Ep 178 Mastering Author Newsletters

Pencils&Lipstick podcast · Apr 24, 2023

Transcript

Welcome to the Pencils & Lipstick Podcast, a weekly podcast for writers. Grab a cup of coffee, perhaps some paper and pen, and enjoy an interview with an author, a chat with a writing tool creator, perhaps a conversation with an editor or other publishing expert, as well as Kat's thoughts on writing and her own creative journey. You'll laugh. You'll cry. Well, hopefully not actually cry, but you will probably learn some things. And I hope you'll be inspired to write because, as I always say, you have a story. You should write it down.

This is Pencils and Lipstick. Hello everyone, welcome back to Pencils and Lipstick. I am Kat Caldwell and this is episode 178 of the podcast. And today we do not have an interview, but we will be back next week with a guest. Today we are going to talk about a couple different things going on in the indie world. And we're going to talk about author newsletters. So before we get into that, I want to remind you as always that it helps us

if you share out the podcast, if you subscribe on the apps that you are listening to, if you could review. I know on iTunes we kind of have, like we're six or maybe eight months out from the last review we have. I know reviews are a bit of a pain, but they definitely help the podcast. So if you are willing to do that,

even giving some stars, whatever you think of it, but sharing it out with other people. We some wonderful guests who know a lot about the publishing world and the writing world, and I hope that they're bringing you some really good content that you can apply to your writing and to your marketing and to your publishing and all that. Last week we had Jenny Nash on and she was talking about book coaching and why you might want a coach and why you might want to become a coach.

So if you haven't checked out that episode, go and do that. Author Accelerator is still running. Until the end of the month, their spring sale where you always sort of get these tons of bonuses if you sign up to become a book coach and I can't say enough about the community. So the links will be in the show notes below and if you wanna hear more from Jenny Nash, the founder of Author Accelerator, go to episode 177 and you can listen to her talk

all about it and listen to me gush all about it basically. So if you guys don't know Kobo has rolled out their subscription book service in the States now. I believe it's the States and the UK that was next in line. They already had it in the Netherlands and I think they had it in Canada as well. So the subscription -based service is kind of like Kindle Unlimited in which you pay per month to get access to all the books, you know, in there. But the difference is that they aren't exclusive. So if you don't know if an author has their book within KU so you can get it with your subscription, they are limited to only having their book with Amazon. They cannot have their ebook with anybody else. And that's why, that's what we differentiate

between Wide and KU, because KU is the only subscription service in which the author has to limit the sale of their book only to Amazon. So they can have it in KU, so anybody with a subscription to Kindle Unlimited can access that book, and they can sell the ebook on Amazon as well to anybody who doesn't own the subscription service, and they can have their paperback Wide if they want to. With their e -book they cannot have anywhere, they cannot even really, they shouldn't be giving it away themselves. I'm sure there are others out there that sort of skirt the rules, but if Amazon finds out, you can get a big old slap on your wrist.

So Kobo is different in that they are not limiting authors to be exclusively to Kobo, and that's just good business sense because I believe they have less than half of the the titles that Amazon has. You know, Amazon almost has so many books out there. Just, you know, FYI to readers, I loved Kindle Unlimited, especially while I was living in Europe. It gave me access to a lot of books. I have cut down on all my subscriptions, so I don't have that anymore. But, you know, anytime that you're buying a book from, even if it's Kobo, Amazon, you don't actually own the book. what you're doing is paying to rent the book, right? And especially your subscription service. And a lot of authors make most of their money from KU. This is typically romance writers, YA writers, fantasy writers, people whose fan base consumes a lot of books in a short amount of time. So a lot of romance readers will read books just all day long. So they are going to make most of their money there and that's why a lot of them argue against going wide. For the rest of you, you need to decide for yourself where your audience is. I personally am wide.

I sometimes put my books into KU every once in a while just to see what they will do. But I don't write to market and I don't write fast consumable books. I think An Audience with the King is probably my quickest read, and it's not a series, it helps if it's a series. So yeah, I've put them in to KU every once in a while because you can put them in for 90 days, you're not stuck in there for life, but you are stuck there for 90 days, and just to see what happens. And like anything, you cannot just stick your book somewhere and expect something to happen. You have to do a lot of promotions, you have to do a lot of sales and marketing and pushing. And so I put coffee stains in there last fall, like late last fall.

