So Why Are Email Lists Important?

After all, there are plenty of ways that you can contact your readers. Find the right blog and they will review your work, or even interview you; your book can be advertised in subscription emails from promotional services and, in some cases, Amazon will do the same. Even your own publishing house might send details of your book to their contacts. So why not use these? Because there are two main problems:

You are using a middleman and not contacting your readers direct.

You are depending on another relationship to make contact with your readers.

What if you left your publishing house? Changed your social media accounts? Set up another website? Email addresses don’t tend to change very much and remain the strongest link you have to your fan base. By the same token, third parties aren’t interested in sending out your news for free; there will be a price or some condition attached and those emails may not necessarily be just about your work – that means messages can get lost.

An email list, cultivated by you and managed by you, is a far more effective tool and will play a big part in your success.

How to Build a List

There are a few ways you can do this but every way will hinge on you giving readers a good reason to sign up to it. It could be for the information you promise to provide – adding a simple message on your website, asking people to sign up for more updates on upcoming work is often sufficient.

Whenever you publish a book, add a link at the end to your email signup, again, asking people to sign up for more details on future projects. If people enjoy your books, they’ll sign up.

Multiple Lists

You are not limited to one list; if you have time and energy, set up more. You can have one for full information, one that offers information on new releases, on appearances you may be making and so on. This gives people the option to sign up for as little or as much content as they want to receive from you.

You might want certain groups for certain types of information so you should organize your lists at the start – put each person into a specific group, perhaps using demographics as your criteria. This helps you later on when you want to send certain information to a certain group.

Most people keep the same email address long-term so use every opportunity you can to start building up your list. Post a link to your signup page on Facebook or Twitter as well but make it clear that they will be getting more tailored information by email to make it more likely they will sign up – they won't sign up to receive email information when they can see it on social media.

Pretty much, any way you can think of to draw readers into signing up to your email list is a good way; just make sure that you follow through and send out what you promise.