Every time you send your author newsletter, a few readers unsubscribe. It's a law of nature.
Most authors treat this as a Goldilocks problem, thinking that if they email too often and the porridge is too hot, people get annoyed and unsubscribe. Email too rarely and the porridge is too cold, so readers forget who you are and unsubscribe, wondering, "Who is this?"
Authors spend years hunting for the just-right schedule, but readers don't push the porridge away because of the frequency. They push it away when they aren't hungry for your porridge.
Readers unsubscribe because your newsletter is boring.
One interesting email every day is still interesting. A boring email once a month is still boring. You probably have newsletters you open the moment they arrive every day because they scratch an itch. You probably also get newsletters that show up infrequently, which you still ignore.
The ones you read win because you like them, not because of their schedule. Writing interesting newsletters is hard, especially between books. When you’re about to release a book, everyone is excited about it and eager to hear more.
What do you talk about when your next release is a year away?
To find out, Thomas Umstattd Jr. sat down with Elle E. Kay, a Carol Award finalist with more than two dozen novels in print and over 16,000,000 Kindle Unlimited pages read. Elle writes thrillers and romantic suspense, writes for authors through The Write Angle, and runs Newsletter Scriv, an email service built for authors.
How often should authors send an email newsletter?
Elle: I can't give you a straight answer. It depends. I send every week, but every author will be different, and I think they should be. It depends on what you have to say and how often your Timothy, as you would call them, wants to hear from you. Some authors can get away with once a month. Some of us need that constant back-and-forth with our readers.
Thomas: Much of it has to do with the format.
Every successful newsletter is unique, because if yours is a copy of somebody else's, readers will subscribe to the real thing.
Let's walk through the core ingredients and then figure out the right recipe for wherever you are in your editorial calendar. What's the most important one?
What’s the most important element of a newsletter?
Elle: Treat it like a letter. It should be a communication with a friend. When you write to an actual person rather than broadcasting to a group, it comes across as much more genuine. That's how you build relationships with your readers, and when you have good relationships, readers want to hear from you and buy everything you put out.
Thomas: You know you've succeeded when every email generates replies, because readers feel invited into an exchange. The more readers reply, the less likely you are to land in spam or the promotions tab. If they reply enough, you go straight to the primary inbox. Depending on the email client, that back-and-forth is sometimes the only way to get to the primary inbox.
Should authors worry about the Gmail promotions tab?
Elle: Some people stress too much about the promotions tab. Your author newsletter is a promotion, so expect it to land there until you have that back-and-forth.
Thomas: It's not the end of the world, and not everyone uses the promotions tab. I have it disabled on all my inboxes.
Elle: I do too.
Thomas: I also ruthlessly unsubscribe from newsletters that aren't interesting.
That's a good first principle. Make it a letter. Make it interesting. Make it personal. Don't make it too fancy, either.
Should I use images in my newsletter?
Thomas: A common mistake authors make is adding lots of graphics.
Elle: That will put you in the promotions tab, if you don't end up in spam. The more graphics you add, the harder it is for email clients to read your email, and the less likely they are to put you in the inbox.
Thomas: A heavily designed, brochure-looking email is very different from a mostly text email with a book cover halfway down. A book cover or relevant photo is fine, just as it would be in an email to a friend. That big fancy template AI made might look professional to you, but you don't want professional. You want personal.
Big corporations spend millions of dollars putting spokespeople in front of customers to look like what you already are by nature of being human. Lean into that.
What should authors include in an email newsletter?
Thomas: The first core ingredient is probably news. If you have news about your book, that's the most important thing.
Elle: That's why you're writing a newsletter, but you'll usually open with a greeting. I open with something about my personal life or how my week went, the way you'd talk to a friend.
Then I break my newsletter into sections. I have a writing news section, a farm news section, and an author spotlight section. Your sections will depend on your audience. A historical fiction author might have a research section with little research tidbits. If you write cozy mysteries set in a coffee shop, maybe you share different types of coffee.
