On Newsletters And Notifications from Author Janeal Falor

Janeal Falor, author of You Are Mine is here to talk about newsletter and notification emails. 

You published a great book, readers love it and want to know more, and you want to give them more. The problem: How do you make the connection? Newsletters are fantastic, but they didn't fit my personality. Then I discovered Series Notification and quickly fell in love with the idea. Simple to make, easy for readers to sign up. Readers hear about your next book and it's an easy way to communicate wtih them. Win, win. Series Notification: An email sent on, or close to, release day informing readers that your new book is available for purchase. If you don't write series, or if you write multiple series, you could also do an author release notification and send out notices when any of your books are released. How to do this?

• Newsletter Manager. I'm not going to go over all the newsletter program options here for spaces sake, you can research what you'd like. Personally, I use Mailchimp. It's easy to use for both you and readers, plus it's free up to 2,000 subscribers.

• Make it easy to sign up. I have a link directly to sign ups at the end of my ebooks. This is the best place for it because readers are eager for more at the end of a good story. Links are also included on my website where readers will be looking for more information about the book they read and my works in progress.

• Notification Email: Once your book is released, send out an email with information and links. Make this simple, eye catching, and easy to navigate. I've created an example for you here. This is an already released book, but gives you an idea what to make. This is just how I chose to do it, make it it to fit your book(s) and personality. [caption id="attachment_1104" align="aligncenter" width="212"] Click to Enlarge[/caption]

Whether you decide to make a release notification or newsletter, try to make it fun and useful for your readers. Keep it short with lots of eye catching details like a magazine article. You can also do this with your social media, like twitter and facebook. If you'd like to do a newsletter, you will need a bigger variety of content. Ideas for inclusion in a Newsletter or Release Notification: What you decide to include is entirely up to you and will depend on whether you're doing a newsletter or notification.

• Book Cover
• Book Title
• Description
• Purchase Links
• Short Excerpts (favorites from past books, sneak peeks from new books)
• Character highlights
• Reviews
• Quotes made into images
• Polls
• Contests (both for newsletter subscribers only and for the general public)
• Deleted Scenes
• Exclusive information on new projects

There's a lot more you could do, but whatever you decide to use, keep it simple. We skim through things a lot these days so it's good to have it short, interesting, and eye catching. What would you prefer, a newsletter or series notification? Do you have any ideas, either as a reader or writer, of things to include in a newsletter?