My email newsletter…
Maybe I’m old-fashioned. Some pundits are now saying that email and email newsletters are dinosaurs due for extinction. I disagree with them. I subscribe to many email newsletters—mostly ones for regular news, science news, causes (environment and wildlife preservation are big ones), new books, and news about other authors and their books. I read them at my leisure, often at night on my Kindle. While email newsletters might be going out of style a bit, I still like them—let’s face it: tweets can’t be too newsy because they’re too short.
I didn’t have an email newsletter for a long time, but I started meeting many readers who (1) don’t read blogs or use other social media, and (2) want to follow what’s happening in reading, writing, and publishing from my viewpoint. #1 is key: they wouldn’t see my blog newsletter (it’s been a feature on this blog from the very beginning). #2 is important because many readers are older and read a lot, but they don’t want any encumbrances beyond email. So I decided to have both types of newsletters.
My email newsletter subscribers have two basic advantages. While there is always some overlap between the two versions, email subscribers get the information first, often a week ahead of time or more.
Email newsletter subscribers also and exclusively receive news about sales of my books. In every issue, I offer at least one of my ebooks for a discounted sale price on Smashwords. That presumes they read ebooks, of course. (There are various reasons why I can’t offer print books at discounted prices.)
Maybe special sales aren’t much of a bonus because all my ebooks are reasonably priced compared to most Big Five ebooks, even the ebooks traditionally published by small presses (I can’t offer sales on those, by the way—those are up to the publishers). Still $0.99 for a $3.99 ebook is a 75% discount—a reader would be getting a full novel for the price of a McDonald’s $1 meal…and the novel would be a healthier meal!
Now you might ask, “Why not offer ebooks in the newsletter for free?” First, I give other fiction away for free—you can download it from this website (see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page). Second, there’s nothing stopping email newsletter subscribers from sharing the sales info with family and friends—in fact, I encourage it! (Of course, I’d rather have them as subscribers.) And third, I don’t give novels away. If I run the novel-writing marathon to create a novel, I should be rewarded something for my efforts.
Some readers might think I only put my old backlist books on sale. Info alert: I don’t have any old books! None of the books in my backlist are old—my first novel Full Medical (2006, now with second ebook edition) is as current today as the day I wrote it, maybe even more so. My earlier backlist books are “evergreen books” in that sense (see my recent post on this subject).
There are usually two or three books on sale at one time, and they’re often related in some way. For example, for the month of June, I offered the three Chen and Castilblanco books that go international, i.e. they start in NYC with a homicide but end up outside the U.S. Chen and Castilblanco have cases like that, and they often involve other police forces, international ones, beside the NYPD.
Bottom line: If you want to receive my email newsletter, full of other news and notices along with that sales info, you can subscribe by emailing me: steve@stevenmmoore.com. I never sign anyone up without a request to do so. I also never will divulge your email address to a third party. And you can unsubscribe anytime you like. What’s to lose?
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Comments are always welcome.
Rogue Planet. Sci-fi books are generally “evergreen” books (all the books in the “Detectives Chen & Castilblanco” series are also evergreen), at least the ones involving the future of human beings in our galaxy—they never get old. Rogue Planet is one of them. If you read A.B. Carolan’s Mind Games, you’ve learned how difficult it is for ITUIP (“Interstellar Trade Union of Independent Planets”) to control the colonization of new worlds and bring them into the trade union. Eden is such a world, forced back into virtual savagery after one tribe takes over and establishes a brutal theocracy. It’s up to the son of the deposed king to do something about that. Hard sci-fi with Game-of-Thrones fantasy elements, action, suspense, and intrigue await this novel’s reader. Available on Amazon in both ebook and print format, and in ebook format on Smashwords and all its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc.).
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
