Maybe do these three things?

(with your newsletter)  ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Hey, I was chatting with a fellow author recently about all them storm clouds on the horizon. Including Meta’s changes – do we stop posting, and what if we have to stop advertising? – which naturally brought us on to the troubling disclosures from the FTC action versus Amazon Ads (we haven’t discussed this yet, but it’s really not good, guys). The thing we kept returning to – reaching for something solid – was our mailing lists. We’ve been around for a while, so we’ve both been through a few personal tempests and industry-wide hurricanes already, granting us a little perspective, he says, scratching his greybeard. You’ve heard me (and countless others) describe building a presence on a third-party site like digital sharecropping, or constructing your castle on land you don’t actually own. Which is why we always recommend making your newsletter the ultimate center of any platform building you do. That’s not to say social doesn’t have its uses. I have a five-figure following at Facebook and YouTube, and had one I walked away from at Twitter, once it stopped being fun. And each social channel has unique benefits that email can only replicate poorly (or not at all). But you own your list, and no one can take it away from you. Social followings can be an incredibly powerful accelerant, generating traffic at levels you could never match with your list, reaching people you would never encounter otherwise. However, it’s important to try and move your social follows across to your list on a regular basis. Most people know this, but many approach it all wrong, quite frankly. Here are some classic mistakes I see: 1. exclusivity Being on your list should feel exclusive, and by that I man people should get benefits they don’t get elsewhere. If your list is just a Substack feed that I can read without signing up, why bother? If your magnet is available on Amazon, why get excited? If your content is just a cross-post from your socials, why give you my email? 2. cadence No one wants to hear from anyone every single day. On the other hand, you’ll forget your favorite author if they only email once a year. The sweet spot tends to be somewhere in the range from weekly to monthly, depending. Any more frequent and it’s probably going to be annoying (even a weekly list is difficult to pull off). Any less frequent and you’ll have potential drops on engagement – for both highly technical and deeply human reasons. Establish a cadence that works for you, and your audience, and be consistent. Consistency is so much more important than finding the ideal day to send, or time, or frequency, or any of the other things that authors can obsess about (is me, no judgment). 3. be a giver (but not a dope) This is where I usually say something like “booty calls are fun but no basis for a long-term relationship.” But I’m getting old now and fear I’ve horribly misjudged the situation. I’m sure that balance is key here, as with most things. You have heard me say again and again that your newsletter should be more gives than asks because it’s burned into my brain from reading Newsletter Ninja. What this means is that you shouldn’t just be asking for things in every email. Most of us intuitively understand this, at least on a surface level. But perhaps we don’t always realize what comes across as an ask to someone receiving your email. Launching a book is on ask. Calling for reviews is an ask. Requesting social shares is an ask. Putting a book on sale is an ask. Giving a book away for free is, yep, an ask too. Once we get that, we might realize we’re doing it in every single communication. Ensure that at least some emails are pure gives - you giving something to your audience and looking for nothing in return. (And that can be as simple as discussing the shared passions you have with your readers in an interesting way, just so we are clear.) All that said, don’t go too far and feel you can’t sell you books ether. Definitely get excited when you have a backlist promotion or a nice review to shout about or a new release or when you cradle your paperback edition in your arms for the first time like a newborn baby. Those are passions that readers definitely want to share with you too! Just make sure your inner circle, your VIPs, your precious mailing list subscribers get more of that juice. Dave P.S. Writing music this week is Okonski with October. Interesting Paths, Apartado 108, Loja CTT, Lagos, Faro 8601-902 ​Unsubscribe | Update your profile​