Jim: We talk a lot about how effective author newsletters can be. Of all the online marketing tools, email is the most powerful way to connect with readers. Most social networks are essentially just an extension of email. People go to Facebook when they get an email about a new photo or a comment. Email is the world's biggest social network and the most effective one at making sales. Email is the way to make sales, bottom line.

Thomas: That's where people get their bills. That's where people get notified by Amazon about new products. People are in a buying mood when they're in email.

What's the difference between a blog email and a newsletter?

Jim: Listener Gary Hanson, author of Kneeling with Giants, writes, “"Thank you for the great podcast."

He's been building his email list through his blog, GaryNealHanson.com, and has always sent subscriber links to new posts including short notes, using Mailchimp as his tool. He'd love to hear an episode on newsletters, the difference between sending blog posts and sending a newsletter versus sending both, what to include, what to leave out, and how to avoid going insane with the extra work of a newsletter on top of blogging, social media, and his book.

Thomas: This is an area a lot of authors get confused about. You can use a tool like FeedBurner or Mailchimp to  automatically send an email every time you post to your blog, and that's different from a newsletter.

A newsletter is typically far less frequent.

My recommendation is to have both, and let people choose whether they want the blog, the newsletter, or both, using checkboxes when they sign up.

Back when we were building websites at Author Media, that's what we put on every site. You want to offer both because you have two different kinds of fans. Some fans want to hear from you regularly and read your blog and don't know how to subscribe through RSS, so email is the way they subscribe to a blog.

Then you have another kind of fan who just wants to hear about you when you have book news or a new release and doesn't want every blog post. You want to communicate with that second kind of reader too, because their money spends just as well as their friend's who reads every single post.

Jim: It's very possible that the person who doesn't want to hear from you often is a more passionate fan than the one who wants every blog post.

Thomas: That's right, especially if you write fiction. Many fiction fans don't care about the blog, they just want to know about your next book. Tell them about your next book and they'll be happy. Other people want all the insider information.

What should actually go in your newsletter?

Jim: The newsletter isn't about you. You might think it should be, but even news about yourself should apply to your readers. It should entertain them, educate them, encourage them, or evoke laughter. You want to evoke some emotion in them that has to do with their life, not yours.

Thomas: Ask yourself how you can serve people with this email.

Jesus was walking along the road one day, and a couple of his disciples asked him how to become number one in email, how to get more subscribers. He said, "Anyone who wants to be a popular email writer must be a servant." Okay, that's not exactly what he said, but if you want to be first, you must be last, and if you want to lead, you have to serve.

Think about the emails you actually enjoy getting and reading. It's because they serve you somehow, maybe telling you about a discount you didn't know about, giving you news, or making you laugh. Think about the emails you forward to friends. Email is highly viral, and when it's well made, it can actually boost your subscribers instead of costing you some.

So think like a servant, and let your book guide your content.

For Gary’s book, I'd recommend giving prayer tips since your book's about prayer. Offer encouragement, like stories of answered prayer. That email should be prayer focused, which would be totally different for someone who writes books about zombies. If your books are about zombies, share reviews of other zombie books or photos of zombies, anything that entertains, educates, makes people laugh, or encourages in a way related to your book.

Jim: My theme, in my books and my life, is living with more freedom. One aspect of getting free is overcoming fears, so I jumped out of an airplane on August 22nd from 13,000 feet. The thing is, I’m afraid of heights.

I shared that in my newsletter along with a video, but it wasn't just about me jumping. It was about drawing attention to the fact that we can overcome our fears. The real push of the newsletter was, what's your greatest fear? What's the thing you need to step out and face, whether it's a relationship you haven't wanted to confront, quitting a job, or starting a business?

I was focusing on what this could inspire the reader to do, not just what I did.

Take what you are at your core and use that to entertain, educate, emote chuckles, or encourage.

Should you repurpose old blog posts in your newsletter?

Thomas: Another thing you can add to your newsletter is curated blog posts. We started doing this at Author Media, with an opening letter for newsletter subscribers and then four or five blog posts at the bottom.

We did the same with Enclave Publishing. We sent out our Black Friday email, our most popular email of the year with the biggest discounts. You know what our most clicked link was? A two-year-old blog post about bad boy characters with an intriguing photo, sitting at the very bottom of the email. People loved that post. It caught their attention and they clicked on it.

