It\u2019s a fact: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A racing catamaran can sail faster than the wind \u2013 over twice as fast, indeed, under perfect conditions. (Don\u2019t believe me? And yet it\u2019s true, I tell you, true!) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Something like the same effect \u2013 only better \u2013 is achievable via mailing lists. Still better: this email is just as important to trad-publishing types as it is to indies. Almost more so: this is the one part of your marketing destiny that you can, and really must, control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s say that you hustle and bustle your way to 1,000 names on your mailing list. You\u2019d be pretty pleased with yourself if you did that, no? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And let\u2019s also say \u2013 fantasy land, here \u2013 that you put out a book launch email which secured a 50% success rate. That is, half of all those you emailed went out and bought your book. (That\u2019s not impossible, but it would be very good. Anything 30% or better would be excellent.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, you\u2019ve just sold 500 books. Let\u2019s say you\u2019re offering a launch promo price of $2.99 for the ebook, which means your royalties are (roughly) $2, so you\u2019ve just earned $1,000 from your 1,000-name strong mailing list. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I mean, that\u2019s good, right? No one hates $1,000. But you\u2019ve had to go to a lot of effort to secure it. Maybe your time and energy could have been better spent elsewhere? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not so, my furry friend<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n But that\u2019s not so. In an\u00a0earlier email<\/a>, I told you that Amazon responds quickly and powerfully to signals which tell it that a certain product is selling well.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now the beauty of email is not especially the volume of sales that you can generate. The beauty is that you can generate those almost precisely when you want. A launch-type email will generate essentially all its sales within 24 hours and, honestly, within about 6-12 hours of sending. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, the way to think about those 500 sales is that they allow you to manipulate the visibility of your book on Amazon\u2019s system. If you generated all those sales within 2 hours, you might lift your overall bestseller rank on Amazon.com to perhaps 200. (In the UK, you\u2019d do even better, with a peak rank of under 50.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, as I told you in that earlier email, you don\u2019t want to do that. You want to space your sales out over 4-7 days. So, for example, you might send your launch email out in waves, aiming to secure roughly 100 sales\/day over 5 days. That will give you a lower peak rank, but will send a much strong signal to Amazon. Your email will get Amazon\u2019s bots active on your behalf, and they\u2019ll take over the marketing for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The result of your email to 1,000 eager readers could easily be sales of well over 5,000 copies over the next 1-4 months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Phooey to catamarans. You and your mailing list can sale much faster than the wind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n None of this is theoretical. The summer when my wife and I had our second set of twins, I was due to launch a book. Our first set of twins was not yet two and my wife and I\u2026 were pressed for time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, my launch strategy \u2013 the whole thing, not withholding a single thing \u2013 was: <\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Send an email <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That was it. There is no \u20182\u2019. I didn\u2019t tweet. I didn\u2019t blog. I didn\u2019t flap around on Facebook. I didn\u2019t float zeppelins over New York or hire PR people at $1500 an hour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I sent an email, that was it. And to about 1,000 people at that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But those people liked my book and bought it. And my visibility rose. And Amazon saw my book happily a-selling and marketed it further. Over the next few months, I sold over 5,000 copies. My mailing list more than tripled. The other books in the series also sold much more than before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not saying this was a good, rational, well-planned launch \u2013 it was not. But it worked. Indeed, it was the success of that spectacularly lazy campaign which told me just how much power there could be in self-publishing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n How to build your list <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The basic way to build your emal list is: <\/p>\n\n\n\n A helping hand <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, yes, there is something circular about my telling you to build an email list to sell books\u2026 but you need to sell books to stock your list. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope that the emails on promo sites and Facebook ads covers that issue, at least a bit. (This is a flywheel. It\u2019s hard to get it to start spinning. But once it\u2019s going, it\u2019s hard to stop. The first 250 names on your list are the hardest.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n Additionally, though, there are sites whose purpose is specifically to help seed those lists. You can check the various options for yourself, but the current champ in this area is\u00a0Book<\/a>Sw<\/a>eeps<\/a>. The emails you\u2019ll get from that source won\u2019t be as good as genuine organic signups from people who have bought and read a full-length novel of yours, but they\u2019re not bad \u2013 and a darn site better than nothing.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some specifics <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n One email isn\u2019t sufficient to outline how to build and use a list \u2013 there are whole books that cover the territory in detail. But here are some starting points: <\/p>\n\n\n\n First, offer plenty of opportunities in the front and back of the ebook to sign up to your list. That\u2019s not being shouty \u2013 it\u2019s being appropriately helpful to your readers. Just like if you were building a website, you wouldn\u2019t place just one link to a key page. You\u2019d pop that link anywhere that users might find it helpful. You need to follow the same logic in your ebook. