Julie Broad (author and founder of Book Launchers) presents a short YouTube tutorial arguing that an email newsletter is the single most powerful marketing tool authors can use to sell books and build a business. She gives concrete, actionable steps: choose and maintain a realistic sending frequency (or use an autoresponder for low-frequency schedules), pick an email service with good deliverability and website integration (mentions Mailchimp, AWeber, ConvertKit), embed a clear signup form on your site and never add people without permission, and offer a valuable lead magnet (chapter, checklist, tool) to entice signups. She cites personal results (early buyers, reviewers, and high Amazon ranking coming from her email list) and emphasizes ownership of an email list versus relying on social platforms; brief banter and calls-to-action (subscribe, visit booklaunchers.com and juliebroad.com) frame the video.
Chapters
I know you've been looking for the magic bullet, that one thing you need to do to sell more books and even build a business around your book. This is it. This is the tip. It's not social media. It's not Facebook messenger bots or some AI robot selling your book in malls. Although that's a pretty cool idea, isn't it? Stick around. I'll reveal what you need to do. Hey, I'm Julie Broad, award winning author and founder of Book Launchers, a company that helps entrepreneurs and professionals write, publish and sell a fantastic nonfiction book. Today, I want to share the single most powerful marketing tool for your book and beyond. But before I do that, make sure you subscribe to our channel and hit that little notification symbol so you'll get notified when a new video comes out. And when I go live, that's your best chance to interact with me, ask questions and hang out on YouTube. So let's get to it. That single most important piece of marketing for your book, for your business. I'm talking about an Email list. Regular email contact with your readers keeps you top of mind. When someone who runs an association needs a speaker, a book club needs a new book to read, media needs someone to interview, or someone asks for a referral to someone who does what you do, you'll be much more likely to be the first name they say. If you've had regular contact with them via email, emails may be ignored but but they won't be missed. Like a 24 hour story that disappears or a post that drops down in a feed, never to be seen again. Or worse, something that Facebook or some other social media site decides nobody needs to see so they just don't show it to anybody. When I launched my books, it was my email readers who were the first people to buy my books, write reviews, and tell others. Both times my email readers got my book into the top 100 overall on Amazon. That's pretty powerful. So start building your email newsletter list today if you aren't already connecting with readers in an email newsletter. First, of course, I recommend you go to book launchers.com and grab our bi weekly launch letter. Every other Monday I send out some tips to help you as an author and you will also get some valuable insights into what makes for a fairly successful email newsletter. And if you want to see what I do as an author and see a newsletter that regularly gets 30 to 40% open rates extremely high in the industry, go to juliebroad.com and get my monthly Broad Thoughts newsletter. Both are examples of content driven Newsletters that are designed to create a connection and build a relationship with the readers, which is what you want to do as an author looking to sell your books. So how do you start? Number one, decide how often you'll send a newsletter. Pick a frequency you can maintain. Be warned though, if you choose a low frequency bimonthly or quarterly, you run the risk of people forgetting they signed up, which then leads to unsubscribes or worse, spam flagging. Who is that email from? I don't remember that person. If you're going to send infrequently, I recommend you set up something that's called an autoresponder that will send three to five emails over the next few weeks so they can get to know you so they'll remember signing up for your newsletter and know who you are. Number two, choose a newsletter service. Focus on a company that has great deliverability, integrates easily with your website, and most importantly is wide that you'll use. In other words, you like the interface and feel comfortable there. Don't worry about making this newsletter look super pretty. Plain emails actually perform really well. A lot of people like mailchimp, I used to use Aweber and love them. They had high deliverability which means more people actually got the emails versus them going into spam or just floating somewhere in cyberspace. Services like Convertkit are getting a lot of love these days because they're a company that's designed their email system for creatives. I'm not an affiliate, but I hear amazing things about their service. So if you're committed to your author business they could be perfect for you. Bottom line, you can get going for free with a lot of services and then as your email list grows then you will start to pay for that service. Number three didn't I already do 3443 set it up on your website. Most services have an embed form. It's really easy. You don't need to know code, but you can always pay someone five bucks on fiverr.com to do it. Just change your password after when you set this up. Be specific and honest about what people are signing up for and you should create some sort of a form that tells people what they'll get if they subscribe and how often you'll email them and what they'll get when they get your emails. Never add people without their permission. That's gross. And in most countries it's actually against the law. In Canada you are required to get people to double opt in and my Internet lawyer recently emailed me about what's going on in Europe and the privacy laws are going crazy and you have to prove that you have permission to email people there. So collecting info from Europeans means that you really have to set this up for right? Ew, I didn't sign up for that. That's gross. Be compliant and don't be a spammer. A spammer is anyone who sends unwanted emails. Spamming is like being that drunk guy at the bar trying to pick up the happily married woman.
You know what's on the menu?
No?
Me and you.
Now that it's set up, you'll want to work on creating something that entices people to sign up for your newsletter. So like the book selling game plan, which you can get free@booklaunchers.com sellbooks basically, you need to create something so awesome people would otherwise pay for it. If you're writing a book, one of your fabulous chapters will work well for now. Or if you have a great checklist or a tool that's in your book, give that away as an incentive to sign up for your newsletter. I always go back to my real estate background with this analogy. When you rely on any other platform to connect with your readers to, you're squatting. You don't own that property. You're just loitering there for free. And that landlord can change the rules at any time. So build your business on something you own. Build a great email newsletter list with readers who can't wait to get your next newsletter. In another video, we'll cover what to put in your newsletter to keep that engagement high and build a strong relationship with your readers and your potential readers. Until then, don't be a spammer. Smash that thumbs up button. If you like this video and want more, I'll see you on the next video.
Hey, does this place have WI fi? Because I feel a connection.
