5 Newsletter Freebies You Can Use As An Author
You've heard it before...
"Build your mailing list"
"Your email list is your most important asset"
"Start building your email list from the beginning"
So you get it. Having an email list is extremely important.
And you did it. You set up a page on your website where people can sign up to read your newsletter.
But... nothing's happening...
No one's signing up and you don't know what to do. Everyone's told you that having an email list is the most important part of your marketing plan but you can't get anyone to sign up for yours.
And that's because you've made a fundamental mistake right out of the gate.
You're trying to get people to sign up for your newsletter but quite frankly, no one wants to give out their email address these days.
Everybody is inundated with more emails than they can handle and the thought of adding another one to their inbox is too overwhelming. Especially when they can easily check amazon for your books.
So what should you do?
You need to entice your reader to sign up to your email list.
How do you do that, you ask?
You need to give them something for free.
You need to offer them something that they can't get anywhere else and is exclusive to your email list. That way they know that the only way to get it is by joining your email list.
Because let's face it, if there's nothing in it for them, why should they give you their email address?
People want to know what's in it for them, so you need to cater to that and offer them something in return for signing up.
So now that you know the best way to get people to sign up is by offering something they want in exchange, here are 5 reader magnets you can use to get people to sign up for your author newsletter.
Options 1-3 are perfect for getting people to sign up via your website. And options 4 & 5 are better suited to be used in the backmatter of your books as those readers will be the most interested.
1. Give them a free book on sign up
This option works especially well if you write in series. You can offer the first book in your series for free to draw them into the series and then you can make your money on the read through as they buy the rest of your series.
This is the same strategy as having the first book in your series set to perma-free. However, you're just using it to get people to sign up for your email list instead.
2. Give them a novella on sign up
If you only write standalones or don't want to give away a full book for free then the next best option is a novella. This could be one that you've already written or one that you write specifically to use as your reader magnet.
If you have any secondary characters that your readers love, this could be a good opportunity to let them shine with a book of their own.
Or perhaps you can create a short story set in the same world or town where some of your books are written.
Maybe you write a Christmas novella or a prequel to a story that sets up the backstory of your characters, their parents or the world that came before them.
The options are endless.
3. Release a serial book only to your newsletter subscribers
This is a novel or short story that you write exclusively for your newsletter and release part of it to your email subscribers every week, every two weeks, every month etc. Or however frequently you email them.
This can be a great way to get your readers to sign up and stick around for more of your emails.
You can also either write this ahead of time and split it up for each newsletter. Or if you're feeling adventurous and able you can write it as you go.
The choice is yours.
4. Bonus epilogue
This is a bonus epilogue in addition to your normal book epilogue (if you include them). Your book can stand completely on its own without this bonus epilogue, in fact, it might already have an epilogue in it. But this is just an extra freebie for those super fan readers who read your book and want a little bit more and are happy to sign up to read the extra epilogue.
Some ideas could be:
Seeing where your main characters are in 5 months / 5 years etc
Covering an important future event
Have the bonus epilogue be about your main characters BUT witnessed from the point of view of the next character in your book.
5. Deleted or bonus scenes
This is kind of like the bonus epilogue option, however with this option you can use any deleted scenes that you may have written and loved but ultimately had to cut from your book because they didn't fit for some reason.
This means that you don't have to do any extra work to use this as a reader magnet except for maybe a bit of a polish.
Or if you choose to write a bonus scene, unlike the epilogue it doesn't have to be set in the future of the characters. Maybe you want to create a scene that shows a little backstory to your characters, or maybe you show the point of view of a different character during one of the scenes that are in your book.
It’s entirely up to you :)
Now that you have some ideas of ways to entice your readers to become newsletter subscribers, which one are you going to try?
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