While not everyone is active on social media, nearly everyone has an email address. A well-crafted email newsletter goes a long way toward keeping your readers up-to-date about book deals, release dates, great reviews, or even a contest you might be running. Newsletters help you give back to your readers. Loyal readers consider themselves part of a community—one led by you.

Getting Started

There are some points to keep in mind as you start. As a form of communication, there’s built-in asymmetry that effective writers of newsletters should keep in mind. From the perspective of the writer, the newsletter seems like a billboard or broadcast announcement. But from the perspective of the reader, newsletters feel more intimate and geared towards them as individuals.

Your thoughts and words are nestled within your readers’ inbox in a very tangible way. That’s a very personal place to be—and very unlike website articles, promotional copy, or even your book itself. It goes without saying that you are there by invitation. When readers opted in to receive your emails, they were in effect saving a space for you in their daily lives. Successful authors always seek connection with readers, and work to maintain that connection with authenticity and respect.

Newsletter Title and Structure

Give your newsletter a name. Something short, catchy, and easy to remember. Readers will see this title in the FROM field in their inbox and will come to associate it with you, which drives email opens and keeps your subscriber count up.

Many authors like to apply a set theme to their newsletters as well. For example, if you've written a non-fiction book about investing, it makes sense to stick to topics around the economy and the markets. On the other hand, many authors find this approach too limiting. Honestly, you’ll wind up figuring this out as you go. Since the goal of your newsletter is to serve your readership and foster a long-term relationship, we suggest not being too restrictive with your newsletter theme.

Some examples of well-known author newsletters include the following. Take a look at each to get a feeling for the form.

Taney Morgan George Saunders Helena Rookwood

Although newsletters at first seem just like old-fashioned blog posts, there are subtle differences to keep in mind:

• Newsletter content should be more scannable and easier to gather at a glance. We suggest keeping things pithy, with an eye towards putting any must-read points within the first few sentences.
• There are two common approaches to newsletter length: many suggest keeping things very short and to the point, while other authors have had success with longer-form content. We get into this in more detail below.
• Much of your newsletter engagement will probably be on phones. Avoid requiring people to click through to other websites to fully take in what you’re presenting to them. Once their phones switch from their email app to their web browsing app, you’ve lost them.
• Because of the limited interaction space of mobile email, we recommend limiting the number of links to only one or two. More on that below.

There are several formats for newsletters, each with their own strengths. You’re free to explore what works best for you, but keep things simple and easy for readers to parse. Breaking things into sections is a nice way to help scannability and help with organizing your content when writing them.

Extremes in either direction are to be avoided. Don’t send out emails that are one long paragraph. A common approach is to use at least 2 or 3 sections with predictable titles—set in bold type—to make it clear to readers what’s included in part of the email.

A good set of bare-bones sections would be something like this:

• Main Feature: include no more than three topics or announcements. This is a good place to call out upcoming appearances or blog tours. More content suggestions found below.
• Book Update: how are things going with your book (either the one currently in-cycle or others)? Loyal readers love behind-the-scenes detail about your journey as an author.
• Book Recommendations: show some appreciation for peers you admire or books you think your readers will especially enjoy

Along with these, you should always include a section at the bottom of every newsletter you send with the following items: your short bio, link to your website, links to your socials, and at least one buy-link if available (it’s OK to send out newsletters before your book is actually for sale).

Please note that newsletters are not the same as social media posts. It might be tempting to include silly or inconsequential tid-bits in your newsletter, but try to resist it. That’s what your social media feeds are for. We cover optimal social media practices in our special Social Sprint series.

What To Write: Newsletter Content

While the intent is to keep your name and work in front of people, you also want to keep things interesting—which means sharing value by providing quality content. You’ll have to find a voice that’s true to who you are, but the overall effect is to balance promotional language with more personal thoughts and expressions.

Topics you should consider covering in your newsletter:

• Important marketing calendar milestones
  • Book cover reveal
  • Release date
  • Blog tour or podcast appearances
  • Special discounts on your book
• Notable positive reviews
• Sales milestones
  • Hitting number one within an Amazon category
  • Appearing on traditional best-seller lists like the New York Times
• Notes of personal inspiration
  • Did you learn something important worth sharing?
  • Have you read about someone who inspires you?
• Interesting research topics
  • Are there topics related to your book that you continue to learn about that your readers will find interesting?

