Newsletter
Join my newsletter, stay up to date
(oh, and get a free book).
THIS is such a simple process, it’ll make your eyes roll*.
1. Send me an email.
2. In the email, tell me:
a) What address you want me to subscribe you under.
b) Your first name.
That’s it.
In either a few minutes, or a few hours, depending on how busy my day is, I’ll confirm I’ve got your email, and send you your free book.
Yes, it’s really me that will be answering. An actual person. No machines or auto responders. There is no automatic confirmation process, layers of security, passwords or other systems. You don’t have to fill out a form that gives your first, last and middle name, and your second child in security. No weird characters you have to cross your eyes to read to let me know you’re human. I think I can figure that out from your email, and if I’m not sure, I’ll ask. (Yes, I’m kidding. Sheesh….)
If you haven’t heard back from me after a few days, you’re welcome to nudge me and ask me if I’m purposely ignoring you. I’m not, by the way. I never ignore people who like my books. But it could be that I’m either out of the country or at a convention. I’ll try very hard to let you know either way, and that I’ll get your book to you as soon as possible.
(*Why is the process so simple? That’s another story. See below)
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Reader Feedback
I have to tell you, I am really enjoying your newsletter. It is fun and informative at the same time. — Renee
Great scoop this month, I enjoyed both formats of the newsletter. — Cathy M
I really enjoy your newsletter. It is very interesting!! — Deb F
I want to thank you for taking the time to send the newsletters. It is a very good newsletter. – Loretta C. P.S. The eye candy is nice.
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Why the simple sign-up process
I agonized over how to do the newsletter. Which sounds odd, as I’ve been doing a newsletter for at least ten years, so why the hand-wringing?
Allow me to explain.
You as a reader probably don’t realize what an angst-filled exercise just sending out a monthly newsletter is for most authors. It looks pretty simple on the surface of it. Just write it and send it out. Simple, eh?
But when your readership list gets a bit bigger you can’t do it yourself, if you’re not terribly technically minded. (Although I am — “geek” is my other second name.) So, I can hear you say: “Use Yahoo Groups.”
However, every promotions and marketing person worth their salt just shuddered at your words. Yahoo and other free list and group email managers have a number of drawbacks for authors, including exposing their readers’ email addresses to hackers and other privacy issues, and the author to potential litigation.
There are professional solutions that cost anywhere from about $30 a month up to “oy vey!” depending on how many addresses are on your list and how many times you email a month…plus you have to use their emailing templates and program interfaces, and a whole lot of other rules and by-laws. Put together with a number of other reasons, I declined to renew my contract after a year. These are the services that the promoters and PR people insist that authors should be using if they are to look like “professional” authors. Despite declining to use the service, I still consider myself a professional author.
For a while I tried switching my newsletter over to a blog — the very short lived Stories Rule. I prefer the more intimate, closed circuit readership of readers who want to hear my news, not the odd reader who stumbles over my blog when they’re bored and looking for distracting entertainment.
So my final decision is…I’m going to run my newsletter myself. All me, myself and I, with no professional, expensive mediators or middlemen telling me how my newsletter will look, when it will go out, or how often I can afford to send it. Which is why all I’m asking you to send me is a simple email with your first name.
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