I'd encourage you to repurpose old blog posts this way, because people don't typically dig through your blog much. If you pull a bunch of posts together around a theme, that's a great way to serve your readers by curating your own content.

How can you repurpose content from books for your newsletter?

Jim: You could include trivia about a particular book you wrote. Think of it like the deleted scenes on a DVD. If no one else is getting that, it makes readers feel special. You could also feature fan art.

Thomas: If you're self-published, you should be price pulsing your books at least once per quarter. Price pulsing means temporarily lowering the price of your books, particularly the first book in a series, to boost sales, often in combination with a site like BookBub.

People love getting email discounts, and you'll get far fewer unsubscribes from an email with discounts in it.

What should you never put in a newsletter?

Jim: Leave out information about your personal life. It's not your Christmas card. I'm not saying you leave out everything about your personal life...

Thomas: I am.

Jim: I think a little bit of pepper, or let's say a little salt, can work, but too much salt makes the dish taste horrible.

Thomas: Yeah, and nobody cares about you. No one cares about your kids, nobody cares about your dog.

Jim: We've talked about this often. Readers don't care about you. They care about what you can do for them. If something isn't doing anything for them, leave it out. When in doubt, leave it out.

Thomas: I'll concede that something like your skydiving story isn't really about you, it's about overcoming fear, and it serves as an example for me. That story serves the reader even though it's about you, because it might encourage them to face one of their own biggest fears. So the only exception to "don't talk about your personal life" is if it's directly beneficial to people, or if it's hilariously funny and is guaranteed to make people laugh.

The other thing to leave out is anything boring. It only takes one boring email for someone to hit unsubscribe, and then that person won't get your next email either, like the one announcing your book next month, because they've already left.

Think about someone who truly doesn't care about you and only cares about themselves. You have to answer the question "what's in it for me" with your email. The better your answer, and the better you work that answer into the subject line, the more it'll get opened and forwarded.

How often should you send a newsletter?

Jim: How often is too much? How much is too little? How do we take this off our plate so it's not something we're worried about all the time?

Thomas: The first thing I'd say is automate, automate, automate. Email should be automatic.

Gary sounded like he was hand sending his newsletter with blog posts included, and that can be automated. Mailchimp can automatically send an email with your blog post as soon as you publish it. You don't even have to log in. (Note: Thomas no longer recommends MailChimp. He recommends Kit.com)

The second thing is don't send email too often. If you're a novelist, once per quarter is probably the ideal frequency. If you're nonfiction, like Gary, and you're helping people with prayer, your readers probably want a more frequent email. But if you're a novelist, there's not a lot going on. Hopefully you're putting out a book every six months or so, which gives you more to talk about.

You really need to spend less time on social media and sending out lots of email, and more time writing your novel. You heard it here, folks.

Jim: The best brochure you can write is your next novel.

Some novelists, and this is rare, could send one out once a month with relevant, engaging information that makes readers say, "I can't wait." But I see a lot of novelists who feel like they have to send one every month, so they stretch, and it's not worth it. Save up and send four great newsletters a year instead of 12 mediocre ones.

Thomas: A lot of this depends on how big your backlist is. If you've been published a long time and have 20 books whose rights you now hold, you can price pulse a different book every month and go almost two years without repeating one. So if you're writing a new book every year, you can go two years, since the months around your launch won't be spent price pulsing.

That's just a general rule of thumb, but here's the real tip. No one ever unsubscribes from a newsletter because it comes too infrequently. Back when Author Media's email was weekly, if we skipped a week, people would email us all freaked out thinking they'd been unsubscribed somehow. They'd ask if they missed the email, and we'd tell them no, we just didn't get around to sending it that week. But you know what they did? Nothing. They were relieved they weren't unsubscribed.

They didn't unsubscribe because they were angry about getting fewer emails. So don't be afraid to cut down the frequency, because there will come a time, like during a book launch, when you'll send two or three emails in one week. Book comes out in a week. Book comes out tomorrow. Book comes out today. That's three emails in one week, and you want to build up your audience's trust so you can get away with that.

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