Your book marketing Tier List is now complete 💅

(yes, we're doing author newsletters)  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Hey, I've put together the first slate of covers for the inaugural Facebook Ad Image Workshop – which I'll start recording over the weekend. It should be published on YouTube some time next week. Please make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel – which doesn't just ensure you'll see my videos; it also encourages YouTube to show my stuff to more authors, and is the best way to support my channel, which will be relaunching very soon with lots and lots of great content for you. Don't worry if your book/cover isn't picked this time around. I had hundreds of replies so we'll be doing lots of these Ad Image Workshops to loop in as many authors as possible – but mostly because it's a fun and different way to learn all about Facebook Ads, and one that I enjoy a lot too. Today, we have something else you have been clamoring for. The Book Marketing Tier List We're back for the grand finale. And the final S-Tier marketing option for all of us intrepid writers is, of course, the author newsletter. Email marketing is something that's pronounced dead more often than Tom Hanks on Twitter, but it remains the #1 way for authors to spend their precious marketing time, in my rarely humble opinion. We are going to take a quick look at the unique advantages of email – in case you are skeptical or just wondering why something like social media or a trusty website can't fill the same role. And in tandem with that, the tech landscape, and why you might need to lean even more on your mailing list in the future. We'll also spend a good bit of time on the how – showing you how to level up from wherever you are right now with email marketing. Not just generic suggestions for improving your aptitude but specific, tailored advice on how to work through the levels from a rudimentary list (or none at all, gasp!), through more intermediate concerns like deliverability and growth, as well as more advanced tactics. Naturally, we'll be taking a bird's eye view of everything – we have a lot of ground to cover – but I'll also point you to further resources and then flag some upcoming content designed to help you through specific pain points. On that note, my entire body is a pain point right now because I decided to walk to the next town yesterday in a foolish act of calorie balancing but didn't realize that "fisherman's path" involved scaling two mountains and butt – scooting down some terrifying scree only to land in some random lady's thorny bush. That said, lunch was great and the wine was even better, so we'll call it even… once I get these last thorns out of my-- Anyway, I've had a lot of new people join the Decoders crew recently; thanks to all of you for spreading the word. Good things will spring from this, as you will see over the summer, he says somewhat obliquely. Don't forget you can up on any previous episodes you missed at the Decoders Email Archive where all the most useful newsletters are embalmed. Newsletters: Freak or Unique? Most email marketing is terrible. As such, it's understandable if you are skeptical that email is worth investing serious time in – I genuinely get it. You may have no list worth speaking of, or just a rudimentary email operation mostly covering new releases, or you might have never tried reengagement, or dodged list-culling, or only deal in slow, organic growth, or, most likely of all, have reached a kind of nice point with your list and perhaps have plateaued and figure this is as good as it gets, bar some further slow growth over time. All those positions are completely unsurprising – given the clumsy and annoying marketing we are typically confronted with whenever we check our email. It's no stretch to say that a standard email marketing experience plays out as follows: a customer visits a store's website to make a potential purchase, and then signs up to their list – just to get a coupon code or free delivery or whatever. The store then emails them incessantly – daily, or even more frequently!! – until the user unsubscribes in frustration. Possibly after waiting until after they receive their order, just in case, which only multiplies the annoyance.) Because every single one of these emails is a hard sell, an upsell, or a bait-and-switch of some description. Email can be much better than this. You can aim higher – and really, really should. In fact, just by engaging in the radical step of treating your subscribers with respect – which should flow from the shocking realization that they are actual human beings with their own hopes and dreams – then you will be off to a great start. From this, everything flows, because you will grow in the right way, rather than just chewing through subscribers with a variety of shady tricks. You will experience real engagement instead of awkwardly fostering the fake kind. And you will reap the reward in the form of stellar open rates and a cracking response when you launch something or need a review. There's a lot more to it than that, of course, but the right mindset is essential for maximizing your return. Just chasing numbers might give you a quick ego boost, but the superficiality of that approach will be apparent in worsening open rates, minimal clickthroughs, and muted response generally. Yes, you can do some of this "engagement stuff" with social media – sometimes very well. It's also true that social posts can go viral in the way that emails just can't. But email is simply better at deepening engagement with readers over time, as well as closing a sale in the here and now – which is why it simply must be the foundation for your superfan factory. Also because of late-stage capitalism. What The Tech? Tech has never been more central to our lives... or a more shaky foundation on which to build a business. Hyperbole? Let's take a look at the landscape as we approach the midway point of 2024. The hottest tech company on the planet right now is probably OpenAI... which