Thinking About Your Author Newsletter? Start With the Reader in Mind

Maybe you read my previous piece and have been persuaded that an author newsletter is a great way to connect with readers. Or maybe your agent or editor or publicist are prodding you to be more visible and build a platform to help sell your book. Or maybe you’ve just noticed that lots of writers seem to have a newsletter and you’re starting to wonder if you should have one, too.

Whatever your reasons are for wanting to start a newsletter, this piece will provide you with practical advice for getting started. The good news is you don’t need fancy graphics or an exceptionally clever name or a content calendar that stretches from here to next year. What you do need is clarity about who you’re aiming to reach with your newsletter and what you’re offering them.

Two pitfalls to avoid as you’re starting your newsletter:

Writing mostly for other writers. So many of us spend so long honing our craft and talking to other writers about our work that it can be easy to think that’s who our audience is. But if you imagine yourself writing largely to other writers, you’re missing a huge potential audience for your newsletter and your book. Did you know the world is full of people who aspire to never write a book? And yet those non-writers read books, and that’s who you want to reach in your newsletter.

The Christmas-letter style update. A newsletter that’s pitched as providing “updates” on your writing is probably too vague for many readers to get excited about, and chances are, you’ll quickly tire of writing it. Even the wildly popular romance author Jasmine Guillory includes a recipe in each edition of her newsletter, alongside updates on her many books and her appearances on the Today show! If you think about your newsletter not as a chance to talk about yourself but as an opportunity to build relationships with readers, I think you’ll have an easier time getting readers to sign up, and you’ll have a lot more fun writing it.

But what should that “something” you’re offering be? Figuring out the answer starts by thinking about your target reader. What a newsletter can do really well—better, I’d argue, than social media platforms—is build a relationship with your audience. So before you start writing your newsletter, it makes sense to spend a bit of time thinking about what readers you’re aiming to reach.

Three exercises for thinking about your target reader:

Develop reader personas. Instead of thinking about your reader in general terms of demographics or preferences, create personas with actual names and character traits. This is a marketing exercise, but it’s one I think writers should use more often. Leigh Stein wrote a great post, in her newsletter Attention Economy, about working with Dan Blank to develop reader personas—she named hers Rachel and Lauren—ahead of the launch of her novel Self-Care. So think about the people you’re aiming to reach with your writing. What do they read/watch/listen to? Where do they shop or go out to eat? What issues do they care about? Once you have two or three personas, you’ll have a lot more clarity about how your newsletter can connect with those readers.Write a message to yourself from your target reader. Imagine that you’ve sent the first installment of your brand-new newsletter, and you’ve reached your ideal reader, who emails you back to say how much they loved it. What did they like? What did they learn? How did your writing make them feel? (This exercise is adapted from Nicola Washington, whose newsletter Too Much is a great guide to using Instagram to build an audience for your writing.) Imagining how your writing will connect with a specific reader can be a great guide to getting started.Think about what you love and are excited to talk about, in addition to your writing. Novelist Chloe Benjamin’s seasonal newsletter includes recipes, travel stories, and updates on her knitting; Jamelle Bouie’s newsletter for The New York Times features a round-up of articles he’s read elsewhere, a photograph he took, and a recipe he’s cooked for his family. No matter how devoted you are to your writing, you’re certain to have other hobbies and passions you can share with your target reader.

With a growing catalog of instructional writing videos available instantly, we have writing instruction on everything from improving your craft to getting published and finding an audience. New videos are added every month!

Once you have a clear sense of who you’re trying to reach, it will probably be easier to imagine what you’re actually writing in the newsletter. If you’re writing historical fiction, for example, chances are your reader probably cares about a wide swathe of topics related to that time period, so you could share podcasts, movies, other books, even cool things you’ve discovered related to fashion or culture from the time. If you’re writing nonfiction, you could share snippets from your research, other books you’ve loved, or interviews with other writers or experts. I’d recommend identifying three or four core topics and starting a Google doc or note in your phone where you can collect ideas related to those topics.

Each newsletter, then, might include a little introductory essay, a round-up of reading recommendations or a podcast you loved or a recipe, and then an update on your writing life. It’s not that you shouldn’t include information about your writing—definitely link anything you’ve published, share updates about your progress on your novel, do a cover reveal for your next book—but that shouldn’t be the only thing in your newsletter.

All of this—the focus and format of your newsletter, even the name—can evolve as your newsletter grows. But if you have a target reader in mind, that will make getting started a lot easier. A newsletter subscriber base takes time to grow. And the best way to get that growth going is just to get started.