By J.T. Ellison

For the past twenty years, I have been sending a monthly newsletter to a burgeoning mailing list of people—readers, friends, family. Through every iteration—from the early days of sending to twenty people directly from my Gmail account all the way to my current robust preference, Substack—this newsletter has been filled with book updates, essays about my writing life, recipes and wine recommendations, reading suggestions, and, of course, my cats. The list has grown, shrunk, and moved from service to service in an attempt to improve open rates. It’s been a consistent presence, a living, breathing record of my career. My latest, as of this writing, is Volume 283. Which means that over the course of twenty years in the industry, I’ve sent approximately 14.5 newsletters a year, consistently. 

Why?

I’m so glad you asked. The answer is simple. Having a reader’s email, being able to show up in their inbox, is more valuable than hundreds of thousands of social media followers. You own your list. A mega corporation can delete or meter your account at a moment’s notice, and poof, there go all those followers. Or, worse, they force you to pay to play, and that makes the interactions less valuable over time because your core followers aren’t even seeing your posts. Social media is fine for discoverability, but to truly build a readership, a newsletter has always been the best option. 

In a newsletter, you control your cadence and topics. Your length. You don’t have to worry about hashtags, likes, algorithms. Every newsletter is a personal hello to the person on the other side of that message, and if done properly, not abused, not used to spam the world, it will be your most valuable resource. 

A well-done, well-thought-out, meaningful newsletter creates the difference between the reader who feels seen vs. the reader who feels marketed to. That’s where I’ve had the most success with mine. It’s a conversation piece. A monthly cocktail party. A way for me to share my creative life with my readers that isn’t a constant sales pitch. Because no reader wants to be on the receiving end of a gazillion BUY MY BOOK messages. 

And there’s the rub. As an author, we do need to market our books to our readers. That is the number one reason to have a newsletter. So how to market without, you know, marketing?

I call it value-add authorship. 

It’s just important to understand these are people, first and foremost. They love treats, and special treatment. They like surprises. They like insider knowledge. They love being first to find out exciting news. And in a world where the immediacy of media means exclusives are hard to dole out, having a dedicated group of people who do get first dibs on information about you and your books can make a career sing. Happy readers make loyal readers. (Just remember: People really, really don’t like being sent messages they never signed up for. Never spam. Only ever use emails that have been vetted, from people who subscribe.) 

So how do you go about building a newsletter from scratch? First, make sure you have an easy Subscribe mechanism on your website and across all your social media. Choose your email platform wisely. CANN-Spam laws mean you can’t send mass emails from private addresses, so you’re much better off using an email service. Some are more expensive than others. Ask your author friends who they use and how much they pay. And if you’re not technically minded, you can absolutely hire someone to do the backend work for you. Paying someone $25 an hour for a few hours a month to help is a wonderful use of your advance and will pay for itself in book sales. 

How do you know what your readers want? Ask them. I do polls all the time, both to measure their interests and build data for my own use. 

It’s very helpful to sign up for your favorite authors’ newsletters, too. See what they’re doing, how they interact. Especially if they’re in the same genre, it’s helpful to see what your peers are doing. 

I moved my entire list to Substack last year. Let me tell you why that platform is my favorite. Not only is it free, easy to use, and beautiful (don’t underestimate the importance of newsletter aesthetics) it brings a level of interaction from both a comments section and Notes, which is Substack’s version of a social media scrolling feed. The discoverability factor makes it a lot easier to grow your list than if it’s just sitting dormant and siloed on your website. You control the SEO, you control the content, and you control your list. It doesn’t have a good way to do segmentation, which is its one fatal flaw, but if you’re building your list, it’s a great place to do it. If you’ve thought about moving an established list over, I highly recommend it. 

There are other ways to build your list, including services that do group contests that then give you a list to manage, but I’ll be honest—the people who are signing up to win free books are not necessarily going to be your high-value contact. They might stick around for a few newsletters, then unsubscribe. They may never open in the first place. Worse, they often use throwaway addresses that are spam traps, which hurt your open rates. 

There’s a lot of backend technical talk I could throw at you right now, but the gist is this: you’re better off growing your list organically. Don’t ever forget, though, the newsletter is about your readers. While perfect SEO might attract new readers, the important part is satisfying your current subscribers.

One thing I will say about Substack: though it does have a paid model, I don’t charge for my monthly newsletter. I never will. It’s something I gift my readers. I do have a paid newsletter that is craft-oriented, but my monthly has been and always will be free. 

This all may sound too technical, and you may be throwing up your hands and thinking Instagram works well enough; this is too much. I assure you, it’s not. You’re a writer. Long form is your jam, right? Words are your life’s blood. You didn’t get into this gig to become a marketing expert, did you? Of course not. If that were the case, you’d be one of our wonderful publicists instead! 

A newsletter gives you a chance to explore your one-off thoughts, expand on the snippets of life that you share throughout the month. My newsletter is full of all kinds of value-added items, recipes, and contests, as well as my weird thoughts about life, love, books, aging, creativity, and cats. I have decades-long friendships that came from this monthly missive. It’s worth every moment I spend on it.

Find your niche, own it, and they will come. Your readers are out there, waiting. Give them something worth signing up for, and they’ll stick around for a very long time.