What's up with all these newsletters?

I am a reader. 

I think that statement is probably true of a lot of writers - we start to write because we enjoy reading so much. Either we just have stories inside of us begging to be told, or we have tried to find stories that we want to read, but cannot, so decide to write them. A lot of us write for both reasons, and perhaps more as well.

I'll tell you soon about how I decided to take the independent publishing path, but this week I am focusing on one thing that Indie Publishing requires if an author wants to get any traction - marketing. Specifically, newsletters.

There are a lot more successful authors who can tell you the whys and wheres of putting out a newsletter, some of whom I follow and hope to learn from. This blog post will illuminate my experience, both as a reader and as a writer, with newsletters.

As I stated, I am a reader. As such, I am as down as the next limited-income reader with getting free books to read. Even better are when I can find lists that offer free books in the genre and rating-level (fantasy, clean, pg-13 or less) I prefer! Chances are that you have come across the kind of promotion I mean, especially if you get my newsletter, because I include them. You browse the offerings and find books that look appealing, sign up for the author's newsletter, and receive the ebook for free. You are free to continue to receive the newsletters or unsubscribe, and the ebook remains yours. 

I have signed up for a lot of newsletters. Like a lot of readers, I haven't even read all of the books I currently have downloaded, and yet I still look for more. That can end up being a crap-ton of newsletters! I use these newsletters as a form of research. What do other authors do that I like, and may want to copy? What do other authors do that I hate, and will make sure I don't do?

Some authors treat their newsletter as a marketing tool - which, to be fair, it is. However, if all I see when I open the email is a bunch of promotions and books to buy, or a pitch to buy the author's other books, then I may stick around for another email to see if it changes but chances are I'm hitting the unsubscribe button.

I get enough flyers in the mailbox, and I pitch those directly in the bin to start the woodstove with. If I had a way to stop getting so many of those, I would. I don't need to start that many fires. In my email, I do have a way to stop receiving what I don't want. I unsub.

A newsletter needs to be engaging. There should be something in there that makes me want to open it. They also need to be aware of my time. (okay, newsletters are not sentient. Their authors, though, should be.) Michael's Arts and Crafts store convinced me to sign up for their coupons. I'll admit, I would want to open those, if I'm going to be heading to the store. I did NOT want to open the five emails they sent me a week. Unsub.

My favorite newsletters are entertaining. Not necessarily dishing personal details about the author, but at least enough to give me a connection. Share a bit of yourself with me, I'll share a bit of myself, either with comments, a reply email, or at the very least, my time. 

I'm still learning. My newsletters are not perfect. In fact, earlier this month I sent one out without a link to the book I was showing and had to send a corrected version, hoping readers would open that to click to the book instead of getting mad and unsubscribing.

Here are two case studies I've recently done.

Author A, whose name appears at the top of the genre on Amazon and has hundreds of reviews, agreed to mention my book to her readers in exchange for the same from me. Hooray! Plus, I joined her list. I received her newsletter. She has a lovely banner at the top identifying her brand. She jumped in with chatty smatterings of what is going on in her writing and otherwise life, including a couple of photos. All great! I was enjoying this! 

Then she had a separator, and graphic images of three promotions and the cover of my book. No introductions, no explanations of what we would find if we clicked, no words. Just the hyperlinked images. Her newsletter just ended. It felt like someone had engaged in a conversation with me and then turned and walked away without comment before the conversation had naturally ended. (Another word for that is Rude.)

I'm sure you know my reaction. Unsub.

Author B, whom I had not heard of before even though she has written a couple of series, got me to sign up to receive her free book. I almost didn't click on it, because I don't love the artwork on the cover - it's just not my style. 

Because this is a positive review, I'll reveal that the author's name is L. S. O'Dea. Her newsletters have me eagerly checking my inbox. Each newsletter has a theme that she briefly discusses and includes references for (feeling different than others, animals adopting other animals, animal superpowers) For example, the first one was about not fitting in - it had a snip of conversation with her mom, quoted statistics with reference links, had funny pics she tied into reading her book. Then she put in a couple of paragraphs from one of the books that had to do with not fitting in.

In all of the newsletters I've received, she has more images than I've read is good to include, but they are fantastic. I've even gotten used to the weird art she has for her covers. (This is just my opinion, probably other people wouldn't find it weird at all. You know, if they like weird art.)

At the bottom of each of her newsletters, she has links and images (Again!) of each of the books in the series and then another series, plus a link to sign up for her FB page. This must be the onboarding sequence still, because there are no book promotions or swaps or other stuff in any of these; they are all about her books so far. 

I admit I still haven't read the book, other than a few paragraphs in the newsletter. But, I have read and reread each of these newsletters, so she has definitely got my engagement! And I know her book will be one I turn to sooner, rather than later, based on my enjoyment of her newsletters. If you would like to sign up for her newsletters, go to her website. (lsodea.com.)

TLDR: I'm not interested in receiving sales flyers with no personal engagement, so I will not be sending those type of newsletters out. I have thoroughly enjoyed these themed newsletters with entertaining and informative tid-bits in them, tied into the author's series. Enough of the author's humor and style show in the newsletter to engage me. I plan to redo my onboarding sequence to increase the entertainment value and hope to increase engagement. I want conversations, people!

