The newsletter, and what to give people for joining
Everything else you build an audience on is rented. The stores own their customers — you never learn who bought your book, and you cannot contact them. Social platforms own their feeds, and they change what they show and to whom whenever it suits them. A following built over three years on one of them can be halved by a ranking change you never hear about.
An email list is the exception. It is a file of addresses given to you by people who asked to hear from you, and it moves with you: to a different provider, a different genre, a different name. This is why a list of a few hundred real readers routinely outsells a following of tens of thousands — the readers on it chose you individually, and you can reach every one of them on the day your next book goes up.
Build it from the first book, even when it is twenty people. Twenty readers who bought the first one are the most reliable twenty sales the second one will get.
The reason to sign up
"Sign up for updates" converts badly, and it deserves to. It asks the reader to give up something concrete — an address, and a small ongoing intrusion — in exchange for a vague promise about the future. Most people decline.
A reader magnet replaces the vague promise with a specific thing they get now. What works:
A prequel or a short story. The strongest option for fiction. Same world, same voice, something that does not exist anywhere else. A reader who just finished your novel and liked it is being offered more of exactly what they liked.
A deleted chapter or an alternate ending. Cheap, because you already wrote it, and it appeals precisely to the people who finished the book.
A character guide, a map, a family tree, a timeline. Good for a large cast or a complicated world, and genuinely useful to a reader partway through a series.
The first book in the series, free. The most aggressive version, and the most effective one, if you have three or more books. You give away the entry point and sell the catalog.
A practical worksheet, template or checklist. The nonfiction equivalent. Whatever your book asks the reader to do, give them the thing that makes doing it easier.
The magnet has to match the book. This is the part people get wrong. A free thriller short story attached to a cozy mystery recruits thriller readers, who then do not buy your cozy mysteries and unsubscribe when you write to them. A general "writing tips" download attached to a novel recruits writers, not readers. Offer the same kind of book as the one they just read, or you will build a list that looks healthy and buys nothing.
Where to ask
The back of the book. The best-performing place there is, because the reader who has just finished is at peak interest. Put the offer on its own page after the last line — the magnet, one sentence on what it is, and where to get it. If you can, put a short note at the front too, for readers who never reach the end.
Your site. On the home page and at the bottom of every book page. See The author website, reduced to what it needs for the rest of that.
At the end of a sample. The store preview cuts off somewhere. A reader who got that far and hit the wall is a reader worth catching.
Delivering the file
Send the formats readers actually use. An EPUB covers nearly every device and app; a PDF covers people who will read it on a computer or print it. Sending a bare Word file, or one format half your readers cannot open, turns a gift into a support problem you answer individually.
Make the first email do the work. It should deliver the file immediately and set expectations in two lines: what you write, roughly how often you will write, and that they can leave whenever they want. A list that knows what it signed up for unsubscribes far less than one that does not.
Use a real email service. Sending to a hidden-copy list from your own address gets you filtered as spam and gives subscribers no way to leave. A mailing-list provider handles delivery, unsubscribes and consent records. Privacy rules vary by country; check what applies where you live.
Writing to the list
Pick a rhythm you can actually sustain. Monthly that happens beats weekly that stops in March. There is no correct frequency — there is only the one you will still be doing in two years.
Silence is the real risk, not frequency. A list that hears nothing for eighteen months has forgotten who you are, and your launch email lands as spam from a stranger. If a book is a long way off, send something short anyway.
Write like a person to people who asked. A short note about what you are working on outperforms a designed template with three columns and a banner.
In the tools. A reader magnet is a book like any other: run the manuscript through the Interior Formatter for an EPUB that validates cleanly and a PDF, and give it a real cover in the Cover Maker, including the 1600 × 2560 ebook cover. Start a book → · about the tools
Treat the magnet as a book
It is the second thing of yours a reader will ever read, and for some of them it is the first. A 4,000-word story delivered as an untitled document with no cover reads as a leaflet, and it quietly undoes the impression the finished book just made.
Give it a cover in the same style as the series, a title page, and a properly built file. That is the difference between a free extra that recruits a reader and one that loses them.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they 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.
Back to: The author website, reduced to what it needs · More: The back of the book is where your next sale is · Launch week, without the panic · Ebook cover size, and why it is not your print front