And that is how it got up to number two on the top 100 in the contemporary new adult. So, you know, and that's fun to see, but quite frankly, it's, you know, it helps sales for a couple weeks. And then of course, everyone moves on basically because we've got busy lives and anybody who wanted the book gets it. And the other problem with it is you see a book when you have KU, you take it, that you put it into your TBR pile, right? And so just like our TBR of physical books keeps piling up, your TBR of Kindle books can fill up. So just because somebody downloads your book doesn't mean that they're gonna read it right away and then you don't get paid until they read it. So just because somebody takes your book with KU doesn't mean that you're getting paid. You actually get paid per page read. And what's great about that is that you can get a lot of data, especially if you have a series, and you can see what your read -through rate is from book one to two, two to three, and so on. And, you know, even for your book, do people finish the book or do they not finish the book? But it's not great for, you know, initial sales. So you might get 100 people that download the book and put it into their KU, TBR, and you won't see sales until they get to reading it. And let's just, you know, raise our hands if you have a book in your Kindle that you haven't yet read. I don't have KU so I buy it so they have been paid but I haven't read it. So there's like 10 of them on there. So Kobo is going to do the same subscription. Mine are in the Kobo subscription because you don't have to be exclusive and I think why not? Why not have them there? Same thing, Kobo requires some marketing. The great thing about Kobo is that they do have promotions on the site that deal specifically with Kobo products and gets your book specifically out in front of an audience that you might not be able to reach on your own. So Canada, New Zealand, UK, Australia, India, Europe.

So it's definitely, if you're gonna go wide, it's worth playing around in Kobo. They have excellent customer service. It's really worth checking them out. If you guys have any questions, and I will try my best to answer them, you can get me over on Twitter at Pencils Lipstick, and you can get me on Instagram at pencilsandlipstick, all spelled out, or at katcaldwell .author.

I will try to answer your questions. I am trying to get Kobo to come on the show and to tell us all about it so hopefully they will be able to answer all the questions when they come on the show and Try to convince y 'all to go wide. I Think you should go wide, but that's just me. So that's exciting news There's I think that it's good for Amazon to have competition. I know we all have sort of mixed feelings about Amazon And they're sort of takeover of America and possibly the world. I think it's good for companies to have competition. I think it's good for them to have competition on the subscription service. So I don't think that Amazon will change their exclusivity. I think it's working for a lot of people and I don't think books are their priority. You it's like, it's working, why fix something that ain't broke?

But, so that's just a decision you're gonna have to make you're going to, you know, stay exclusive to Amazon. But I will repeat myself, it does not matter as much whether you go wide or you go specifically KU, your book isn't going to sell if you don't push it, right? So it is easier to publish your book these days. It's easier to get it out there. There are I think KU has 3 million titles on it. So you have a lot of competition. We have a lot of competition. It is getting harder and harder to differentiate yourself in the crowd and to be seen and to be not only bought but be read, right? So there's a couple different steps along the way in getting your book consumed by the reader. And so whether you decide to go wide or direct sales or KU or a mix,

you are going to have to find a way to market. And I can't stress enough that you are a salesperson as an author, you are a small business, and it is worth looking into learning how to sell and learning how to run a small business. That is what I have been doing for about nine months. It's slow going and I feel like we're doing that from the beginning too, but it's just a lot. And with all of our busy lives, I feel like we have to take it in stages. I am in my fifth decade of life, so I'm not in college and I don't just have the time to go and take a business class. and anyway, you know, it's an online small business and all the things are different. So you need to learn how to sell. You need to learn how to promote your book, how to talk about your book. And that is why I want to talk to you guys about your author newsletter. So your author newsletter is going to help teach you to do these things, to talk about your book, to talk about your small business, your brand,

which is usually you or your pen name unless you're JK Rowling's and it's, you know, Harry Potter or Potter's World or whatever that is. And yeah, you can make a brand around the series if you want to sort of make maybe several brands or you think that that series will really be, you know, the Harry Potter in your world sort of take off and be worth spending a lot of time on. And oh, it's a lot of decisions to make, right, before you even know. That's what I find so hard about it. So for most authors, their brand is their pen name or their author name, right? It's amazing to me how many people still struggle with author newsletter, how many people resist making an author newsletter. That's one thing. Of all the things that I didn't get right, that's one thing I got right. And I still didn't do it completely right from the beginning. But an author newsletter has been a thing since 2014, 2013. I mean, ever since I really started looking into becoming an author, or seriously with babies in my arms and on my legs, hugging my legs. I just have this visual of me standing with a newborn baby and a toddler on one leg and another toddler on another leg.

