One of the smartest marketing moves you as an author can make is to collect emails of those who show interest in your book.

What will you do with this emails? You’ll send your most interested and dedicated readers information about your book release – announcing that it’s imminent, when the book is released, any awards you receive for it, and climbs up the bestsellers chart it makes. This then leads to many of them to purchase the book.

Creating and growing an email list can be done in a number of ways:
• Invite people to subscribe to your blog. By subscribing, they must give you an email to send what they’ll receive.
• Offer free bonus material (such as “10 tips to…” or an unpublished short story) in your ebooks and on your website. To get the bonus material, however, they will need to provide their email.
• Hold a contest in which to enter people must provide their email.

This is called “permission marketing.” The person giving you the email is telling you that emailing her about your book is okay.

Never buy an email list. The people on those lists have no idea who you are, and the vast majority of them probably have no interest in your book. Indeed, some shady vendors who sell such lists even create hundreds of fake email addresses, so you’re basically sending your email to no one.

To look professional when sending emails, try an auto responder service, such as Mailchimp or AWeber. Usually there is a cost for such services, especially the more people you have on your email list. Always make sure the service gives anyone receiving your email an option to easily unsubscribe; this only makes you look reputable.

Whatever you do, though, don’t spam people with emails about your books. In addition, never send them unrelated offers. Either will cause them to quickly unsubscribe and even vow to never buy any of your books again!

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 300 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.