How to Start an Author Newsletter + 3 Mistakes to Avoid
In a sea of advice about author marketing, publicity, and how to sell books, one strategy shines as not only being sustainable, but enjoyable: writing an author newsletter. More than social media, blog posts, or a Pinterest board, newsletters reach readers in a deeply personal way, help you grow a community, and develop long-term support for your work.
Not only are open rates higher for email, and more people use email than social media platforms overall, but if Facebook or Instagram disappeared tomorrow you wouldn’t have any way to get in touch with your followers. Even if you love Instagram and have great engagement with your community there, it’s a missed opportunity to not encourage those people to be also on your email list, which is a channel that always belongs to you.
Here are three mistakes to avoid when getting started.
Mistake #1: Not starting early enough
In a survey I sent out about newsletters, I asked my readers if one of their writing dreams was to write a book one day. Sixty-seven percent said yes and 14 percent said they’d already written one—that means 81 percent of writers surveyed have a book in their future. For that reason alone, you want to have a newsletter.
I recently heard a saying that I really love.
“You’re an author sometimes. You’re a writer always.”
This reminded me of a truth we encounter during seasons of visibility. When a book is recently published, you’re an author doing all the things associated with helping get your book out there until life normalizes again. It’s like a switch gets flipped on and you’re in go-mode for several months at least.
But you’re always a writer, which means you can’t just show up when you have something to promote, like a book or a workshop. That’s not how you’ll build trust.
Showing up consistently in someone’s inbox over time, sharing who you are, and responding to personal emails, is what builds the relationships that are essential to bolstering support when you do step into those more visible moments in your writing career.
You might not have a book come out for three years. That’s actually perfect. Now is a great time to start a newsletter, because you’re not asking anyone to do anything except get to know you. You have time to get comfortable and find your rhythm and what works for you, and time to support your readers before you ask them to do something like buy your book.
The best time to start your writing newsletter (or dust off the one you have) is right now.
Mistake #2: Not having a service mindset
I write in WILD WORDS that a newsletter is less about you and more about your readers. I didn’t actually realize this when I first started my newsletter in 2013—it’s one of those lessons I’ve learned over time.
When you start, you might feel natural growing pains of figuring out who your audience is, what you want to share with them, and your own secret sauce for how you interact—that’s totally normal and part of the process, but adopting a service mindset from the beginning can help you build relationships faster. Not fast necessarily, but faster.
And here’s what I mean about having a service mindset. (And no, it doesn’t mean you need to have something you’re selling, like a chapbook or a workshop or a developmental editing session.) What it does mean is you want to be helpful and encouraging in whatever area of expertise you happen to have.
You have a unique set of life experience, work experience, a worldview, a skill, and you might write about being an empty nester or traveling with kids, or homeschooling, or gardening, or running, or taking care of aging parents, or whatever.
You have a perspective to share that’s unique to you, and within all of that experience and expertise are valuable lessons just waiting for your readers. How can you encourage, teach, or inspire your community? That’s a question to ponder as you think about how you want to frame your newsletter.
Of course, you can also be of service in more tangible—you can promote your book, or a course, or a workshop—I certainly do that myself now that I have them—but if that’s all you’re doing, you won’t be building an engaged community, you’ll just be constantly asking people to buy things from you.
The goal is to strike a balance, focus on being helpful and encouraging and inspiring, and then when you do have something to offer beyond that, you’re more likely to attract people to whatever it is because of all that time you’ve already spent supporting them in other ways.
If you’re thinking “I don’t know what to write” or “I don’t know what I have to offer,” don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to create something fancy, or you your perspective isn’t as valuable if you’re someone living in the messy middle and don’t have everything figured out. That’s where most of us are, honestly, and writing from the truth of this place will actually make you more relatable.
From personal experience, I find that a service mindset brings a satisfying sense of purpose to the whole newsletter process because you’re not just writing into the void or getting something off your chest, but you’re doing the magical work of taking an idea or an experience and translating it into something universal, which can be a real gift for someone to receive.
Mistake #3: Not Setting Up a Simple Workflow
Waiting until the last minute to hit send won’t work in the long-term, which is why I love having a simple workflow to be able to do this work month-over-month.
What to include in an author newsletter workflow:
A newsletter template
An intuitive folder structure to save documents
A brainstorming doc to gather ideas
List of links you’ll often reach include (e.g. links to your books, your author website, podcast, etc.)
Being organized is one of the secrets to having a productive and easeful writing life no matter what you’re doing—whether writing a blog, hosting a podcast, writing a book, or pitching your story ideas.
Having a plan and creating systems that work for you is hugely important. And when you do this, it’s less likely that you’ll burn out, miss a newsletter, or feel like a newsletter is just another task on your to-do list.