is burning through cash at rates you could nickname Brewster's Billions. It hasn't really developed a product or killer app yet, or even fleshed out a proper set of use cases yet, for all the hype. While generative AI looks like it has the potential to upend multiple industries, including our own, it also feels like a house of (graphics) cards. Is the future really going to be inside a chatbox? Will they be able to rein in all these hallucinations? I have so very many doubts. Nevertheless, AI clearly has the potential to be incredibly disruptive, and to turn some of these tech behomoths into white elephants – including some of those which authors depend on to make a living. Google, on the other hand, is so worried about the threat from OpenAI, and its partners, that it is willing to sh*tcan its entire search operation – with north of 90% market share, and which is basically the Field of Dreams that powers everything else in the Googleverse. If there's no search, there's no ads, and Google goes broke because it's the only thing driving any real revenue. This leaves Google in a deeply uncomfortable position where it desperately wants to lean into AI fully but can't do that without killing the thing that everyone actually likes about Google (and which pays the bills). It has tens of thousands of smart people working for it, of course, and will likely figure it out, but how many licks will it take along the way and what share of the market will it have when it's all done and dusted? Because Google basically thrives off an unwritten pact with the world's webmasters: we'll pass traffic your way if you let everyone pass by our billboards first. Now Google wants to end the journey in front of those billboards, only letting a trickle of users through to their destination. Which might be great for Google's bottom line in the short term (that's a maybe btw, not a certainty), and should help it in the AI battle as well... if they can get this stuff to work, and maybe stop advising people to eat rocks and put glue in their pizza. But how's all that going to play out long-term? All the website publishers in the world, and all the content creators too, are not going to settle for that; something has to give, and it's not going to be pretty. Google will have nothing to scrape for its increasingly insatiable AI if no one needs to be indexed anymore for search. And will people even search in this manner in five years anyway? Will they be using AI assistants or voice commands or something else we haven't imagined yet? Whatever way it pans out, it's almost impossible to imagine the status quo holding if Google fetches all the information and gives it to users right there on the search page to keep them hanging out in front of their lucrative billboards. At the very same time, Google has decided to kill cookies (because "privacy") which is going to change the web in extremely unpredictable ways. Unpredictable except for one rather relevant way, that is, because it's going to royally screw Facebook. Meta also pays the bills with ads, and that business has had a couple of bites taken out of it by Apple, as well as privacy campaigners, governments enacting legislation to protect minority groups, media scandals, and by falling asleep at the wheel, quite frankly. Now Google is going to kill cookies this year, which will surely kill the Facebook Pixel in its current form. You might not care about that if you run Traffic ads to Amazon primarily, but this is a little bit awkward after Facebook removed a giant swathe of interest targets, encouraged us to lean into the Pixel and broad targeting, and then compelled us to use all sorts of AI nonsense that needs way more time in the oven. So, we have essentially been forced onto a shrinking piece of Facebook ice... which Google is about to take a blowtorch too. And if any of this made you jump ship to TikTok, well then I recommend not reading any American newspapers because a lot of guys looking to get elected this year are desperate to join the pile-on. TikTok is currently faced with a very difficult choice from American regulators: sell to a US company, or get shut down completely – an execution which has only been stayed as various cases work their way through the (US) courts. Now, this is a very pessimistic view of the current tech landscape – granted. But if even some of this is correct, it makes for a very uncertain picture – and uncertainty is kryptonite for business planning. Even if I am wrong and all these developments pan out, the landscape is still going to change radically. And change has a habit of radically shaking up the population of winners and losers. Would I start a business today which is dependent on SEO when it looks like the way people search online is going to change completely? Hell, no. Would I devote energy to building a presence on TikTok with the threat of divestment or closure from the US federal government? Certainly not. That doesn't mean you should close your TikTok account or shut down your website, of course, but it does highlight some of the dangers all this tech uncertainty can foster. We might look back on these paragraphs in a year or two and view it as scaremongering or hysteria – easily possible. But I prefer injecting some certainty here, and the best way to fireproof your author business against... whatever is coming is to have as many of your readers' email addresses as possible. Yes, your email service provider is also a tech company and probably will go through the same process of ensh*ttification – in Cory Doctorow's memorable phrase. But at least when MailChimp went south, I could switch to MailerLite with a couple of clicks. And if the same thing happens with MailerLite, I can export my list and go wherever I fancy – with all my readers. Try doing that with your Facebook Likes, your TikTok followers, or the web traffic Google (currently) passes on, for that matter. Or your Amazon purchasers. Having an email list with as many readers as possible on it isn't just the best insurance policy