Common mistakes to avoid in your newsletter content:

• Including topics or references that you don’t actually relate to, but that seem trendy: your loyal readers have an uncanny way of telling your authentic voice. In many ways they know you better than you do. Authenticity is everything. Stay true to who you are.
• Overtly promotional language: readers want to learn about what you’re up to, but they also want to know what it all means to you, and how various activities positively benefit them. Stuffing your newsletter with blatantly promotional jargon violates the understanding between you and your readers.
• Promotional or paid placement by someone else: unless you’re a megastar and the amount of money on the table is huge, never include links to other products or services in exchange for money or promotional consideration. It will dilute your voice and put off loyal readers. If you really want to include these kinds of mentions, make sure it’s for something you really believe in.
• Excessive use of exclamation points and question marks: we’re sure you’ve seen promotional phrases in emails like “Head over and click buy to get 50% off!!!” or “What are you waiting for??” That kind of punctuation not only obscures your true voice, but can actually trigger spam blockers in some cases.

Newsletter Cadence & Subscriber Fatigue

Do not send a newsletter for every little update. That’s a surefire way of ensuring your unsubscribe rate grows. What’s the best send frequency? Honestly, very smart and knowledgeable people have significantly different opinions on this question.

We’ll say this: once a day is too much, once a year too little. Where you land is really up to you. You may find the whole process of writing and sending newsletters to be stressful and something you’d rather avoid. We know exactly how you feel! Honor that feeling and don’t push yourself into a place of recurring anxiety. Keeping your headspace open and your creative drive flowing as much as possible. If you’d rather not be sending out newsletters at all, we suggest trying it a few times to see if you get used to it. A great way to get your feet wet is by using a quarterly cadence (four times per year, perhaps one for each season).

If you’re totally comfortable and have a lot to say—that you’re confident subscribers want to read— by all means publish weekly. We’ve found that formula only works for a very small group of authors, however. Once or twice per month is probably about right for most people.

It’s considered a best-practice to send out the same day of the week each time you publish. We agree. You want to be seen as reliable and consistent. Which day of the week is completely up to you. Some content is more inherently “weekend” content (like travel, gardening, entertainment) while some is more workaday, and performs better during Monday through Friday. It’s been well established that Tuesdays are still the best day of the week in terms of open rates, but only by a small margin.

Now that you’ve figured out your format, content, and scheduling, how do you prevent people from unsubscribing? Because the word is now out about the power of email marketing, it may seem like every journalist and author has their own newsletter. You may already be getting several per day yourself and have no time to read them. Study your own behavior with these emails: how much do you read? What catches your eye? Where’s the value that prevents you from unsubscribing?

Assume subscribers won’t open every message and will quickly scan over your content. For this reason, it’s important to:

• Write a unique subject line for every send to differentiate the topics covered
• Include important links at least twice (once towards the top, once towards the bottom)
• Be sensitive to the commitment you’re asking from readers to give you their attention and take your recommendations seriously

Things can go wrong. Should the day come when you hit Send too quickly, don’t send out multiple copies of your newsletter because you saw an error after the fact. Sometimes you just have to take the hit, move forward, and do better next time. Serious errors or omissions can be addressed on social media or on the author news portion of your website.

To avoid this situation, carefully proofread before you send. Ideally have someone else do a final proof, even for simple things. We suggest drafting your newsletters in Google Docs or other shared cloud-based document tools. That way it’s very easy to share out and get back inline comments from colleagues.

Subscriber Privacy and Current Laws

The wild west days of anything-goes email marketing are long gone. We have entered an era where user privacy has become a major driver in politics and is starting to be reflected in our laws—state, federal, and in some cases, international. We’ll have Sprints and articles where you can read about this in more detail.

While exact laws differ depending on where you live, following these guidelines will keep you in the safety zone (and keep your subscribers happy too):

• Never share your email list with anyone else. This includes other writers, your spouse’s side-hustle, promotional partners, or even your book publisher. Your subscribers opted into a relationship with you. The only exception is if you mentioned they were signing up to hear from you and other marketing partners. But honestly, that’s considered bad form. Avoid the hassle.
• Institute a double opt-in model for subscriptions. This means people must not only enter their email into your signup form, but also click a link in a preliminary email to actually be added to the list. Most newsletter systems provide this by default so you usually don’t have to worry about it.
• Always honor opt-out requests from subscribers. Ignoring them can cause real unhappiness and cause headaches you'd rather not have. Again, most newsletter systems handle this automatically. It’s a good idea to test it out from time to time by subscribing to your own list with a different email address.
• Provide an actual physical address and unsubscribe link at the bottom of every newsletter or email you send to your list.