How to Create a Content Strategy for Your Author Newsletter

The surest way to let any writing project sputter out is to work on it only when inspiration strikes. That might be doubly true for a newsletter, which is even easier to let drop from your list than the novel you’ve been dreaming up for years or the memoir whose story you feel compelled to share.

So if you’re persuaded that you should start an author newsletter, and you’ve developed a clear picture of the readers you’re aiming to reach, how do you ensure that you actually send that newsletter with the kind of regularity you need to build an audience?

Today’s piece will provide you with several strategies for writing your newsletter regularly enough to build an engaged readership—but without overtaking your writing practice or burning you out. I’ll share ideas for how to build your content calendar, develop templates for each type of post you’ll write, and determine a manageable frequency for posting. 

These strategies helped me continue to write my own newsletter, Write More, Be Less Careful, while drafting my forthcoming book, The Good Mother Myth, teaching, parenting, and attempting to keep the rest of my life from descending into total chaos. I think you’ll find tips that will make writing a newsletter a sustainable part of your busy life, too.

Create a Content Calendar

“Content calendar” can sound like it has to be fancy or complicated, but really it’s just a plan for what kinds of posts you’re going to send and when. In a previous piece on identifying the ideal reader for your newsletter, we talked about different kinds of content you might include in a newsletter. 

I’d suggest selecting one of two basic approaches: Either sending a less-frequent (monthly or quarterly) newsletter with a couple different components that are standard in each newsletter (say, an opening essay or anecdote, a reading recommendation or two, then any writing and event dates you might want to share) or, if you’re planning to post more regularly, developing a plan for different kinds of content that you can rotate.

If you’re sending monthly or quarterly, then all you need to do is pick a day of the month, put it on your calendar, and boom, you’ve got a content calendar. If you’re going to send different kinds of content—say, interviews with other writers, reading recommendations, and some behind the scenes content from the book you’re working on, you can schedule each one of those separately, so that, for example, an interview goes out the first Tuesday of each month, a reading recommendation on the second Sunday, and a book update on the third Thursday. 

For my newsletter, I have sections set up for each kind of content I send, and I have recurring events set up on my Google calendar to remind me when each piece should go out. I’ve really liked having sections in my newsletter because it provides readers with variety—posts in the sparks section, for example, tend to be brief and provide a quick writing tip or prompt, while the tending essays are longer, focused on craft elements or process issues in more depth—and because having a container helps me generate and shape ideas.

Create Post Templates

Once you’ve determined the categories of content you’re going to send, I think it’s helpful to create some loose templates for each kind of post so that you’ve determined the structure in advance. Mine tend to be really basic—when I have a guest essay or interview in the tending section of my newsletter, for example, I write a one or two paragraph introduction to the person and their work, share their essay or interview response, share a writing prompt they’ve written, add their bio, and I’m done. 

There’s nothing fancy about that as a structure, but having that structure determined in advance helps me work more efficiently. That way, all my creative energy is going into what I actually want to say, rather than how I’m going to organize it. You could also think of this as developing writer’s guidelines for yourself.

The big underlying idea here is that it’s helpful to automate the parts of newsletter writing that aren’t creative, so that you can save your creative energy for the actual content.

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Determine a Regular but Manageable Posting Frequency

Many of the big newsletters on Substack, where I host my newsletter, Write More, Be Less Careful, post multiple times a week—but those are writers whose newsletter is their full-time job, or close to it, and the rest of us don’t need to post nearly as often. Many writers with day jobs, family responsibilities, and a writing practice of their own seem to aim for every two weeks, but I think a monthly or even seasonal posting schedule could work well. 

I’d suggest identifying a posting schedule where you feel like you’ve got some consistency and some momentum around your newsletter—but you’ve still got time and space for your other writing projects. (And if you’re an especially ambitious type, as so many of us writers are, maybe start by taking whatever your initial goal is and doing half of that, just to give yourself some breathing room. You can always adjust your pace back up if you feel inspired.)

One more note: I think, especially as you’re getting started, that it’s helpful to keep an eye on how long each newsletter takes you to write, so that you have a solid sense of how long you’re devoting to your newsletter compared to your other writing projects. 

Even with all the templates I’ve developed, I’d estimate it still takes me 2-3 hours for each good creatures interview I share, and probably 3 hours or sometimes longer for tending essays and intentions posts. I find doing that work meaningful, particularly because of the feedback I’ve gotten from readers and the relationships I’ve built with writers and artists whose work I’ve shared—but that’s time I’m not spending on other essays or my next book project, so I try to be mindful of how much I’m taking on for the newsletter.

Remember, the goal with your author newsletter is to build community and grow your readership—but you don’t want to do that at the expense of the projects that brought you to your writing life in the first place.