against change, it's often the only lifeboat you can truly rely upon when things go south. Keys to Email Success I've been running my lists pretty well for about six years now… after running them poorly for even longer than that. The keys to success with email are clear: A really, really good reader magnet (plus a solid call-to-action at the back of your books to encourage those sign-ups). This is one of the biggest potential difference-makers. Want to get fancy? You can have more than one. Contextual magnets are where it gets really interesting. A solid welcome sequence which will (a) onboard readers correctly, (b) maximize deliverability from start-to-finish, (c) set the tone and expectations appropriately, (d) make good on whatever promises you made to potential signups, (e) upsell further books to your readers. This might be dry and technical, but it's super important and can be quite lucrative, if that gets your juices flowing. Regular, engaging emails. You can email too little, or too frequently. The exact cadence will depend on you, your readers, and the types of books you write, and you might want to test a few approaches. For me, emailing weekly for non-fiction and monthly for fiction feels right. Traffic to your books. The above matters little if no one signs up in the first place… and you won't really get any organic sign-ups unless people are buying or downloading your books. Need to jumpstart things? A sale or a free run, especially, can really get things moving – as with reviews. A good mix of organic and inorganic sign-ups. Organic sign-ups are best, obviously, these are existing fans of your work. But inorganics play an important role too – not least in accelerating your growth. Inorganic sources can include giveaways, swaps, cross-promo, listbuilders, and Facebook Ads. Just don't lean too hard in that direction, especially before you have the above nailed down, or you could end up with a lot of dead weight on your list. On that note, it's important to identify that dead weight, attempt to re-engage it, and then potentially remove it if re-engagement fails. If you don't do this, it will impact your sender rep over time, which will start chipping away at your open rates. I've covered this topic in great detail before, but the short version is the very real danger here is that if you have lots of people on your list not opening your emails, unsubscribing a lot, or marking you as Spam, then that will start to impact deliverability to the good parts of your list as well. I'll be covering all these topics again, with a fresh slant, but you'll find plenty of resources on all the above in the Email Archive (link up top). It's worth highlighting some pitfalls to avoid though: Half-assing your emails. Put the effort in. Deliver real value. This is your core audience – treat them well. Too much hype. When I launch a book, I pimp the hell out of it, don't get me wrong. But inbetween launches, don't just be pushing your books all the time – give readers some valuable or interesting genre-appropriate content. Flogging your list to death. A hyped-up launch email is perfectly fine. A follow up email during launch week is also perfectly fine – this is what your list is for, don't be shy here! But be smart about it. If you email a second time, mix it up. Focus on the series deals more, give a different slant on things, maybe drop some background info that fans will love, or just frame it as a Thank You email for a great launch – that's always a handy one to have in your back pocket. I don't recommend emailing people several times during your launch with the exact same content, and then re-sending to non-opens every single time as well. That's a surefire way to get an Unsubscribe – even from a fan. A lot of this stuff takes some practice and experience to find the right balance – but the key word is balance. You'll also find resources on all that in the Email Archive too, but I'll certainly be covering this again soon. Your email list should be the core of your author business, the central tentpole of your marketing efforts, the foundation of every launch, the backbone of your operation to turn readers into the kind of fans that do the selling for you. It's a slow burn though – especially at the start, when it can seem like progress is painfully slow. You need to stick with it. There are things you can do to accelerate your progress, but there's danger here too: making your newsletter an endless parade of giveaways and promos and swaps is often not a great reader experience and can be counterproductive. Again, balance is what is needed. Email marketing is one part using the right tools for the job and putting a technical framework in place so everything runs smoothly, one part mindset, and then several portions of patience too. But if you set things up correctly and approach things the right way, the results can be astounding. It also makes you bulletproof – protecting you against whatever change is coming our way. A large, healthy, and thriving list is the most important thing for a sustainable career and can be incredibly lucrative too. And really, there's nothing cooler than having a list so big that you can split it up and throw your latest release into the charts on Day 1 – before you have spent a penny on ads – and then do the same on Day 2, and Day 3, and Day 4, and Day 5. Now you have hit the charts and tickled the Amazon algorithms too, and you did it with your own list, not with a BookBub Featured Deal, or a bunch of Facebook Ads, or even a shoutout from Oprah. You did it, yourself, with your own list, your own readers. Of course, you can layer ads and all sorts of promo on top of that too, and you can do it with the confidence that you have a solid foundation underneath, with a consistent push over several days – and that's when the magic really happens. (Yeah, we'll be talking about that!) Dave P.S. Writing music this week is The Whitest Boy Alive with Inflation. Broomfield Business Park, Malahide, Co. Dublin K36 AT04 ​Unsubscribe | Update your profile​