by Dr. Diana Stout

Do you struggle with creating and maintaining a newsletter?

I have, and from the first time I heard that authors needed to have a newsletter, I've struggled to find my newsletter niche, where writing one isn't a chore.

Because the experts insisted, I kept trying to write and mail a newsletter out regularly but found myself giving up after a few months every time.

I became convinced that my friends, fans, and followers' needs were being met through my blog posts and other postings in social media.

And then, I was hacked.

To make a long story short, on May 23 of this year, my Facebook account (Diana Stout) was hacked. Not cloned (copied) where one still had access to their account and can warn friends to ignore any friend requests.

No, I was hacked, which meant I had lost all control and access to my account, pages, private groups, and even groups I participated in.

I had ceased to exist. Worse, I had no way to contact my followers. (The hacker's name still shows up in my place on those pages and groups.)

The experts were right: I needed a newsletter.

I started over. I deleted those subscribers who had never opened any of my newsletters. At least, I was starting with 80 subscribers rather than 0.

To improve my newsletter and make it work for both me and my readers, I did some research.

What sage advice offered.

• That a newsletter should be sent out regularly but irregular works, too. The point is to provide value to your subscribers.
• That you want a strong following for agents and publishers if publishing traditionally.
• That you want a catchy subject heading that creates curiosity so that they want to open/read the newsletter.
• That you want a newsletter with 80% content and only 20% promo.
• That you want it to be eye-catching and relatively short. Readers scan these days, giving newsletters mere seconds, not minutes of their time.
• That you want to provide links for engagement.
• That you want to provide a call-to-action element for further engagement.

The struggles of creating a newsletter.

To create a better newsletter, I needed to consider how and where I've struggled in the past.

• With the masthead/header. I kept changing it. Why?
• With my content niche. Other than any promotions, I felt like I was all over the place.
• In finding content that didn't repeat my blogs.
• In not wanting to repeat what others were doing in their newsletters.
• In not sending it out regularly.
• Too often, I had more promo than I did content, with more of my links promo-related, too.

Using the five Ws of journalism.

The best way to gather information for any project, is to use the five Ws of journalism: the who, what, where, when, and why.

• WHO – Determine your audience. Be specific. It's better to have a smaller, narrower audience than a larger general audience.
• WHAT – Determine the newsletter's content so it can be delivered consistently in every newsletter.
• WHERE – Determine which newsletter platform to use.
• WHEN – Determine how often the newsletter will be sent out.
• WHY – Determine the newsletter's over-all purpose.

Additionally, I thought about the newsletters I prefer to receive and have remained subscribed.

• Monthly newsletters that provide lots of links to classes, workshops, conferences, contests, and helpful how-to articles.
• Irregular content newsletters that provide important information or insight due to an event that has altered their writing ability, and those that are short announcement newsletters only. Often, these are writers I know personally.
• Newsletters from favorite authors, sent out once or twice a year announcing a new release. Of course, they can afford not to have regular mailings because they're best-selling authors and have been for years. For the rest of us, we're still growing our newsletters.

Consider what your preferences are. Why do you like them?

Find what works for you.

As a professor of writing classes and as a writing coach, my advice has always been: use and do what works for you.

In following my own advice, I discovered I needed to brand my newsletter to my website. I needed to use a photo, too. I decided I was okay with an irregular announcement newsletter, since I'm publishing several times a year now and because I have promised every subscriber that their mailbox will love me due to my infrequent emails. But now, after this new look at newsletters, I want to add a couple more elements to add interest and helpful information for both writers and readers.

Your result may be totally different. Again, find what works for you!

Tips to growing your newsletter subscriber list.

• Know that it will take time to grow your list.
• Know that everyone starts at the beginning with zero subscribers. Everyone.
• Know that you can test your newsletter by using the A/B option in your newsletter platform. It's a great way to test subject lines and to compare open and click rates.
• Know that you can build a list more quickly by providing freebies and giveaways. Also know that in doing so, you'll see more unsubscribes, but they aren't personal. It just means your newsletter wasn't a good fit for them. After all, don't we provide our email addresses for freebies to which we then unsubscribe because their newsletter isn't a good fit for us?
• Know that you can make changes to create your best newsletter style, to obtain better open and click rates.
• Promote your newsletter everywhere by providing links on your website, social media, and email signature.