My readers enjoy the farm news, so every week I include a link to a YouTube video where they can watch the goats play. I write thrillers, so I don’t know how that relates to thrillers, but my readers enjoy it.
Thomas: This is the power of knowing your Timothy. Not everybody who reads thrillers cares about goats, but the readers of your kind of thriller do care about your goats. The takeaway isn't, "I need to go buy chickens and feature them in my newsletter."
We're living with my parents while our house is rebuilt after a flood, and they have the stupidest chickens. Everything they do courts death. That anecdote probably isn't interesting to my audience, because they don't want farm news.
You find the recipe by interacting with your readers so you know when something hits. I'm guessing you mentioned your goats once and got a much bigger response than you expected.
Elle: It was chickens, actually.
Thomas: For me, it was ancient Rome. I used to edit out all my references to it. When I started doing Author Update, I realized my audience doesn't mind when I compare the war between Audible and Spotify over audiobook market share to the war between the Romans and the Parthians. They wouldn't go listen to a podcast on ancient Rome, but they like hearing it from me because it helps them get to know me.
Elle: It's the same with the farm news. It's a way for readers to get to know me as a person, not only as a writer.
Thomas: You have to earn that celebrity appeal, though. Most authors just getting started don't have it. Nobody cares about their life yet. You earn it after somebody has read a dozen of your books and is waiting for book 13. Then they're a little curious about your chickens, but what they really want to know is when book 13 is coming out.
What kind of book news belongs in an author newsletter?
Thomas: That's why trickling out book news matters. Brandon Sanderson gives weekly updates like, "I'm now 17% finished with this book and 24% finished with the next one." It’s a fun tactic, but I don't think you have to be that precise.
Elle: I include writing news in every newsletter, even when I'm not working on a book. I'm a binge writer. I'll write a whole book in a month and then not write for two months. While I'm not writing, I tell readers about the research I'm doing, where I'm at with the editing, or the audiobook that's coming out. There's always something about a book I can share.
Thomas: There are also cover reveals, title reveals, and promos. I interviewed an author who had 52 books for sale on Amazon, and she put a different book on sale every week. If you subscribed for a year, you could buy every one of her books on sale, and she could get up to 52 sales from every subscriber.
Elle: I guess I could do that for half a year. I'm at 26 books.
Thomas: If you had 12 books, the first email of every month could feature a sale. The downside is that you train your audience to wait.
A chunk of my audience waits for Black Friday because they know I put a course on sale, and that cannibalizes some sales from the rest of the year. Still, some people are deal seekers. If your pricing is right, you can offer a deal and still make money.
Should authors share writing tips with their readers?
Thomas: When we say writing news, we don't mean "Here's how to write an interesting protagonist."
Elle: Oh, no, no, no. Your readers don't want that.
Thomas: Be careful with the idea of writing the newsletter you'd want to receive. You're way more into the weeds of how a book is made than the typical reader.
Elle: I write both, because I write for The Write Angle. When you're writing for authors, you can do that. When you're writing for your fiction readers, lean into the fiction side.
Thomas: If you don't believe me, ask yourself when you last watched a movie's making-of documentary or listened to the director's commentary track. Almost every movie has one.
You could listen to the director the whole movie long. Why wouldn't you want that? Because you don't care how the sausage is made. You care about the story, and your newsletter should take the same approach.
How do you choose authors for an author spotlight?
Thomas: You mentioned an author spotlight. Who are you spotlighting, and how does an author get featured?
Elle: I spotlight other romantic suspense and thriller authors. They have to be a guest on my blog first, and that's by invitation. Occasionally, I send out an invitation for authors to fill out. If I accept them, we send them personalized questions, and the blog post goes up. Everyone featured on the blog is also featured in the newsletter.
