This Just In

I'm curious if any author has a newsletter that works for them. I've come across a few authors online who claim theirs does, but they offer no hard data. It's no secret that anyone can claim something, whether to boost their own ego or to mislead people, so I am dubious.

I am a pretty creative person and yet I've not been able to devise a winning newsletter formula. Before starting my newsletter I failed to do the most important research. I did search for the best (free) hosting sites and I looked for tips regarding content. What I didn't do was investigate success rates. However, I doubt that would have dissuaded me. Everyone says an author must have a newsletter, so I did as I was told. 

A rudimentary Google search tells me that the average open rate is 20%, 2% is the average click rate, and anything below a .5% unsubscribe rate is good. 

My latest stats:

Open rate 26%

Click rate .55%

Unsubscribe = 1

(The click rate of .55% was the one person clicking the unsubscribe link.)

This whole enterprise is just silly! No one clicked on the link for my new book, no one clicked to answer the quiz. Thank goodness, I guess, for the unsubscribe link or I would have no clicks at all. And this month's unsubscriber was one of the new people who claimed to like my genre.  

It's so weird that 45 people opened my newsletter, yet none of them showed any interest in my content. I wonder what they thought would greet them upon opening ~ a chance to win an all-expense paid French vacation? Maybe there were simply 45 extremely bored people sitting around with nothing to do.

And speaking of the quiz and giveaways in general, I must be the rare person who likes getting free stuff. Even if it's a book I'm not particularly interested in, I'll enter to win it anyway. A click doesn't even take one tenth of a second out of my day. 

I haven't fully decided yet, but I think I'm pretty much done. I haven't wanted to be negative about a free service, but MailerLite's templates (yes, even the one blank template a free user is granted) are hard to work with. It's impossible to separate different sections attractively, and some lines of text can't be centered, so the user has to guess the number of spaces to tap in order to center the second line correctly. I sent three test emails to myself yesterday before I got the spacing right. And now they've apparently stopped sending me emails regarding unsubscribes. I realize that free users are more of a burden to them than a selling point, but then, don't offer a free service!

The simple truth is, I don't have a thing to say in a newsletter, but for four months I've forced myself to say something. And it makes me feel stupid.

Maybe it's time for me to revise the self-publishing tips on my author website and tell it like it really is. 

 

P.S. All things said, my newsletter this month looked pretty damn good.