The best thing about having a mailing list is that you own and control it. I have yet to hear of any newsletter being hacked.

How about you? What's in your favorite newsletters, the ones you open consistently? Do you struggle with creating regular newsletters? Have you started one yet?

About Diana

Dr. Diana Stout is an award-winning writer in multiple genres who enjoys helping other writers. The author of Finding Your Fire & Keeping It Hot, and the Laurel Ridge romance series, she's teaching a Master Class, Punctuation and Grammar Made Easy, in January 2024, with limited seating. To receive immediate news of the class and of new releases, be sure to subscribe to her From the Desk of Diana Stout MFA PhD newsletter.

Learn more about Dr. Stout at her website, Sharpened Pencils Productions. Follow her new Facebook account here: DrDiana Stout. (She's the only Dr Diana in Facebook.)

Image Credits:

Top image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Second image by Kate Stejskal from Pixabay

by Kathleen Baldwin

I intended to write an entirely different article for you… but I needed to get my A+ Amazon content set up for my newest release. The trouble is I’ve set up A+ content before and wasn’t thrilled with the results. So, I decided to figure out what kind of A+ content actually sells books—not just what looks pretty or graphically pleasing. In short, I wanted to nail down what works.

I hunted the net and came up with bupkis. Oh, the sizes are all out there, suggestions of what to put in each size box, but no one is studying what works. So, that is why you are reading this article today. If you’re just looking for the sizes. Here are the basics sizes: Logo Image: 600 x 180, image Header with Text: 970 x 600 (recommended) or 1464 x 600, standard 3 Images with Text: 300 x 300

You can find more about sizes on Amazon. There are also tables and other goodies might want to investigate. And Amazon will tell you the rules.

Yes, there are rules:

• Don’t use any pricing language in your content. No words like “affordable” or “discounted.”
• Don’t use customer reviews.
• You are allowed four (4 only) endorsement quotes from well-known publications or public figures. (Although you’ll see that rule broken by publishers in an example we will discuss today)
• Do not use time sensitive info. No wording like “latest,” “new,” or messages related to holidays.

Those are the technical basics. I’m here to discuss what types of A+ content sells books. To do that, I analyzed A+ content from Amazon’s bestseller charts. These are well-written compelling reads. REMEMBER: Craft comes first—promotion comes second. There’s no sense promoting a book that is going to disappoint your readers.

Example One: Amazon's #1 Bestseller

Let’s start by taking a look at #1 bestseller, The Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros.

You can see by her ratings this is a well-written, well book. So why did her publisher even need to put up A+ content? To increase their already wonderful sales. That’s why. And that is also the reason why you and I should put some up.

But what content is best for your book?

That depends on YOUR reader. We will discuss that as we go along.

Take a look at the content her publisher, Entangled, chose to put on the book page.

NOTICE:

They mimicked the colors from the cover. Most publishers use colors or images from the book. Entangled also cleverly chose quotes that highlight the story content.

Entangled chose to use them in reverse. They made the black dominant and employed accents of gold foil. The heavy black and luminous gold elicits a strong tense battle-like feeling, and the dragons scream fantasy.

The review quotes are short, convincing, and descriptive of the story.

If you are a fantasy reader in love with epic battles and dragons, do you think this graphic might entice you to pick up this book?

Yes!

Yes, it would. And it has. 

Let’s analyze a book from an entirely different genre…

Look at Emily Henry’s Happy Place, a fun beach-read romance that hit the charts at a stellar #5. It’s no surprise that the publisher used the peppy pink from the cover for their A+ content.

But they did a few things differently. The broad pink banner box is a story log line, a very inviting one. Anyone who reads that line will instantly know they’re in for a relaxing fun romance. The image is great, too. The smaller boxes are in bright happy colors and include review quotes an invitation to spend the summer with Emily Henry.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  

The smaller square boxes will appear bigger when viewed on a phone. Notice how the big beautiful pink banner shrinks down and look less important on the phone. Still cute and fun, but it is a drastically different effect than when viewed on the phone as opposed to a desktop monitor.