Thomas: If you want to be a professional author, you need to read in your genre, ideally at least a book a week. Some authors don’t read much and don’t like what they do read, but they believe they're going to fix broken fiction in their genre.
The problem is especially bad with Christian fantasy and sci-fi authors. Many of them don't read any Christian fantasy or sci-fi. They say, "I read Tolkien. I read Lewis. That's all I need." They have no clue what modern-day readers want, and if they added an author spotlight, they wouldn’t be able to name an author they like.
Even Stephen King advises authors to read in their genre. Read, not only in your genre, but at least in your genre. Have preferences, and make your recommendations worth something to your readers.
Can you put Amazon affiliate links in an email newsletter?
Thomas: Book recommendations can be a source of revenue. If you include affiliate links, an author newsletter can pay for itself. When people complain about how expensive their email service is, I think, "You must not know how to monetize it." Every email is an opportunity to make money if you make good book recommendations to readers looking for good books.
Elle: Many authors don't know the rules for affiliate links have changed. Several years ago, Amazon started allowing affiliate links in emails. Before that, you could lose your affiliate privileges if you sent affiliate links in emails. It’s now allowed, but many authors don’t know that.
Thomas: It was never well enforced. Half the time, somebody had to rat you out. Now you can put an affiliate link right in your newsletter and get paid.
Elle: I even hit bonuses most weeks.
Thomas: It can be quite profitable, because people are more desperate for good book recommendations than ever.
There used to be about one new book in a genre each week. Bookstores put the new book on the shelf, and being published was enough. Then the word processor came out, and new books outgrew the shelves. Today maybe .001% of new books are stocked at Barnes & Noble, and more people than ever are writing, some with AI assistance.
There's a tsunami of books being published. If you can reach into it and pull out a gem for your readers, your newsletter becomes the email they can't wait to open. They forward it to a friend, and they both buy the book through your affiliate link. That means you're making money while building credibility.
Should you share negative book reviews in your author newsletter?
Elle: Let me push back on something you've said in the past. I've heard you say it's okay to take a strong position on someone else's book in your newsletter. I say do not do that. It turns readers off, and they won't come back for more.
I did it once, and it wasn't even a bad review. I gave the book four stars, and I really enjoyed it, but a couple of things I said came across as slightly negative, and it really insulted my readers.
I recommend mentioning only books you like. If you had a problem with a book, talk about it with other authors, but don't share it in your newsletter unless you want unsubscribes.
Thomas: Part of this is your brand. You have a friendly, cheerful brand, so a critical voice from you will rub readers the wrong way. I can get away with a little more criticism because people don't view me the same way.
Elle: My primary audience is Christian women over 65, and they just don't like that.
Thomas: They don't want the controversy. Jonathan, my co-host on Author Update, could say anything critical about any author, and his audience of Marines would cheer.
Elle: Again, consider your audience. Know your reader.
Thomas: That goes back to our first point. You have to pull together the recipe for your Timothy, and that takes experimentation.
It was good that you were gentle, so you learned the lesson safely. A one-star review would have blown up in your face. A different audience might say, "Why'd you give them four stars? You should have given them two!" They're there with the popcorn, and they want the tea and the drama.
Find where reader desire overlaps with what you can honestly provide. We're not here to tickle people's ears; we're here to tell the truth. There's an overwhelming amount of truth, and an email is generally 1,000 words or sometimes less. You get to pick which truth to focus on.
How do you get readers to reply to your email newsletter?
Elle: Every week I ask readers if they have prayer requests, because I will take the time to pray and then respond. I don't recommend doing that if you won't pray and respond. It gets readers to open up, and it gets the conversation going.
You can also ask readers to name a character or help you pick the pet in your next book. There are so many ways to get your readers involved.
Thomas: You can also comment on media adjacent to what you create. Science fiction and fantasy readers watch superhero films and fantasy TV shows and play video games, and they have very strong opinions. They love debating whether Mass Effect is any good or whether the new Halo games are bad.
