As I write this in early July, there’s something going on, on TikTok which, you may or may not know, is my primary marketing platform. I have between 1,500 and 1,600 followers as I write this, and the number is slowly growing and reflects a lot of hard work and time I’ve put in over probably the last year.
The thing happening is that there are folks going around mass-reporting authors whose content they disagree with. And I don’t mean someone being racist, sexist, or otherwise horrible. I mean just people they disagree with about bookish things (like whether an author likes a particular book/author for whatever reason, or if they put up a review someone isn’t happy with). This has ruined a number of people’s platforms and caused serious harm to budding authors early in their careers for whom social media marketing is of serious value and importance.
None of what I’m saying in this post is intended to bely the importance of social media marketing, by the way. You need it in today’s world, and there’s no escaping that.
All that said, this cancellation has hurt a lot of folks in ways that would sting vastly less if they had a newsletter. Newsletters are our insulation against this kind of event. Whether it’s someone cancelling your social media account(s) en masse, or whether it’s a platform going belly up or having issues (like Tumblr in recent history), your insulation from this as an author is going to be your newsletter and the media you have control over such as your personal website and blog.
Newsletters often feel outdated. Email marketing is seen as a bit of a dinosaur by a lot of people, and I’ve seen a lot of push-back and eye-rolling when it comes to doing one’s newsletter because, frankly, they view it as unimportant or stressful. Or a waste of time. This recent implosion of BookTok is an example of why a newsletter matters. I don’t push mine a ton on there, and I should talk about it more, but I still have one. Right now it has a few hundred subscribers (which is far fewer than my TikTok follower list), but those few hundred subscribers are folks who signed up because they wanted to see my content and connect with me.
The newsletter I put out twice a month via email also contains things I don’t share on social media or things that I share first in there like cover reveals, sample chapters, short stories, and so on. The fact that I share things first through that also means that people have a reason to want to be on my newsletter since it’s their quick fix of everything related to me as an author.
More importantly, though, if social media shut down tomorrow — all of it — I’d still have my email newsletter, and people could still find me. Granted, it’s not bomb-proof if we lose the entire internet, but I suspect if that happens we’ll have bigger problems than book marketing.
If you’re a writer, you need a newsletter. That’s just it. Period. That includes if you don’t have a book out yet. It’ll help you start building your base and your readership as well as connecting with people who want to read more from you.
Ah! A newsletter? (I know you’re right) I have no idea how to do it!
There are ways! The first thing I suggest is looking into the book “Newsletter Ninja” by Tammy Labrecque! It’s very dense and can be pretty intimidating, but the data is really useful. The service I use is called “Mailer Lite.” It’s free until you have 1,000 subscribers, so it’s not too bad. You don’t need to know any coding or anything else, either. It’s really easy to use. My mom learned how to use it in a little while, so it’s not extremely difficult or extremely complicated, I promise!
If you want me to, I can message you some videos on how to use it, too, if you need them.