Take that into consideration when you plan your content. Ahem—this is where knowing YOUR readers comes in handy. Knowing your readers makes a huge difference when marketing and building your fan base. Yes, I know, I rant about this all the time, so I will simply reiterate your readers are your most important allies in this business—study them. It pays off. Need help figuring out who your readers are and what they like? Check out my article on it here at WITS: Who Are YOUR Readers and Why Does It Matter?

For example, according to my webmaster, 50% of my website visitors view my website via their phone. That is a strong indication that they also check out Amazon pages on their phones, right?

Yeah. So…?

So… I ought to be cognizant of that when planning my A+ material.

Another example

Here’s an example of how a different publisher handles the A+ sizing conversion issue. In the same genre as the previous romance. At the writing of this article Lessons in Chemistry had soared to the tip-top peak of Amazon charts in the highly coveted #1 position.

Bonnie Garmus’s publisher, Random House, chose to make sure all those cute A+ square boxes were readable at the same size even on a teeny-tiny iPhone like mine. Here it is on a desktop view and the phone view…

My only objection to this is that scrolling through six big quote boxes on a phone might begin to feel tedious to some readers. What do you think about that?

Here’s another solution…

Atria, the publisher of This Tender Land considered Krueger’s phone viewers and chose to stay with the square boxes. However, they only set up four boxes for the reader to scroll through. IMO a good choice.

And I also like that they included a visual background and review quotes that give me a strong sense of the story. This four-box layout is more appealing to me, but I can’t argue with the fact that Lessons in Chemistry is selling VERY well despite their six box review quote scroll, although to be fair Oprah touted her book. The question is what A+ content sold these other author’s books?  AND is that what will sell your readers on your book?

Weigh in. What do you think?

Here’s another concept.

Granted Kingsolver won a Pulitzer for this novel and Oprah made this one a Book Club selection. So yes, that ensures a TON of sales. Let’s see what we can learn from her publisher’s A+ content decisions…

Interestingly, Kingsolver’s publisher, Harper, went with four equal size content Standard Image & Dark Text Overlay 900x300 banners. The results are fairly pleasing even on the phone. Check it out. When it is all equal sized banners it doesn’t feel as disproportionate the way a banner blended with squares does.

Visually, whether using squares or banners, identical sizing implies that each of the panels are equally important.

I like this layout, but IMO they tried to fit too much on the middle two panels. I like seeing the author’s photo, but the print is so small it’s nearly impossible to read on the phone. Granted my iPhone is fairly small, and I’m not a big-time publisher like Harper. They certainly know their stuff. Even so, no matter which layout you choose, I strongly recommend using a print size that people can easily read even on their phone.

Even if most of your readers are PC people and you choose a desktop friendly layout, don’t risk losing the few potential readers who might be on their phones. Select a font they can easily read even when on a small cell phone.

One last example...

and then I’m going to leave you alone to make your own decisions.

Take a look at Scott Pratt’s final book in a bestselling series. Pratt was a hybrid author like me, and he has an impressive 5 million copies sold, and his legal thriller, Last Resort, a Joe Dillard series novel written by Scott Pratt and J.D. Pratt, is independently published and doing extremely well. At the time of my writing this article it ranked #1 in Legal Thrillers. He used the entire A+ arsenal very effectively.

This layout includes almost everything—an intriguing log line in the second banner, and images that give you a feel for the content. That’s very important.  Note the review quotes in the squares, and he wisely included a series testimonial on the third banner, and a view of the entire series in the last banner. I love that idea.

If you are like me and trying to decide what A+ content works best for your book and your readers, I encourage you to look at this book page and other book pages on both your phone and big screen. See what you think of how each of the content structures scrolls.

Observe your emotional responses to the content. Look for content that excites you within your genre.

What did I end up doing?

Um… Well, I waffled between four squares and four wide banner-width frames. To see what I chose, check out my latest book. Sanctuary for Seers. It did garner a #1 new Release ribbon in its category, but I’m not convinced the A+ material is speaking persuasively enough to prospective readers as sales dropped off after the first 30 days. So, what do you think about all this?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on all this. WITS authors are smart and savvy. What are YOU doing with your A+ content?