Elle: If you write LitRPG, you should definitely jump on that bandwagon.
Thomas: Strong stances can draw lots of feedback, or you can throw it out as an open question. "We all watched the latest Marvel movie. I won't do spoilers for a month, but what did you think?" Then you get all these emails back, and it's a good way to get to know your readers.
A "question for you" segment can be a formal section or something you work in organically.
Elle: I work it in organically. Many authors put a random question at the bottom of every newsletter, and that gets old. You'll stop getting replies. I'm all for sections, since that's how I do my newsletter, but you still want them to feel like a letter.
Should an author newsletter include links of interest?
Thomas: Another good ingredient, especially for nonfiction, is a “links of interest” section with interesting articles, tweets, or Wikipedia pages. For example, if I've been researching poisons, and I learned that King Mithridates, the Poison King, microdosed poison to build up a resistance, just like in The Princess Bride. I could share a link to his Grokipedia page.
Elle: Be careful with that one. Don't put 10 links in your newsletter that don't go to your book. For a “links of interest” section, I would only include a few. If you include more than two or three, you’re likely to land in the promotions or junk folder.
Thomas: You also want to wrap each link in an explanation of why it's worth reading. You might say, "I thought this breakdown of superintelligence and where the economy is headed was interesting. What do you think?" You want interactive, contextual text, not a list of bullets.
Some newsletters also feature memes and funny images. You need to know whether your style of humor fits the humor your readers respond to. It's risky, but if you get it to work, no email is forwarded more than the funny email. Jane Friedman has a funny image in every edition of her The Bottom Line newsletter, along with many links of interest and lots of news.
Elle: Her emails are packed with information.
Thomas: Her approach wouldn't work for the typical novelist, because there isn't that much news in one genre unless you feature every new book. You don't want to do that, because you want to sort the wheat from the chaff and make good recommendations.
Do readers want to hear about your book research?
Elle: If you write books that require regular research, you could do a whole section on it. Research sections can be so interesting for readers.
Thomas: Some historical romance readers care about the research. Others say, "I just like the dresses. I don't want to know the geopolitical state between England and France during the Jane Austen era."
Elle: It's easy to find out. Ask your readers, "Did you enjoy this section? Are you interested in learning more?" If you get responses, share more next week.
How often should you survey your email list?
Thomas: Once or twice a year, survey your readers. A survey may save your email list. It's common to do three things right and one thing wrong without realizing that one thing is irritating your readers.
You can learn how to do a reader survey in our episode on reader surveys. What Elle describes is the ongoing interaction. A survey is the periodic deep dive.
Elle: I send a survey in my welcome sequence to get to know new readers. Some fill it out, but many don't. A certain kind of person fills out surveys, so you get a one-sided answer. It's like phone polls. You only hear from the people who answer those calls.
Thomas: Author Mary DeMuth did a reader survey. She prayed for her readers as you do, and she learned that was everyone's favorite thing. She reoriented her newsletter around prayer requests, and it became far less about her books and far more about prayer. That pivot helped her whole brand.
The principle isn't that every newsletter should be a prayer newsletter. The principle is knowing which itch your reader has that you're uniquely positioned to scratch.
Elle: If you don't write Christian books, you probably don't want to include prayer.
What happens when you recommend a bad book?
Elle: When readers read a book you recommended and can't stand it, they stop trusting your recommendations and stop wanting to read your newsletter. You should at least know something about the author. If you can read the book, that's wonderful. If not, consider whether you have read their other books.
Newsletter swaps are the same. Many authors do five or six swaps per newsletter, and they will get unsubscribes. You couldn't possibly have read all those books, so readers can't trust your recommendations.
Thomas: The biggest trap is the author you're good friends with in real life. You feature their book because you're friends, but you don't know they're a terrible writer.
Elle: Sometimes you do know, and you feature it anyway.
Thomas: Some wonderful people would make great friends, but they cannot write an interesting story. They lack the skills to hold a reader's attention from one chapter to the next and make you care about the characters and the plot.
