Book marketing gurus like Mark Dawson swear by the power of newsletters. The idea is that you have a free medium to contact your readers. Essentially, this turns you into a one-man Bookbub. I have posted in the past about ways to add more subscribers, while Mark advocates Facebook Ads.
My way, which is pretty much organic, adds a couple of new subscribers daily. Facebook ads have been more successful, adding maybe 200 subscribers (depending on the budget). They’re expensive, though, and about half of them unsubscribe after receiving the first newsletter. So, when I added over 1,000 new subscribers in the last month for $40 and only some 10% of them unsubscribed, I thought you might wish to know about it.
Even better, there’s a free way of doing this; more about it below.
AuthorsXP
Amy Vansant of AuthorsXP offers a variety of tools of interest to authors. I have used her review service and her newsletter service so far. The former has had relative success: a lot of readers have requested to review my book, but, two months after the first reviewer requested my book, just one of them has actually reviewed it so far. With some of the reviewers listing hundreds of books on their Goodreads tbr list, I have no idea how long it will take them to get to my book. Still, it may be worth considering if you don’t mind the waiting.
Where AuthorsXP has impressed me, however, is newsletters. I have participated in two giveaways so far, each costing me $20 and a free ebook. Between the two of them, I have gathered over 1,000 new subscribers. The list has an impressive 35% open rate and an even better 13% click rate. This means it’s highly focused – the industry average is a measly 2% click rate. The only drawback is that I’ve had to increase my MailChimp budget!
Upcoming mailing list building events include:
- SEPT 26 – Young Adult
- OCT. 3 – General Fiction/Women’s Fiction
- OCT. 10 – Mystery
- OCT. 17 – Fantasy/Urban Fantasy
As an added bonus, Amy is super-helpful and a pleasure to work with. You can register for her newsletter service on the AuthorsXP website or fill in the event participation form on authorsxp.com.
A Free Alternative
Every now and then, authors of a certain genre will join forces to run a giveaway of multiple works. These are usually word-of-mouth affairs, although you can also find out about them in social media (especially Facebook author groups). At the moment, there is one such giveaway available to science fiction authors that I know of. This only requires you to have a sci-fi book available through Instafreebie. As this is a free service, it may be worth considering.
The giveaway will take place between October 24 and 30. You can join the fun by filling in this form. Many thanks to Fleur Camacho for alerting me to this opportunity! I’ll let you know if I hear of any giveaways in other genres.
Thanks, Nicholas. I checked out AXP and I’m really interested in the newsletter list – it’s hard to build for middle-grade. I”ll let you know how it works, but it may be awhile before that genre hits again. 🙂
Maybe not: Amy runs them pretty regularly. I wish you best of luck with it 🙂
Very interesting, Nick. I have been working hard on building my newsletter and growing my list. I get between 80 and 100 subscribers a month and have only had about 3 unsubscribers. My open rate is 32% and click rate is 12%. I have done this purely via the blog. I have almost finished writing a little free ebook for my subscribers, so it will be interesting to see if this has any impact. I’ve yet to see any impact on book sales. I’ve never heard of authorsX, so thanks for sharing that. Always learning from you, Nick! ?
Thank you so much for sharing that, Ali! I’ll be looking forward to hearing about the freebie when it comes out 🙂
I have your book “Emotional Beats.” Excellent tool for fiction writers like me.
Thank you so much! Music to this writer’s ears 🙂
Great article, I have begun to use some of these already! Very excited for AuthorsXP young adult giveaway coming up. Can’t wait to see the return on this.
I hope your experience is as positive as mine 🙂
Thanks for sharing this good info. I’ll be able to use your ideas when I return to my blogs.
A pleasure! I’m glad you found the post useful 🙂
Very cool. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Hope it helps with your marketing 🙂
I’m currently participating in AuthorsX romance giveaway, and I can confirm that Amy is very responsive and easy to work with. Hoping for good results…
I’m looking forward to hearing how it goes!
Thanks for the information, and news of the giveaway too, Nicholas.
Best wishes, Pete.
Thank you, Pete 🙂