Writing a newsletter people actually open
Getting people onto a list is a separate job, and it is covered separately: The newsletter, and what to give people for joining deals with the sign-up incentive, where to ask, and how to deliver the file. This page is about everything that happens afterward — the issues themselves, for the next several years.
Start with the governing rule, because almost every mistake in author newsletters comes from breaking it. A newsletter is a letter, not a broadcast. The ones that get opened sound like one person writing to another. The ones that get ignored sound like a company that has acquired an address.
That is not a style preference. A reader gave you their address because they liked a book you wrote, so they already have a relationship with your voice. An issue written in that voice is continuous with the book. An issue written in marketing voice is a stranger who got hold of the address.
What goes in an issue when you have no news
Most months you have no news. This is the normal condition of writing a book, and it is where newsletters die, because the author waits for something to announce and eighteen months pass.
You do not need news. You need to be interesting for four hundred words. Five things reliably are:
What you are reading, and why. The most consistently valuable thing you can send. Readers on your list are readers, and they trust your taste because they liked your book. One or two paragraphs on a book you actually enjoyed — not a review, just why it got you — is the item people reply to most.
What you are working on, and how it is going. Including when it is going badly. The chapter that will not sit, the ending you rewrote three times, the research trip that was mostly rain. Progress reported honestly is more interesting than progress reported triumphantly.
Something you learned. The thing you had to look up for chapter nine — how coroners' inquests worked in 1890, what a kiln does at that temperature. Your research is genuinely interesting to people who like the kind of book that needs it.
A photograph of something relevant. The desk, the place the book is set, the proof copy that arrived, the notebook page. One image, with a sentence saying what it is.
An answer to a reader's question. Someone asked whether the inn in chapter four is real. Answer it to the whole list. This is the single easiest issue to write and one of the best, because the question came from a reader, which means it interests readers.
What to leave out
A sales pitch in every issue. If every email ends in buy something, readers learn what the email is and stop opening it. The pitch works because it is occasional.
A wall of covers. A grid of your entire catalog at the bottom of every issue reads as a storefront. Link the one book you are actually talking about.
Anything that reads like a press release. Third person, announcement voice, "is delighted to announce" — it is the tone of a company talking about a person, and your reader signed up for the person.
Design belongs on that list too. A plain, mostly-text email in your own voice outperforms a template with columns, banners and buttons, for the same reason: one looks like a letter and the other looks like an advertisement.
In the tools. The things an issue needs to show are by-products of finishing the book: Mockups render your real print wrap as a physical object, and the Social Pack makes stills and a short vertical video from the same cover, so a cover reveal is a file you already have. Start your book → · about the tools
Subject lines
Specific and plain beats clever and vague. The chapter I cut, and why gets opened. An update from me does not, because it describes a category rather than a thing.
Write the subject line last, after you know what the issue actually contains, and make it the true short description of the best item in it.
Never mislead. Not a fake Re:, not a false urgency, not a subject that implies news you do not have. It works once. What it buys you is a reader who feels tricked, and a reader who feels tricked unsubscribes permanently — you do not get a second impression, and you have converted someone who liked your book into someone who does not want to hear from you.
Cadence and length
Pick the rhythm you can hold. Monthly that you will actually write beats weekly that you abandon in March. There is no correct frequency; there is only the one still happening in two years.
Twice a year is too slow. A list that hears from you every six months has forgotten who you are, and your launch email arrives as spam from a stranger. If the book is a long way off, send something short anyway.
Keep it short enough to read on a phone in a queue. Most people will open it standing somewhere. Three or four short items, one of them the main one, and an end. If something needs two thousand words, it is a post on your site with a link from the newsletter.
The asks, and the numbers
Ask clearly and rarely. There are three worth making: buy the new one, leave a review, and reply and tell me something. Make one ask per issue, say plainly what you want, and put it in its own line where it cannot be missed. An ask buried in a paragraph is not an ask; three asks at once is a form.
On measurement, be honest about what you are looking at. Open rates are distorted by devices and mail privacy features that load images whether or not anyone read anything, so the number moves for reasons that have nothing to do with your issue. Clicks and replies are the signal. Track them over months rather than per issue, and see Tracking what actually works for the wider version of that argument.
Replies are the underrated one. A newsletter that gets replies is a relationship, and a list of people who have written to you once is a list that will buy, review and tell someone. Invite them, and answer every one.
Make your book
The tools are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: What an author brand actually is · More: The newsletter, and what to give people for joining · The author website, reduced to what it needs · Launch week, without the panic