That's why I always say that. So in author newsletters, I know people resist it. And I think the reason that you resist it is the fear, like a couple different fears, but it's based on fears. Your first fear is, you know, no one's on your list. How do you even start what is zero at first, right? And this is the biggest question I get, or the number one question over and over and over again is how do I start? And the mechanics of starting's not hard. You know, I can tell you go to MailerLite, go to MailChimp, go to Flowdesk, go to ConvertKit, go anywhere,

and start a mailing list. But really what people are asking is how do they get people on their list? So we are going to tackle that question. And I think the next question that is based in fear is what do I talk about in my author newsletter? And so those are the things that trip us up and keep us from doing it and keep us from being consistent. so we are going to talk about that right now after this little commercial. By the end of the month, you are probably going to get tired of me talking about Author Accelerator, but I refuse to stop talking about it because I just believe that much in this program. It is one program that I am so happy that I bought. There's a couple different programs out there that I have bought and, you know, not finished. And then there's a couple that I have finished and I fully believe in, and one of those is Author Accelerator. So you know me, if you've been listening to the podcast, I spent all last year trying to, you know, or just being obsessed with story, I think from summer of 2020 until now,

just being obsessed with storytelling. And I found Author Accelerator through a couple different steps after I read Lisa Krohn's books. Then I found out that Jenny Nash helped her write the book, and then I looked to see if Lisa Krohn had a coaching certificate or course or something, and then I found Jenny Nash, and she has the Author Accelerator certification program. And what it does more than just, you know, gives you a beautiful little sticker and a fun certificate is it walks you through the steps of how to teach writing. Sometimes we have the intuition about writing, but teaching someone writing or being able to explain what is not working in a story is not easy and it requires knowledge of storytelling and story format and how story works in our human brain. And so this is a super complete certification program. You have to go through every single step with different practicum clients. You have to learn about storytelling. And even me as an indie author, and I will die in the hill of I love being an indie author, or I had to step into the traditional publishing world, which only gave me an even deeper knowledge of writing and publishing and agents and being able to serve anyone who comes to me with questions about writing and publishing better than I could before. Better than I ever would have been able to without this program.

I can't say enough about it. And until the end of April, you can get in. This is when I got in last year in 2022. It was the end of April and it was their spring like push to get people into the certification program. I think it's a great time to join. You have the summer to sort of schedule out. You send your kids on a bike ride and you can spend an hour in the videos and doing your homework and put that in there every day or a couple days a week and you can get the certification done. Plus the community's amazing. They'll answer your questions. You'll make friends. It's so much fun. So the reason that we call it the Spring Push

is because they offer, with the certification program, $700 in book coaching extras. So these aren't just bonuses for bonuses' sakes. This is book coaching extras that will help you in building your book coaching business once you are certified. So what comes with it? All three of Jenny Nash's books, because she has written read books all day and get paid for it, excellent book. A blueprint for a book, also excellent. and Blueprint for a nonfiction book, which I recommend even if you are a fiction book coaching going down the fiction route. It's just really good to understand the difference in the formatting.

You'll also get access to the Business of Book Coaching Summit. That is 18 plus hours of bonus sessions featuring experts in writing, book coaching, and publishing. And it's excellent because once you're done with your certification, your work is not over because you have to build your coaching business. You also get a $100 gift card to bookshop .org, which is awesome. That's for US students only, but it's still awesome. A bonus add -on course called Edit Smarter, Not Harder. That is a great course because it helps you not spend more time than you need on editing people's manuscripts and you get smarter at it. you become professional at editing much quicker. And then you get an exclusive invitation to a business takeoff launch party with Jenny Nash in May.

And are so many different events that we do within the program as well that are all included. And when you sign up for the certification, you have the full course, you can go through it at your own pace. And then the course also includes the sort of one year membership from the time you finish the course of being within their system

and getting clients recommended to you. So I think the course is great. If you guys have any questions, you can click below on any of my Twitter or Instagram. You can ask me anything that you want, what my experience was. You can check out episode 177 in which Jenny Nash talks about the program and why she created it and how it might benefit you. I think that you should click the link below. It is my affiliate link, so at no extra cost to you if you join the program, I will get a little bonus. But if you join the program, also let me know and let's hook up in the Author Accelerator community and just let me know and let's know each other and become friends.

