I know that various RMFW writers have talked about newsletters, but this is my personal, particular (and perhaps peculiar – sorry, I’m having fun with the alliteration!) take on the business and pleasures of newsletters.
I started (after many years, and AGAIN), a monthly newsletter last July, soon after I epublished my first novella (Lost Heart).
Publishing a newsletter is a love/hate relationship:
I hate taking the time from writing.
I love writing something creative for the newsletter instead of struggling with my current manuscript.
I hate formatting the sucker with pictures and text. It takes ALL DAY.
I love finding pictures (mostly my own due to copyright restrictions) for the newsletter . . . and I can use an old graphic I still love from my first website as a header.
And so it goes. Since it’s a monthly newsletter, it usually goes out in the last days of the month, because that’s how I am, I procrastinate.
Though I have two current series going, the reader favorite is my Celta HeartMate series. Unless I have a book out in the Ghost series (contemporary paranormal featuring ghosts of the Old West, mostly Colorado), I spend most of my time on Celta.
I have done: maps of the world, maps of portions of the world, pictures of the Residences (intelligent houses, mostly castles or manor houses), timeline of the books (from the colonists leaving Earth and the generational starships in outer space, to the current year of a short story due at the end of the month – 425 years after colonization).
Most recently I did an article from one of the news sheets, the Druida City Times, announcing the building of a new village, Multiplicity. Included were pictures of a model mansion, the community center, and a home designed by the architect planning the community. I wanted to do this as a teaser for my work in progress and the next full book.
I predated this “article” two and a half months before the day of the erection of the community (magic, folks), which is the next scene I’m writing in the manuscript, so comments about the newsletter HELPED WITH MY OWN MOTIVATION TO WRITE.
That is another way a newsletter can help you:
You know from feedback that you aren’t alone, no matter how dark and cold is the early winter night. People like your work, and will support your writing, again, motivation to write, other writers as well as readers.
You can clarify the story in your own mind if you talk about a work in progress.
You can remind yourself why you like the story, and why you’re writing it.
If you’re promoting a recently released story/novella/book, you can reconnect with that story and get re-energized about it. (I don’t know about you, but the piece I like best is the one I’ve just finished and is being released). You can be excited about sharing another story, a brand new story to your readers.
YOU are in control of the newsletter, what goes in, photos or character interviews or fake news articles or maps. You can be creative with this in a totally different manner than you have when writing.
Be free, and experiment with your newsletter, and have fun. That will show in your newsletter (like it does in your stories).
Have wonderful holidays and I’ll talk to you in the new year.
Merry meet and merry part and merry meet again.
Robin
Another important reason to have a newsletter is that YOU own the mailing list. Facebook and other social media sites can delete your page (it’s happened to people I know), and they control how many people see your posts. Many experts in the field say the 2 most important things you need are a website and a newsletter. Mine goes our quarterly, so it’s not as demanding of my time, and even that is flexible, because I’ll coordinate the timing with something new going on in my writing.