By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com
A couple of months ago, I ran into a longtime friend I hadn’t seen in years, and he asked me why I’d stopped writing. The last book of mine that he’d read was Scott Free, which came out in 2003. When I told him that I’d written two books since then, he expressed shock and asked why I hadn’t told him.
In the pantheon of really good questions, that one shoots right to the top. I thought I had told him. I mean, I’m on Facebook, right? And I tweet and I’ve got a website. I spent a lot of money on publicity and advertising for No Mercy. How could he not know? Even as I type those words, I realize how impossibly naïve I sound.
When At All Costs was published in 1998, my wife and I developed a comprehensive mailing list of 1,500 people. This included everyone from family to old high school classmates I hadn’t spoken to in years. It even included my wife’s old classmates. We entered all of the data into a mailing list program, and we mailed a ton of postcards announcing the birth of the book. Hands down, At All Costs was my bestselling book.
Running into this longtime buddy was my wake-up call to how thoroughly my publicity efforts have deteriorated. When I really looked, it’s obvious where I dropped the ball.
In retrospect, I made a couple of critical errors. First, it was a mistake to use a mailing list program instead of a simple Excel spreadsheet. After a series of computer upgrades, the mailing list became unreadable. We failed to collect email addresses at all, but given that it was 1998 and email was not the ubiquitous presence that it is today, I cut myself a break there. Finally, we had no way to keep track of people as they moved. If you don’t actively farm your mailing list, it becomes useless with astonishing speed.
My biggest mistake along these lines came in 2004 with the publication of Six Minutes to Freedom, my nonfiction collaboration on the rescue of Kurt Muse from a Panamanian prison. I talked myself into ceding the lion’s share of promotion to Kurt himself, figuring that people would rather hear from the coauthor who actually lived the story than the guy who merely put it in writing. I neglected to consider that my fans are my fans, not Kurt’s.
As a practical matter, then, until No Mercy was released last summer, fans of my work thought I’d disappeared for six years. And publishing years are like dog years. Never again.
A week ago, I sent my first email newsletter. Even though I’ve lost most of my old snail mail list, I’ve captured lots and lots of email addresses over the years, and I’m letting everybody know what’s going on in my writing life. I haven’t yet decided how often the newsletter will come out, but I’m pledging two things: 1) that I won’t release one unless I have something to say; and 2) it will never be longer than a single page.
I’ve been resistant to such emails in the past primarily because of the hassle of keeping the mailing list current. Who needs the agony of removing people who unsubscribe, or culling the addresses that are no longer valid? Even adding individual subscribers is ultimately time consuming.
Well, wouldn’t you know? There are websites that do all of that for you. I found one that is extraordinarily affordable. Of the 1,200 addresses in my initial email list, 200 turned out to be bad, and the program eliminated them. Twenty or so have asked to be removed from the list, and the program handled that, too. Thirty-five people have clicked the link to subscribe, which means that they’ve either visited my website or clicked the newsletter link to see a sample and subscribe.
Best of all, I’ve received emails from several dozen people who were unaware that I was still writing books. Of course, that didn’t touch the number of people who wrote to tell me about the typo in the first news item. Hey, at least they’re reading.
I’m sure there are a number of sites that do this sort of thing, but I’ll be happy to share this particular site with anyone who drops me an email.
So what about you? How do you keep in touch with your long-time fans? Do you like author newsletters, or are they annoying pains in the hindquarters? (I can go either way on that one.) Let us hear from you.
I subscribe to several authors’ newsletters via email. I don;t always read them all the way through, but it’s nice to know a book is coming out so I can file the title away in the back of my mind, and for other things, like when a paperback is due to release, or a movie or TV deal, etc.
Nice post, John. Definitely a reminder that you can’t take promotion for granted. One thing I’ve noticed over the past year or so is the drastic increase in bad email address, the bulk coming from corporate ones rather than private. The economy has taken its toll on jobs, and a lot of people who used to use their company or job email as their primary communication are out of work and out of an email address. And even if they now have a Yahoo or Google account, they don’t have the time to try and remember the 100s of places where they used to subscribe to stuff using their old address.
I don’t mind getting newsletters from other authors. It lets me know that they are alive and well. When the newsletters stop, that would be a bad sign. But there’s no doubt that we all have bulging inboxes. I think your promise is the one everyone should adapt–if you don’t have anything to say, don’t.
I’ve never received a newsletter or anything else from Gilstrap about new books. No emails, flowers, candy…
Always looking for ways to improve. Thanks for this information, John.
Great question. How do we continue to market ourselves over and over again to the same audience as if we were new while at the same time getting the word out to a new audience?
I do think that keeping the buzz going longterm is extremely important. If your name stays in front of people’s eyes and keeps hitting their ears they will be aware of your existence. But to do that without becoming obnoxious is the trick.
Recently I visited a military surplus store and found an old cold war television hijaking system. You know, it is the old Dr. Evil takes over all the television stations in the world to announce he is going to use a giant laser hidden in a volcano to blow up all of the national monuments in the world if he is not paid an exorbitant amount of money by a certain time. That’s my marketting strategy….blackmail.
Now…I will use my skyscraper sized Super-Soaker to turn the Moon bright paisley unless you buy my stuff and send me ONE MMMILLION DOLLARS!
whisper, whisper
No make that ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!!!
whisper, whisper
…uh…could you make that Euros…maybe evenly split … between Pounds, Euros and Dollars … and a few Yen.
I send out email newsletters but only when I have something new to say – and people’s email addresses change over time so it is hard to keep up to date. I like using vertical response as it keeps track of that kind of stuff and can report on what kind of bounce rate/open rate you get for the newsletter.
I’ve sent out one newsletter with each release of a book (and you’ve reminded me to send out one for Fresh Kills, which I will now do). One thing I think is important is for newsletters to contain something other than BSP content: “Hey, buy my new book.” I think it’s good when there’s something added to the letter that ties in to the plot, etc. It’s difficult for me to think up those things to include, which is one reason why I don’t send many out. I’ve seen cozy authors include things like recipes, puzzles, etc. It seems harder to do that with hard boiled mysteries or thrillers.
Kathryn – I include a bit of historical background but I agree you need more than just BSP…and it’s tough to come up with new content!
I agree, John, that sort of collection is incredibly useful-I was recently pleasantly surprised to discover that some of the extra entries for my MacBook contest came from people who joined my newsletter mailing list back in 2007 when I started it. So they’re still getting it and reading it.
I also only send it out 4-5 times/year max.
My personal pet peeve is when people add me to their newsletter mailing lists when I haven’t asked to be added…
Just subscribed! I like newsletters. They are a nice break from the drudgery of the day. Our on-line company has a mailing list that grw to over 600 names just by having a sign-in tab on our webpage. Can’t wait for the new book!