Check out the link below, doesn't hurt you to look at it. If you're already a developmental editor, it will help you in your developmental editing. If you ever wanted to work in book coaching, in editing, in this publishing world, this certification program will get you to the next level. You will be so knowledgeable. I can't say enough about it. So check it out. Okay, so we are going to talk about author newsletters now that I have talked your ear off about becoming a book coach. I am going to go into marketing coach mode and we are going to talk about author newsletters. Why first of all do you need an author newsletter? So author newsletter is the same as all those other newsletters that you sign up for at your favorite shops. You know how when you get on to, I don't know, whatever shop online that you, toms .com,

and the popup says, give us your email address and we'll give you 15 % off. And what do you do? You give them your email address because you want that 15 % off. And then what do they do? They send you sales and announcements and newsletters and all these things. That is a newsletter and that is what you want as an author. You want access to your clients, direct access. Now, why do stores do this? Because they have your full attention. Yes, they're gonna run ads. Yes, they're gonna do other things.

But in your email box, your inbox, that is worth money. You know how we talk about how these corporations sell our information, Facebook sells our information? They are selling your email address because it's worth money. Your attention is worth money. So as an author, you are competing with Barnes & Noble and Amazon and Bookshop and Kobo and all the other authors.

Plus you're competing with like the time suckers, the social media and the Netflix and the Hulu and all that, because what you're selling is entertainment as well. You're trying to grab the reader by their face, right? and say like, look at me, look at this book I wrote just for you, please read it. So you want it because you own the right to email them. Now if they unsubscribe, you no longer own that right. But it is the one thing that you can control to get in front of them. If you put something on social media, you cross your fingers that the right people saw it, because you have no control over who sees it. If you run ads, you have a little bit more control, but quite frankly, that is a whole different thing. Running ads, you know, a lot of times people have to see an ad two, three, four, five, six, seven times before they will actually buy. And we've all been there, we've clicked on ads, we've clicked on them again, we've clicked on them again, and then we've decided, no, I'm not going to buy, right? So you are going to own this little road that leads to your readers or potential readers and that is called your author newsletter. Now the other reason that you should do it is because in the States at least they're talking about banning tik -tok. I wouldn't be surprised if they try to ban Facebook or if Facebook tries to own everything or the worst could happen and you could spend all your time building up your Facebook or your TikTok or your Instagram or your LinkedIn or your Noster or whatever all these weird things that are coming up they all they all have weird names and then they take you off for no reason so Russell Nolte who's never not followed

the rules on Facebook as far as I can tell and has been there he's probably my age about and you know has been on Facebook since almost the conception of Facebook, and they just deleted him. And I would assume it was a mistake, but it's gone. It's not just that he's logged out, it's gone. All of his posts are gone. All of his work is gone. All of the page is completely gone. So whether that is a human error, whether it is something that their terms and conditions change and all of a sudden they don't like your kind of book or whatever because it's so subjective, you do not have control over what Facebook decides to do or TikTok or whoever. It is a private company. They can kick off whoever they want.

You also on Facebook, even if you have a group and it's pretty active, pretty active means that like 30 % of the people who are in that group are active. So in business, and this is the weirdest thing when you start learning about business, like you're good if like 30 to 40 % of people in your sort of group that like you are active and actively participating with your brand. That's something to come to terms with, right? So your author newsletter is a way for you to get in front of the reader, present yourself, present your books and see if they will become a fan and away from the maddening crowd, basically. So, if they click on your email and they're reading your email, you have their full attention for all of two and a half minutes, according to studies.