About Kathleen

Kathleen Baldwin is a Wall Street Journal, 1# Barnes & Noble, and Amazon bestselling author. She writes stories woven with rich colors and sparkling threads of love, humor, and light. Her books have delighted readers around the globe, with more than 650,000 copies sold worldwide—a Japanese publisher even licensed one of her books to make into a manga, and her Stranje House series is under option for film.
Website: https://kathleenbaldwin.com/

The Art of Clear Conversations

By Sandy Vaile

Dialogue in fiction stories is a reliable way of bringing characters to life and immersing readers in their lives, but for it to be effective, it needs to be understood. As Michel de Montaigne said in his essay, On the Art of Conversation, “The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind … is conversation.” It stimulates thinking, engages facial expressions and has the magic to convey complex ideas to others. In fact, we were communicating verbally long before we decided to write down ideas.

Engaging conversations that add value to narration, need to:

• Make it clear who is speaking to whom;
• Use succinct and authentic language;
• Compliment the surrounding narrative; and
• Be correctly formatted and punctuated.

Dialogue definition - For the purposes of fiction, it is any words that are spoken aloud by a character, which support what is going on in the plot.

It doesn’t include private thoughts, dreams or narration.

Make it Clear Who is Speaking

It’s important that readers can easily determine who is speaking, so they can follow the conversation and don’t get the wrong impression of what’s going on in the story. Ambiguity can lead to misinterpretation, but this can be prevented by:

• Separating the speech and actions of each character into different paragraphs.
• Not going too long without a dialogue tag to establish who is speaking.

Clear paragraph deliniation

The dialogue (and attached narration) for one character must be put into a separate paragraph.

Clear dialogue tags

Dialogue tag definition – The words that frame dialogue (just before, in the middle of or after it), which identify the speaker and provide context for what’s being said.

Here are some tips for using dialogue tags effectively:

• Don’t wait too long to identify the speaker. If the dialogue is long and it’s not immediately clear who is speaking, then interrupt it early on to slip in their name or another way of identifying them.
• If it’s clear who’s speaking, you don’t need to have a tag on every line. This is especially true when there are only two people having a conversation and it’s easy to keep track of for a few lines.
• Often the simplest tag, like he/she said, is best because a reader’s mind will naturally skip over it. Going overboard with adverbs and unnecessary actions can be distracting. You can always enhance it with cues to how they feel about the conversation. Often adverbs can be avoided with a little effort to find a stronger verb. For example:

“How dare you,” Jane said indignantly. [‘Indignantly’ is the adverb, which is telling readers how this character feels.]

“How dare you!” Jane snapped, a tide of angry red rising up her neck and cheeks. [‘Snapped’ is a stronger verb that tells readers how Jane spoke, and then I’ve added a description of what her physical reaction looks like to the Point of View character.

• Vary the type of dialogue tag you use (e.g. he said, actions and narration) so they don’t become repetative.

You can also use thoughts, actions, body language, facial expressions and thoughts by the Point of View character in the surrounding narration, to not only make it clear who is speaking, but how they feel about it and what else they’re doing. For example:

“Um, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His face flushed and gaze darted towards the exit.

“Like hell,” Jane said, stalking towards him with clenched fists.

• Minimise narrative and tags before dialogue because it detracts from the key information and speed readers may miss it.

How to handle multiple speakers

Of course, things become more complicated when there are three or more characters participating in a conversation. When there’s a crowd:

• You will need more dialogue tags to help readers identify who is speaking, but mix up the type of tag, so you’re not saying he said/she said all the time. For instance, also use actions, body language and facial expressions to show how they are reacting to what’s being said.
• Consider whether all of those characters really need to be involved. Can fewer characters present the same information? Does each one have somethig valuable to contribute or are they just there filling the room?
• You can sometimes move the Point of View character’s attention to the speaker physically or through their thoughts.

Correctly Format and Punctuate Dialogue

Joining dialogue tags

Dialogue should only be joined to a tag with a comma if the tag is something that can actually be said, e.g. he said, she whispered, he yelled, she mumbled.