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Second,\u00a0the webpage (on your website)<\/strong>\u00a0where readers sign up to your club is very important. The key thing is to make it unbelievably obvious what you want your reader to do and that means removing all distractions. My own signup page is\u00a0h<\/a>e<\/a>re<\/a>: note the complete lack of a top menu or, really, anything to do on the page except sign up.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your free gift needs to be a nicely produced ebook<\/strong>. It doesn\u2019t need to be long \u2013 anywhere from 7,500 words to 15 or 20,000 words seems about right to me. But apart from length, in every other way the gift should be first rate. A proper cover. Proper editing. A proper story \u2013 and one that comes straight from the world of the characters your reader has just enjoyed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n (If you happen to enjoy crime stories, and would like to experience the whole sign up procedure,\u00a0then<\/a> b<\/a>e my guest<\/a>. It\u2019s that process which you are going to replicate.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third, you mustn\u2019t think of your mailing as a way to take stuff from your readers. The mailing list is a way to build relationships<\/strong>. Once you\u2019ve done that then, yes, around launch, it\u2019s perfectly natural to say, \u201cHey, do you want to buy my latest?\u201d But put relationships first, then asking second. <\/p>\n\n\n\n So, the first email that goes out to readers on my list offers the free gift (as promised), but the second one offers a second free gift \u2013 a pure surprise. I also tell readers a bit about myself. I tell them roughly what to expect in terms of emails from me. Hopefully, by that point, readers like my books that little bit more than they did before and \u2013 admittedly only in a tiny way \u2013 they feel like they have a teensy bit of relationship with me. Fostering that relationship is THE most important thing in your authorial career\u2026 beyond \u2013 of course, of course \u2013 writing quite excellent novels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And fourth, you do, I\u2019m afraid, need to kill people<\/strong> \u2013 and surprisingly often. Every email list will, over time, fill up with people who NO LONGER OPEN YOUR EMAILS! That shows shockingly poor taste, I agree, but it will happen. And you need to get rid of those people. Murder is one route. Simply removing their emails from your list is another. (All email list providers have simple tools to enable this.) The more dead wood you have on your list, the more likely your emails are to get dumped into Junk email or similar. You must avoid that fate. A small, highly engaged list is better than a large but baggy one every time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Big Publishing and mailing lists <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not going to get into a huge digression here, but suffice to say that it is a Foolish Writer who gives up control of their mailing list to Big Publishing. I have seen some ugly car crashes take place under those circumstances. Even if you plan to be a bestselling writer working under the care of Big Publishing \u2013 especially then, in fact, you need to own and operate your list yourself. Aside from your books themselves, that\u2019ll be the biggest asset you have. Don\u2019t give it away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s it <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You sell books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n People sign up to your list, get their free gift, get some welcome emails, experience the joy of a relationship with you\u2026 and are fully primed to buy your next book when it comes out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Amazon will notice that burst of sales, and will reward you for them in the multiple \u2013 feeding your pocket and building your list in the one and same sweet process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s the joy of the list \u2013 and the thrill of sailing faster than the wind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Next week <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This series of emails comes to a close next week, with thoughts about mindset\u2026 and plumbing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Query Letters<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ll keep things simple this week as well. Any chunk involving physical action \u2013 a fight, a car crash, a fall, an accident. Anything like that. 250 words please. And exciting, of course. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Pop your excerpt here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Till soon,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harry<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n PS<\/strong>:\u00a0This email has been running faster than the wind on Townhouse here<\/a>. It\u2019s pretty sure it can see its own backside looming up in the windshield.<\/p>\n\n\n\n PPS<\/strong>:\u00a0Oh you silly billies. It\u2019s November. It\u2019s time to\u00a0become a member<\/strong><\/a> <\/a><\/strong>of Jericho Writers<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0at 30% off the normal price. How can that not be a good, wise, rational thing to do? You get:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joining information is here. And honestly? We\u2019d love to have you.\u00a0Plea<\/strong><\/a>se <\/a><\/strong>come<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s a fact: A racing catamaran can sail faster than the wind \u2013 over twice as fast, indeed, under perfect conditions. (Don\u2019t believe me? And yet it\u2019s true, I tell you, true!) Something like the same effect \u2013 only better \u2013 is achievable via mailing lists. Still better: this email is just as important to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":98318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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