So, I will always push an author newsletter, and I do think that if you're resisting an author newsletter right now, it's based in fear, in a couple different fears that are completely founded. Yes, yes, there are fears to this and it is like anything, you have to get started, right? So before we get into those fears, the next question people ask me that's sort of like a non, I think it's like keeping them from starting, but they say, when should you send out your newsletter? And that's just really, it doesn't matter. I think it's one of those questions we ask because we think it matters and yet it's,

I think it's just a procrastination tool. I send out my reader newsletter, so my author newsletter, every two weeks. I have done it every month and I would forget, so I moved it to every two weeks. I did it every week for a while and then I polled my subscribers and they said every two weeks would be fine, so I moved to every two weeks. It doesn't matter. What matters is consistency. So whatever you can do. So go ahead and try every month. And giving yourself space to have

a typical reader newsletter. So, okay, I'm gonna say reader newsletter, author newsletter is interchangeable here. So you're connecting with your readers. Having that newsletter that comes on the day that you claim that it's gonna come. So mine comes every other Thursday. And then leaving yourself some room to do promotions whenever you want to do promotions, okay? So you don't only email them on every other Thursday. That's when my typical one comes out. So I will tell them what I am writing. I will tell them if maybe I got a short story published and where they can go read it. If they want to sign up to be an alpha reader, if they want to sign up to be, you know, on your ARC team, who I am cross -promoting that week, whatever promotion I am doing. So that is like the typical.

And then if I have something special going on, I have sort of left myself room to send out extra emails without being kind of overwhelming to my readers, all right? So where do I start? That is the number one fear -based question that people always ask. and the truth is you start wherever you can. If you are not published yet or you've just published one book, you go out and you physically ask your friends and family and people on Facebook and people on whatever groups you are in, would you like to join my newsletter and hear about what I'm writing? Now, are these people going to become your biggest fans? Maybe, but probably not. But it at least gives you somebody to talk to. And it gives you some numbers on your list. So also, when you're putting it out, if you're very active on Facebook, let's say, or very active on LinkedIn, and this goes for you nonfiction writers as well, you need an author newsletter. Let's say you want people, like you've sort of curated a certain group there. You don't just put it out once. You put it out twice, three times a week.

This is what you're gonna get on my newsletter. You need to decide what you're gonna, let's say you're a fantasy YA author. You need to decide what you are going to give them. Are you gonna talk about the greatest fantasy books that you've ever read? Are you going to talk about how you've built the world? Are you going to talk about what you've based your book on? Are you going to talk about, are you going to review other fantasy books? Are you going to, I don't know, what are you going to do? So that's really up to you. I do have some ideas for you and we'll talk about that later. But what you want to do is ask, ask, ask, ask, ask. So ask your friends, ask your family, put it out on Facebook, constantly be putting it out there. And yes, you will start out with 5, 10, 12, 25 people. If you are in different writing groups, you can suggest that you exchange signups. So I'll sign up for your author newsletter if you sign up for mine because in the beginning, what you just need is a handful of people on your list. Where do you go from there? You need a lead magnet. So it is that 15 % off on Tom's shoes. As an author, it's probably not gonna be 15 % off, right? So here are the most typical lead magnets.

So the freebie that entices somebody to come onto your newsletter. And this specifically will help you find people who might become your fans. Because it's going to be a short story, a novella, a character write -up. Let's say some people do some really fun things with their characters. Like they make AI photos of them or like a Pinterest board for them. They like write up their backstory and sort of make this fun little worksheet that you can go in and like see the characters. So if you know how to do that, go ahead and do that. That's awesome. People will get to know your characters and then they'll say, okay, I want to read this book. It can be also the first five chapters, first three chapters of your book, so that it sort of entices them with a link to go buy the full thing. You have to be very careful if you're on KU. Yeah, you just have to be careful if you're on KU.

I'll leave it there. So, you need something that tells the reader about you as a writer and about your writing to entice them over. So, I think the easiest thing is, and I say easy with quotes, to write up a short story or a novella, like a prequel to your book or your series. I think that's the easiest. Yes, a lot of people give away a full book. Okay, we'll talk about that in a little bit. Or your first five chapters. So why are you going to do this? This will help people decide if they wanna be on your author newsletter, because if they are not a fantasy reader, they are not going to click and get that book, right? Or maybe they will think, oh, I'm gonna read this to see if it's good for my child, if you're a YA writer, or I'm gonna try this new genre. I mean, I'm a wide reader, so I try lots of different genres. So this will sort of weed through the crowd, right?

You also need, now the best way to do this is to have a novella, if possible, or a short story, which you could, you know, if it's long enough, 12, 15, 20 pages, you could call it a novella, and then you're going to start finding other writers who are within the realm -ish of your writing. So if you, again, if you're a contemporary romance, sweet romance writer, find other contemporary sweet romance writers. And I think the best way to do that is to sort of, if you write medical romance and they write small town romance, you know, sort of see if their readers will hop on over to your list as well. Now, if you're small town romance, maybe hooking up with another small town romance writer will work as well.