Elle: That circles back to what you said earlier. If you're not a reader, you won't be a good writer.
Thomas: If you write for a hardcore readership, your core readers read a book every two or three days, and they expect you to be the same kind of reader.
If you're reading all the time, you can take a shot on a book from someone you met at a conference. You'll think, "Wow, my readers have no idea who this guy is, and they're going to love this." Other times you'll think, "He needs to go through The Five Year Plan again and do the homework this time." The only way to know is to read enough to tell a good book from a bad one and to read books on craft.
Will reading in your genre make your writing derivative?
Elle: Don't fall into the trap of thinking reading will make you derivative. It's just not true. You have your own personality and your own spin on things, so your book won't sound like theirs. Reading teaches you the fundamentals so you can write a good book.
Thomas: I've never found that argument compelling. It's like saying, "I'm not lazy. I just don't want to be derivative." Other authors say, "I don't want to be derivative, so I'll only read in other genres."
Elle: Then they bring a sci-fi element into a thriller, and their audience hates them.
Thomas: Tens of thousands of new books came out in your genre in the last six months. If you haven't read any of them, even by the famous authors, how do you know what readers want? How do you know what the genre even is?
Is consistency still king for email newsletters?
Thomas: If you're a slow writer releasing a new book once a year or less, you may wonder what to say in your newsletter. The slower you write, the less frequently I would send. You need more time to write, and you may not have something interesting to say every week. It's better to skip a week than to send a boring email. The old advice was that “consistency is king,” and the promotions tab killed that.
Elle: I still think consistency is king. Now that I run a newsletter service, I see it. Authors switch from MailerLite to Newsletter Scriv and try to email people they haven't emailed in six months. If someone doesn't remember signing up for your list, they'll mark you as spam. You have to be consistent, at least once a month.
Thomas: That's an important clarification. The technical minimum is once a quarter. If you send to an address you haven't emailed in a quarter, you may no longer get a bounce saying it was deleted. The email will automatically be marked as spam. Even readers who liked you may have changed ISPs, and the ISP marks you as spam automatically.
Once a quarter still isn't frequent enough for most authors, because if you're even a day late, you're in technical trouble. A monthly frequency isn't hard. That's only 12 emails a year.
Elle: You could draft them all in a day if you wanted to.
Thomas: The December email could be a simple "Hey, Merry Christmas." It doesn't have to be fancy.
Elle: My Christmas email goes out with a free book, and that's it. I think I do the same for New Year's. Most of the time it's a full newsletter that takes about five minutes to read, but not on those holidays.
Should your newsletter link to your blog, podcast, or YouTube videos?
Thomas: You can also feature links to content you created that week, whether that's a blog, a Substack, a podcast, or a YouTube channel. That's my strategy. The Author Media newsletter sometimes opens with an intro letter about a conference or webinar, but usually that's empty.
Then I include the most recent Novel Marketing episode and a bullet list of Author Update headlines with links. That's the whole email. Readers know what to expect, and almost every email features at least one free episode. I've found that quite effective.
My newsletter isn't consistent. I'll skip whole weeks, and nobody notices. Still, people who are inconsistent with their email are usually breaking other email rules too. They're sloppy with content and subject lines, and maybe they wait too long between emails and get auto-marked as spam. That honeypot issue is a real problem if you're not careful.
What makes a good email subject line?
Elle: I've done a lot of testing, and the most effective subject line is usually just "Elle's Newsletter" and the date. Sometimes we overstress about these things. Lately I've had AI give me a list to pick from, but I don't think those do as well, because people recognize "Elle's Newsletter" at a glance.
Thomas: What really matters is the from line. Readers open an email based on all your past emails. That's where you build your reputation. They either groan, "Oh, it's her," or they think, "Oh, yay! It's an Elle email! What are the goats up to this week?" You can't make up for a bad from line with a good subject line.