So tell me, if you are a reader, what newsletters do you enjoy, and why? If you are an author, what do you include in your newsletters? 

Lobster eggs!

The past two weeks I have not had many words put onto paper, because I've been focused on our harvest.

My family has been in the cranberry business for nearly 30 years. We started by inheriting a couple of cranberry bogs - that's the name for the land area where the cranberries are grown. The bog is lower than the surrounding land and encircled by a moat-like ditch to make flooding the bogs with water possible at harvest time.

We use a reel to pick the berries. Cranberries have little air pockets in them, so when the reel scrapes the berry from the vine, the berry floats. What you see in this photo is floating cranberries being pushed toward the pump that will put them onto the truck for transport.

We sometimes have visitors during harvest, especially if we are picking a bog easily seen from the road. One year, a tourist who had never seen a cranberry harvest asked if we were harvesting lobster eggs! (I don't think he ate much seafood, either!) We all got a good chuckle at that, and it has become a favorite story for my husband to tell new visitors.

This is the reel, which has a hydraulic beater bar/reel in the front. As the bog is being flooded with enough water to make the vines and berries start to float, the reel is driven onto the bog and around in circles to knock the berries from the vines. 

Once more water has been added to the bog so that the berries float above the vines, we can start the job of getting the berries onto the truck to transport to the processing plant. We don waders to wear into the water and grab our handy "pushers" to help direct the berries toward the suction box.

To keep the berries from floating whichever way the wind would blow, we use corral boards that hook together with hinges. Some companies have "cranbarrier" which is more flexible and lighter, to corral the berries, but we use what we have. 

Berries are loaded onto the truck through a suction hose that gets staked to the bog just under the surface of the water/berries. The water and berries go up to the wash box at the top, where the berries are diverted to the waiting truck and the water and leaves and other debris go out another pipe into the trash truck, which separates the debris from the water. Water is directed back to the bog, and the debris - leaves that were knocked off, grasses, etc., is hauled to a pile and dumped out.

At the top of the wash box is this spray bar, which sprays water onto the berries and debris coming out of the bog. This causes the debris to fall through the metal rods below, and the berries to bounce down into the truck to be taken to the plant for processing.

The way our harvest is handled is similar to my idea of a Barn Raising, in that some of our friends come to help and we feed them good, hot food and try to have a few laughs. When the water is hard to come by, as it was this year, or it's very cold, or raining or snowing, it can make the work a lot easier when you can have a few laughs along the way. We are so grateful for the help of our friends! 

This picture is of myself and my husband, smiling because the sun finally came out, the crop is almost in, and I bought a new selfie-stick and made him stand with me to try it out. 😉

 

How do you schedule your days?

 

I am not a disciplined person.

I believe I have established this already, right? I said in May that I was going to post a sprint every week, and promptly disappeared. I mean, I didn't really disappear. That would be amazing, and I wouldn't be wasting time worrying about measly little things like schedules if I could be invisible! But I didn't manage to get those sprints done every week, and of the ones I did do, most of them did not make it to the blog. 

I have several projects going on, like a DIY kitchen renovation project that morphed into a take-over-the-whole-house project that has still not been completed but at least is giving us room to breath. We have cranberry bogs, and this is prime harvest season, with the added pressure of being in a drought and having to keep pushing down the anxiety of whether we will have enough water to flood the bogs to harvest them or not. I am close enough to the end of the next book that I can see most of the road to the finish line, but still far enough away that I cannot say I'll be finished in the next week or two. I'm helping to wrangle gremlins who are hybrid schooling, with the assorted meltdowns that the week on/week off schedule introduces (on top of the little-girl-world meltdowns that happen because, life). Oh, and I do have a real job, even if thanks to the pandemic my hours have been slashed to just more than occasional.

I wish I was a bullet journal person. I've tried - I have a whole stack of really cool stickers I bought to make myself a more organized and productive person. They are still in the bag I brought them home in. I think I used a page or two. I love the idea, but my brain doesn't work that way.

What my brain can manage, though, is a to-do list. (Hey, this is progress. I was an adult diagnosed with ADD before I learned how to use external tools to help myself stay on track!) When I was working a more stable schedule it was easier to stay on track and I largely didn't have to resort to the list or planner or... I don't believe in living in the past. We have to deal with what is, right? What is, for me, right now, is that I need to stay a bit more focused if I hope to accomplish things. 

So, back to the calendar with the to-do list. And something new I'm going to trial this month: I'm going to block out time for certain categories of jobs. Something like: editing before going in to the real job. Writing after the real job until gremlins come home. Finishing up the DIY projects, or cranberry harvest related chores that can be done with gremlins in tow, or corralling school projects or homework or myriad other gremlin-related things will be done after school until dinner. If there's still incomplete items left on my list, and I still have energy after supper, they may fit in there. 

So, how do you schedule your time? Are you a planner person, or do you go where the wind blows? Do you need the help of external lists, or are you able to keep it all together just in your brain? (Don't you have anything else going on in there?) {Just kidding!}