You're just gonna have to sort of figure that out. So this does take asking. So I was talking to a young writer the other day and she said, well, how do you find those writers? And I said, it just takes asking. You go into Facebook writing groups, LinkedIn writing groups, You find people and follow them on Instagram and you just ask them, do you have an author newsletter? Would you ever want to cross -promote each other's books? Now you can either cross -promote the book, but the smartest thing would be to cross -promote your lead magnet. So then the readers from their author newsletter will click on your lead magnet, they will sign up for your author newsletter, they will get their free lead magnet, and you might be making a friend for life or a fan for life, right?

The way that you get your lead magnet to people is you can either host all of your media files on your website, which can start getting pretty heavy, or you can become part of bookfunnel .com. Yes, things cost money. BookFunnel does cost money. I believe it's 120 a year. I think it starts at 70 a year. I should have figured that out, but bookfunnel .com is the way that most people then deliver their files to the reader. It's not impossible to do it hosted on your own website. I have done it before, especially for smaller files, where it just has its own landing page on my website and people can download it. But if you want to know more about BookFunnel, go over to bookfunnel .com. Again, you can ask me questions if you want. So where do you start? You start with the people around you. You start with people that you know. You start asking on social media and you start talking about your author newsletter. And you're excited about your author newsletter because you're excited to tell people about your book. Again, I said you are now a salesperson, right? that you are a small business owner. Follow some small businesses on Instagram or on TikTok

and they are talking about their business all the time because they're excited. So aren't you excited about your book? Yes, you're excited about your book. So we just gotta learn to talk about it and to share our excitement, which goes into the what will I even tell people on my author newsletter, which is the other question I get, which I think is based in fear and not unfounded.

I get it. I have done many things on my other newsletter. I have done writing prompts, I have done poetry every other week. For a while I did like sent out, I found poetry to go with it and then I would write my own little story. I've done like flash fiction where I would put out a prompt and then I would set the timer and write, like try to write a little story from it. About 300 to 500 words every week, that got a lot. I have written letters between my characters for my readers just to give them something to read. But I think the easiest thing to do is to talk about your business, which is you as a writer and your books. So you can do fun things. You can write letters. You can do deleted scenes every once in a while. I wouldn't promise it, though, like I did. I'm gonna have to be like, whoa, this is way too much work. Yeah, we're gonna stop this now. So what you talk about is what you're learning as a writer. And these don't have to be long. In fact, I recommend that you do not have an email in which you have to scroll down very much. It's hard to do that. And I recommend this, and then somebody pointed it out to me the other day that sometimes they have to do two scroll ups you know, with their fingers on my emails, which is not my goal. My goal is to maybe do one scroll up.

So you're gonna give updates. You're gonna say what you're learning. You're going to say a character that you love. You're going to tell them how you came up with the idea, what changed as you wrote it, where you came up with this scene, what is maybe based on real life. Maybe you have an ice cream shop in your story that everyone gathers at and that it's based off of your grandmother's stories when she was young. I don't know. Who is based on somebody that you know? Is it true that authors kill off their ex -boyfriends in their books? I don't know. If you scroll through social media, I do this sometimes, and just see what people are sort of talking about. and then I talk to my newsletter about it. Like I've never killed off anyone that I quote -unquote, you know, based on somebody I know in a book, but I also don't write those kind of books. So, so do you, you know, did you base a character off of somebody that you know? Did you write about high school because you wanted to change your years in high school?

It's really about getting personal and yet be sure to keep those boundaries. So I like telling people where I'm at in my writing. I like telling them what I'm reading, which is a great thing to do because I can't feed them everything that they want to read. I'm not that fast of a writer, so I want to recommend other people. And number one, number one, number one,

after you're talking about your book and your writing, talk about other authors and other books. So cross -promotion, collaboration, multiple author promotions, these are key. These are not only key to getting more people on your author newsletter. So as I said, you ask an author friend, will you cross -promote my book or my lead magnet and I'll cross -promote your lead magnet so you're getting readers over to your author newsletter. but you're feeding the book world, right? And you're helping lift up other authors. Now, where you can get this, like it can become a lot to find these people on your own. So that is where BookFunnel again comes in and StoryOrigin .com. So these are where you can go and find large group author promotions going on. And those are either newsletter builders, which is usually promoting your lead magnet. And there are different rules to that. Sometimes it