The subject line does matter to a degree. Some years, I made half my money for the whole year from emails with one two-word subject line, "Last Chance." Authors won't buy anything until they get the last chance email. It stresses my wife out so much, because we have no idea whether something will be profitable until the very last day. Authors are super procrastinators. I don't know whether readers are the same.
The challenge for authors is that you rarely can say it honestly. Your book isn't going away. You could use it for a Kickstarter ending in 24 hours or a deal ending tomorrow. "Last chance to save 50%." Be creative and don't abuse it. If every email says "last chance," the power fades.
How can authors use news stories in their newsletter?
Thomas: Another ingredient is news and news commentary. If you write heist stories, you should have talked about the Louvre heist last year. Many people don't want to hear about politics all the time, but plenty of news stories would interest readers of your genre without touching politics.
If you write Georgian-era historical romance, see if there was a new archaeological dig or discovery. It may not be enough to feature every week, but when it's interesting, feature it. If you write spy thrillers, there's almost always a spy story in the news if you know where to look. You may have to move from mainstream news into geopolitical analysis.
Elle: I do write spy thrillers. Now you've got me thinking.
Thomas: The spy world uses a slightly different vocabulary. Once you learn terms like SIGINT and HUMINT, signals intelligence and human intelligence, you can start to glean the spy news. That will make your stories more accurate and your newsletter more interesting. It helps to be outside the business, because insiders are often forbidden from talking about it. You can say whatever you want.
How can your blog and email newsletter work together?
Thomas: IF you write spy thrillers and visit the spy museum in San Antonio, take a bunch of pictures and put your commentary on your blog. Then feature the best picture in your newsletter with a link that says, "Click here for my full breakdown of the spy museum." That way, you don't water down your whole newsletter for people who don't care, and the ones who do care get more than one photo.
Your blog and newsletter can work hand in hand, or they can be the same thing. Some people's blog is a record of all their past newsletters. More than one strategy works.
Elle: I do a combination. Some blog content goes into my newsletter, but the blog also goes out by email to people who sign up for it.
Thomas: Some people have a Substack and a newsletter through Kit or MailerLite.
Elle: I really don't understand why anybody uses Substack these days. It's the worst of everything.
Thomas: I'll tell you why they use it. It's free, and it's all integrated in one website for your blog, podcast, and newsletter. Algorithmic issues aside, the free platform will always have the most users, because many people believe they shouldn't pay for what they use.
That worldview leads the cows to slaughter. The food is free at the chicken coop if you're destined for the butcher shop. It's good to be a customer and pay for what you use.
What other ingredients belong in an author newsletter?
Elle: You could give readers behind-the-scenes access to your book. Keep track of funny typos during edits, because they can be hysterical. Share when a character surprises you by doing something other than what you planned. That's interesting to readers.
Thomas: If you write for a younger audience, ask, "Have you ever drawn any of my characters? Send them to me, and we might feature you in a future newsletter."
Elle: That's fantastic for fantasy authors. Their readers love to draw.
Thomas: The younger the audience, the more likely they are to draw. I don't think a 65-plus audience is doodling many characters, but it's very common among millennials and younger readers. The more you feature drawings, the more readers will send in. You'll have to be okay with them doing it wrong, though. You have the authoritative platonic ideal of how the character looks, and they'll have some other version.
Elle: If readers might dress up as your characters for a literary event, include those photos. I recently dressed up as the Huntress from Carrie Cotton's book for an ACFW Story Fest event. I could share that in my newsletter, and she could share it in hers. Anything that brings your readers in like that can be fun.
Where can authors learn more about Newsletter Scriv?
Elle: Go to NewsletterScriv.com. Your first 1,000 subscribers are free, and our prices are far below MailerLite and Kit.
Thomas: It's an email tool built for authors, with very competitive pricing. Check it out at NewsletterScriv.com.
Connect with Elle E. Kay
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