If I am going to be giving advice to fellow struggling authors, then I imagine I am obliged to talk about email lists. On this topic, I am in the Hubert Humprey camp; an old-time Minnesotan politician—that I remember him dates me—of whom it was said he could talk about any subject, any time, any where, whether he knew anything about it or not. Witness that I have thirty-three fans on my email list, that should disqualify me from opening my mouth on this topic, but here goes.

In the self-publishing world, if you have a large email list (10,000 for example), to which you can market, then you are ahead of the game. How do you get such a list? It is with a “reader magnet.” You offer something for free in exchange for their email address. Then the trick is, you, the author, need to keep them engaged with more content, such as a newsletter, so that they don’t forget who you are when it is time for you to say, “Hey all, I’ve got a new book!”

I have a reader magnet. It’s called Stories and Poems of Trueterra (click if you dare), an on-going ebook of short stories and poems related to my fantasy world. Periodically, I add another story or poem, then send it off to my email list, all thirty-three of them, as a way of saying, “Hey, I’m still here.”

My failure is that the new material is very periodical, maybe four times a year, not weekly or daily like most email lists that I am on. Yet, I can’t see myself filling up other people’s email folders with prattle, attempting to remind them of my existence.

I am sure you have the same experience as I when we surrender our email address to a virtual stranger, then see our screens populated with items of marginal interest. We can unsubscribe or ignore. I tend to open, glance, and if nothing catches my interest, move on. I do try to keep a finger on the pulse of the market.

Rather than focusing on an email list, I prefer blogging to get attention. Readers come to my blog when they want to read it, not because I am foisting it upon them. I am much more comfortable with that approach. Between this mid-month blog and my end-of-month fairy-tale blog, in April I got six hundred and thirty visitors and eight hundred and three views. Is this a good approach to marketing my book? Probably not, but I have settled into it.

Speaking about being on others’ email lists, there are two that I have found useful. One is Bryan Cohen’s free 5-Day Amazon Ad Profit Challenge. This is a course he runs a couple of times a year, the next one in July. Yes, he is trying to sell you a larger course, and you will have to put up with his unending, positivity-generating, enthusiasm, but he will give you actionable information. In fact, he will handhold you through creating the three basic types of Amazon ads, step by tiny step. If you are interested in Amazon ads, there is no better free course that I am aware of.

On broader topics in self-publishing, there is David Gaughran’s extensive and free Starting From Zero course. He generously shares an immense amount of information in a readable and viewable manner. I highly recommend, and I think I will revisit it again soon. He also has a useful newsletter that comes out most Fridays.  

PS. My email list resides on MailerLite, which I talked about before in December’s mid-month blog. I am using MailerLite at David Gaughran’s suggestion.