5 Questions About Starting an Email List, Answered by a Marketing Coach for Authors and Artists
These are 5 questions I answered in one sitting recently, and I want to give you the same answers here.
They all circled back to the same place, which is the email list. Not the cover, not the launch plan, not the fun creative part. The list. That makes sense to me, because your email list is the one piece of your marketing you actually own, and it's also the piece with the most decisions stacked on top of it before you've even written a word.
In this post, you'll find:
Whether it's worth moving your followers onto a list at all
Free newsletter or paid, and which one grows faster
How to work out what your people would genuinely pay for
What to do if you write in two different genres
How to pick a platform without overthinking it
1. Should I move my followers onto my email list, or just grow where I already am?
It is not the easiest thing to move people from one platform to another, and I want you to go in knowing that.
TikTok is one of the harder ones to get people off, partly because the algorithm is so addicting and people want to stay on it, and partly because you can't link to things as easily as you can on other platforms. So you're asking a lot of somebody when you ask them to leave.
That doesn't mean don't do it. It means pick one avenue for now as you grow it, and expand to an additional income stream later, because it's pretty hard to balance both at the same time. Pick one as your goal and really lean into it for the next 90 days rather than trying to split between both.
There's really no right answer on which one you pick. It's what you see as what you want to do.
2. Free newsletter or paid?
A free newsletter is a lot easier to grow than a paid one, and I'd start there almost every time.
When it's free, people get a chance to see more of your work, you build that trust first, and then you sell to them. Trying to get somebody as a paid subscriber right off the bat asks them to decide before they know whether they like what you make.
If your longer-term plan is a paid tier, one way to build up fans first is to share some of the work publicly. The first chapter free, or even the first few chapters, and the rest behind the paywall, because by then they're going to want to read the rest of the story.
3. How do I know what my people would actually pay for?
For people to pay for something, it needs to be of value to them, and you don't have to guess at what that means.
If you already have people reading along who aren't paying you anything right now, ask them. What would you want to see more of? What would make this worth paying for? How much would you pay for it? That's quick market research, and you already have the people for it.
4. I write in two genres. Do I need two email lists?
No, and this comes up a lot. It's very common for authors to write in two different genres and keep one newsletter.
That works especially well where the genres differ but the audiences don't, and the line I'd draw is something like a children's book author who also writes for adults. Two audiences that far apart get complicated fast, with different branding and different everything.
You also don't need to make a big announcement about it. You can say something like "I'm a Regency romance, romantic fantasy author who's also working on murder mysteries and I write both", and have that in your bio from the very beginning, so people know.
Then, as time goes on, segment. Keep your main newsletter, and put two segments underneath it. That way, whenever you launch a book in either genre, you can lean more heavily on sending your launch sequence to the readers you know are interested.
The easiest way to build those segments is two reader magnets, one per genre. Everyone who joins by getting that freebie is automatically labeled as that kind of reader, so you know who likes what and who likes both.
People really like receiving emails that are relevant to them. We all lose people naturally and some will unsubscribe, and that's fine. We just don't want to lose a lot of your list because they're getting things they never signed up for.
5. Which email platform should I pick?
There’s many platforms to choose from which can be overwhelming! My own platform that I use and recommend, MailerLite (aff link), dropped its free plan down to 250 subscribers. It used to be 1,000, and then 500, so they've been lowering it. I'm hoping 250 is as low as they go.
My own Marketing Monday list runs on MailerLite, and I still wouldn't tell you to pick it sight unseen. Do the free trial on two of them, see the back end, see which one you like the feel of more, and compare the pricing so you're choosing on your budget as well. There's a learning curve with everything, so the one you enjoy opening is the one you'll actually use.
Final thoughts
If you read all 5 of these and now have 5 new things on your list, pick one.
Write down the one thing you want in 90 days, start it, and let the rest wait until you've given that one a real chance.