has to be a full book and a novella would count for a full book. Sometimes it can be a snippet of your book. And so I recommend wherever you can to just give out the first five chapters. That's just me personally, and I've talked about that a couple times, not giving out your full book. Sometimes you have to and sometimes it's worth it. You can also do one -on -one author connections there so if you don't you know if you sort of exhausted your list of authors that you know via internet or personally you can go to storyorigin .com or bookfunnel .com and meet even more and it's sort of a big list there and you can just sort of click on them and ask to cross promote and so no verbal words are needed, which is amazing for all of us introverts, right? So I do think your next step after you create it is to get on BookFunnel or StoryOrigin or both, and that is how you are going to be able to cross -promote, and that is how you are going to be able to fill that newsletter, right? So if you get tired of talking about yourself, let's say you do one every other week, one week you can give news and updates on your book and on your author brand and then the next week you can do a promotion and just have, you know, I just want to give you guys great books to be able to read and check out and help uplift other indie authors, which I think is great karma and will always come back to you well. So I want you to start your author newsletter. There's a lot more that we could get into, but I hope that this actually got you thinking, especially if you're resisting it. Yes, it's scary to build your own business, and that is what you are doing as an author. But it is possible to do it. It's possible to take small steps doing it. It is possible to grow your list as fast or as slow as you can keep up with and handle. Now, I have a full one hour,

very detailed lecture about this that you can click the link below and you can get if you want. It is a little kind of mini course. It gives a lot of information on literally where you can go to literally start with signing up with a newsletter software company. You cannot start it just on your Gmail. You have to go the legal route

with MailerLite or Constant Contact or ConvertKit. there's a ton of them out there. And so I go into that, I go into more detail on the author promotions, and with that you also get author email ideas. So I have, I have like four pages of author email ideas, just what you can do. You can print it out and you can, you know, put it up on your board or near your desk and that will keep you busy writing author newsletters for at least a year. I go into your welcome sequence and a little bit more on your lead magnet. So if that interests you, you can get that whole bundle just for nine dollars. It's just a lot more information for you on your author newsletter. I hope that I've convinced you a little bit at least to start thinking about it. Without my author newsletter, I would not be able to have moved my books. And if you are a book coach, if you become a book coach, you are going to need another newsletter in which you write to authors, right? So every time I'm pushing a summit or I am pushing a workshop or whatever, everyone, all my signups come from my newsletter. I have never run ads for them yet.

That will be a different step and that's fine and I'm ready for that step when it comes, but your author newsletter, your business newsletter is going to bring you the people who are really truly interested in you and help you understand your fans even more because you're going to be able to talk to them directly, ask them questions directly. They can hit reply on your author newsletter and get you directly, go straight to your inbox. They can ask you questions or answer the question that you have asked. So you are going to get to know them better as well, which will only help your marketing skills. See how this goes? It's just a constant cycle and it's great. We get to know each other and they will tell you what they want to read and you will tell them what you want to write and hopefully it will converge, right?

So if you guys have any questions, you can sign up for my author newsletter down below, my reader's newsletter if you want to see it in action. You want to see my welcome sequence in action, you can sign up for either my reader's newsletter or my writer's newsletter below. You can ask me questions on Instagram or Twitter. Those links are below as well. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can ask in the comments. Oh, there's so many places that you can do that. So hope I at least answered some questions and helped you decide to start your author newsletter today. Until next week, happy writing and happy reading. See you later.

Hey, you're still listening? Since you are, could you do me a favor and head over to the app that you're listening to this episode on and hit the subscribe button and then rate and review the show? It would really help the Pencils & Lipstick podcast get out into the world. And if you're enjoying the podcast, well, then there might be more people out there who would enjoy it as well. If you want to find out more about me, you can head over to katcaldwell .com. I have my story over there, my books, my interactive journals, my one on one coaching information and information on my creative writing community membership group. If you're looking to write a book or you are a writer and you just want to find out more about how to write, how to publish, how to format, how to market, and all the things that go into being an author these days, check out the membership group. There is a 14 free day trial that you can try it out, get into the masterminds, find out all the goodies that we are talking about in the group. I would love to see you there. you