Newsletters II
Last time I told you a bit about putting out an author’s newsletter. Today I’ll share a few more tips on the same subject.
Try to keep your newsletter simple and easy to read. Sure you can get all sorts of color and pictures on there, but that can make it harder to read your message if your reader is using his or her phone. The system I use offers a full color fancy email, but it also goes out in a words-only version.
Readers today like to scan pages more often than they read deeply. Make sure you appeal to people who just want to hit the high points by writing strong headlines. You might want to make good use of bullet points. At the very least, write short paragraphs and leave plenty of white space on the page. Make it easy to get your messages without sifting through big blocks of copy.
How often should a newsletter go out? Well, that depends on how often you have news. In general I think that anything more than once a week will be regarded as spam. Longer than monthly and you risk being forgotten.
Remember that people are judging you as a writer by your newsletter so edit it carefully. Typos or bad spelling send the message that you don’t care about your writing. And by the way, that same reasoning applies to emails, blog posts, and everything else you write. If you can’t get a newsletter right, why should people think you can handle a short story or novel?
They’re also judging you as a person, so don’t overdo the promotion. A newsletter filled with self-praise, special offers and blatant sales copy will lose you readership quickly. Of course the newsletter is meant to promote your books, but you need to balance that kind of content with useful information. You’ll want to tell readers what you’re doing and give them the latest news about your writing, but some sort of value-added content keeps people coming back.
A good newsletter can be a lot of work and requires consistent effort. But it’s worth it to have a consistent and welcome way to stay in touch with your readers. Give it a try.
Next time I'll talk about the process of putting together a publishing company from scratch. Meanwhile, as always I'm open to guest bloggers who want to talk about a slice of THEIR writer's lives.
Try to keep your newsletter simple and easy to read. Sure you can get all sorts of color and pictures on there, but that can make it harder to read your message if your reader is using his or her phone. The system I use offers a full color fancy email, but it also goes out in a words-only version.
Readers today like to scan pages more often than they read deeply. Make sure you appeal to people who just want to hit the high points by writing strong headlines. You might want to make good use of bullet points. At the very least, write short paragraphs and leave plenty of white space on the page. Make it easy to get your messages without sifting through big blocks of copy.
How often should a newsletter go out? Well, that depends on how often you have news. In general I think that anything more than once a week will be regarded as spam. Longer than monthly and you risk being forgotten.
Remember that people are judging you as a writer by your newsletter so edit it carefully. Typos or bad spelling send the message that you don’t care about your writing. And by the way, that same reasoning applies to emails, blog posts, and everything else you write. If you can’t get a newsletter right, why should people think you can handle a short story or novel?
They’re also judging you as a person, so don’t overdo the promotion. A newsletter filled with self-praise, special offers and blatant sales copy will lose you readership quickly. Of course the newsletter is meant to promote your books, but you need to balance that kind of content with useful information. You’ll want to tell readers what you’re doing and give them the latest news about your writing, but some sort of value-added content keeps people coming back.
A good newsletter can be a lot of work and requires consistent effort. But it’s worth it to have a consistent and welcome way to stay in touch with your readers. Give it a try.
Next time I'll talk about the process of putting together a publishing company from scratch. Meanwhile, as always I'm open to guest bloggers who want to talk about a slice of THEIR writer's lives.
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