Why an Email List Is Essential for Authors

Most authors will tell us that they don’t need an email list because they have social media. This strategy can be devastating for authors. Here’s the deal…you don’t own your social media account! WHAT? Let me repeat that….You DO NOT own your social media account.

This is why you need to build your email list. Your social media account is owned by the owner of the platform. In other words, if your audience is on Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and his crew own your social media, not you. We are all one algorithm away from losing years’ worth of audience building. It’s important for you to start early and transition your audience from social media to your email list. Your email list is a company asset and all yours. No algorithm can take it away.

You begin this process with a lead magnet and a landing page. Your lead magnet should be a piece of expertise that is useful for the people who follow you. It can be a video series, e-book, or any other piece of content that you have created. It should never be an excerpt from your book! The landing page is where people will opt-in to get this free gift/ lead magnet and get into your list.

Audience Care and Feeding

Once you have people in your email list, you can’t just let them sit there unattended. This is where you can disseminate content. We send out our podcast to our email list every week. Once a month, we send Breakthrough Author Magazine. In order to stay top of mind with your followers, you must consistently reach out and feed them the content you create.

List Building for Your Launch

The Amazon bestseller list doesn’t require multiple platform sales. You will want to use your list and build two or three swipes at launch, but know that social media is also useful for an Amazon Bestseller Launch.

If your intention is to aim for a bigger bestseller list (Wall Street Journal or USA Today), you need purchases on multiple platforms. One of my friends, who consistently make the USA and WSJ bestseller lists with her books, has two strategies she employs with her list:

-???????Keep your list clean (delete people who have not opened in the last 60 days)

-???????Query where people on your list read and how they read (Amazon Kindle, e-books from Apple, etc.)

This strategy allows her to keep a clean, twenty thousand plus on her list and deploy a strategy that includes multiple platforms to get the numbers she needs for these bestseller lists.

If you want to make a larger bestseller list and haven’t built your platform, you can always pay one of the companies out there who can make it happen. Unfortunately, most authors don’t have 50k plus to pay these people.

Click here for more email tips from Robin Stift and Nina Froriep from Clock Wise Productions: https://youtu.be/pUd5IABi3Hs