If You’re a Writer, Yes, You Need an Email List

Are you sick of hearing this yet?

When I first started my life as an independent author, back in the good old days of 2012, all I had to help me get my name out there were a few skills in photoshop (for covers), an account on Facebook and one on Twitter, some courage and a friend supporting me. That was it.

I used my social media for two things. One, to write online. I had a nice little audience over on my social media page, and it got attention from potential readers. Two, I used it to sell books when I plucked up the courage to publish them.

For days I trawled social media groups for readers, and like an annoying sandwich board holder in the middle of the street, I asked anyone I could find to please go and buy my book. It worked. I got readers, I made friends, and in that first month, I sold over eight hundred copies of my first book and made myself a nice $1500. I was ecstatic, and to me, I had made it. This was it. I could finally be the writer I always wanted to be, and I could publish, sell books and make money.

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn’t bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.” –Stephen King

See Mr King? I am a writer. I was going to make it.

And in some respects, this was enough for me. For years, I wrote and published and gained readers. I had a good time, and I could see the possibility of writing full time just on the horizon for me. It was exciting, but then … things changed.

A Lot Changed

Let’s talk about the Amazon changes. This, of course, is probably the biggest stakeholder in eBooks at the moment and back then.

Back when I was first publishing, books listed on Amazon’s sale pages used to have something called tags. Readers would add tags to books, and other readers would come along and like those tags, and in doing so, an author could climb their way up the Amazon chart. Authors got wise to this and asked readers to tag and click, tag and click, but Amazon got wise to that and removed the tag function.

Then, amazon had this idea of readers borrowing books — sort of like an online library. For every time a reader borrowed a book, the author got paid the same as if the reader had purchased the book. It meant that regardless of whether the reader read the book or not, the author got paid for the borrow. However, in July 2014, Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited. A subscription service where readers pay a set fee every month, and then authors are paid by pages read. That means if a reader downloaded the book and didn’t read it. On the old scheme, the author, would be paid the same as if it was purchased, but under kindle unlimited, the author got nothing. Authors now get paid by the number of pages read.

And it isn’t just Amazon who made changes. When I started as an indie author, it was easy to create your business page, post and get seen by almost everyone who had clicked like. Now, Facebook doesn’t show those posts to everyone, and for better exposure, authors, like me, need to learn marketing and pay for advertising even to reach a fraction of potential readers.

Why am I telling you these things?

You Do Not Own Your Amazon Account

Or social media, or control them.

Last year, I saw an author lose his Amazon account. He had a considerable following in the erotica genre and had garnered some success within his career. His sales were up, as were his page reads. Things were looking good, but then one morning, he woke and found that Amazon had decided to block his Amazon account. They told him he was in breach of some part of their agreement (I’m not sure what exactly) and that due to this, they were removing his books from the Amazon platform, and locking his publishing account.

I can’t even imagine that heartbreak.

Now, I don’t know if he had an email list or not. I’d hope he did. But if he didn’t, what would he do? How would he contact his readers to enable him to still sell the books he’d written? How would he even let them know what was going on?

Amazon isn’t going to give you the contact details of people who’ve bought your books. It is against privacy policies.

You need an email list because you don’t own and can’t control all the platforms that feed into your writing career. If Amazon, Medium or any other platform you use shut you down, how would you contact your readers to let them know where you’d gone, and where they could find you?

And, why would you allow a platform to have that much control over your readership?

There Are No Algorithms to Lose Your Email

Unlike using social media to promote your writing and books, where your posts can get lost, sunk and are at the mercy of algorithms, an email will land in a reader’s inbox and sit there until the owner of that email takes action towards your email. Additionally, if the email contains some information the reader wants to hold onto, they have a much easier time of doing that.

Email Lists Do Sell Books

This one was a shock for me. I thought email was one of those archaic things that no one bothered with. Sure, I had an email account, but I’m old (forty-three haha), and I like email; it works for me, but in talking to my daughter, when I tell her I’ve emailed her something, I always get told, Oh, I don’t use email. So, I assumed, based on that, that this was just the day and age of communication and email was sort of like DVD’s. Something people have, but outdated now.

It turns out; this isn’t true. And, there are more registered email accounts than there are Facebook accounts. With Facebook being able to boast a two billion membership count, email has more than three and a half billion. It seems I was wrong. People do still use it.

Having an email list allows you to connect to your readers, to give then direct updates. But more than that, it allows for a private dialogue between you and your readers. Once I had set up my email address and started to put it in my books, the number of communications I got off readers increased. And let me tell you, there is nothing better than waking to an email from a reader who has just finished your book and they’re bursting to tell you what they thought of your story. (Unless they thought it sucked, then that isn’t very nice).

It Isn’t All Selling Books

I know one big purpose with anything us indies do is to increase our exposure and then, in turn, generate more sales, and gain more readers, but it isn’t all about that. There are many other ways to use your email list, and many ways you should because if all you ever do is go for the hard sell, there is a good chance of chasing readers off.

People don’t want to be sold to all the time, and in this instant reply era we have, they crave interaction with the writers and authors they follow. Email allows that.

Other Uses For Your List

You can tell readers about

• Appearances

• Signings

• Festivals

You Can Get Feedback on

• Covers

• Titles

• Blurbs

• Character names

• And whatever else you can think of

Cross Promotions and Newsletter Swaps

This is one I have started to do recently. I swap my book details with other authors, authors who write the same genre as me. Every time I email, I have links to other author’s book’s, and they do the same for me.

It helps to get our names and work out there. It means that my books and covers are being sent to thousands of potential readers at the simple cost of the time it takes me to add the other author’s details to my email. I have gained many new readers this way, and I would like to think, the authors I have swapped with, have gained new readers from me in return.

Free Marketing

Lastly, an email list and almost all email list providers are free when you’re starting out. Many of them don’t start incurring costs until you reach a certain number of subscribers, usually, two thousand, and even when they start charging, the price is minimal. Many start at $20 per month.

Of course, the cost does increase as you grow, but that’s a good thing. Sure, it costs you more money, but payback from that is worth it. The more subscribers you have, the bigger your readership and an email list, once it gets to a level where you need to pay, is an investment into your business.