“Hey, Dan, wait up a minute,” Jenny called as she jogged across the oval. [‘Called’ is something spoken.]

If the tag can’t be said, then you must use a full stop to separate them, e.g. he grunted, she waved, he chewed on his lip, she glanced around the room.

“Gosh, I didn’t expect to see you here.” Dan stopped walking and smiled. [‘Stopping’, ‘walking’ and ‘smiling’ aren’t something that can be spoken.]

Punctuation

The punctuation related to dialogue goes inside the quotation marks, except when em dashes are used like brackets for non-spoken narrative that breaks dialogue (see the example below), or the tag is situated before the dialogue.

Tag before – Sally called across the oval, “Hang on a minute, Dan.”

Tag after – “Hang on a minute, Dan,” Sally called across the oval.

Tag in the middle – “Hang on a minute, Dan,” Sally called across the oval. “I need to talk to you.”

Tag in the middle – “Hang on a minute,” Sally called across the oval, “I need to explain.”

Capitalisation

When dialogue commences at the beginning of a sentence, captialise it, even if there was a tag before it.

“A snake just slithered behind the shed.”

Sally said, “A snake just slithered behind the shed.”

Tags that are joined to dialogue with a comma because they can be spoken, are not capitalised unless they are a proper noun; even if the dialogue ends with an exclamatioin or question mark.

“A snake just slithered behind the shed,” said Sally.

“A snake just slithered behind the shed,” Sally said.

“A snake just slithered behind the shed. What do you think we should do?” said Sally.

Quotes within quotes

When quoting someone within dialogue, use a different style of quotation mark, e.g. if you’re using double quote marks, then change to single, or if you’re using single quote marks, change to double.

“Look, I specifically heard Mum say, ‘Don’t go to that party,’ and you still went.”

‘Look, I specifically heard Mum say, “Don’t go to that party,” and you still went.’

When interrupting the flow of dialogue:

• Refer back to the above rule about whether it can be spoken and therefore be joined by a comma. If not, separate it using a full stop or em dash. For example:

“I just can’t believe I forgot to bring it,” Sally said. “I even wrote a note to remind me.”

“I just can’t believe I forgot to bring it,” Sally said, “after writing a note and everything.”

“I just can’t believe I fogot to bring it,” —Sally was flustered as she searched her handbag for the offending envelope— “after writing a note and everything.

• An ellipsis ( … ) signifies that words are missing, i.e. when speech trails off, and goes inside the quotation marks.
• An em dash ( — ) signifies speech is cut off, i.e. when someone interrupts it, and goes inside the quotation marks.
• A hyphen signifies stilted speech, like stuttering, e.g. “I h-h-haven’t seen it, honest.”

When you have a long passage of dialogue:

• There might occasionally be instances where you have a very long amount of dialogue from one character, and this can look cramped on the page. You can break it into paragraphs without breaking the dialogue.

“[Paragraph of dialogue that will continue in the next paragraph has no closing quotaion marks.]

“[Each subsequent paragraph of dialogue has opening quotation marks.]

“[The final paragraph of dialogue has closing quotation marks.]”

A couple of warnings

• Breaking up dialogue too often or with large sections of narration can cause its message to be disjointed, and will slow the pace.
• Beware of overusing names in the dialogue, because this sounds unrealistic, e.g.:

“Hi Sally, it’s great to see you.”

“You too Jane. How has your week been?”

“Fabulous, Sally.”

• When using dialogue to reveal information, like backstory, make sure it is relevant to what’s going on in the narration and doesn’t sound forced. For example:

“Hi Jane. As you know I’m a horse-riding instructor and got my certificate in 2015. What do you do for a living?” [Awkward. People just don’t talk to one another like that.]

But look at the same information revealed using a more conversational tone:

Jane picked up the photo of a younger Emily atop an impressive black horse. “Wow, I didn’t know you rode.”

“For years.” Emily said. “Actually, I’m a riding instructor. Got my certificate just last year. What do you do for a crust?”

Bonus Tip for Quotation Marks

I recommend authors use double quotation marks (“) no matter where they are planning to submit their work, because it provides flexibility.

It’s easy to use the Find and Replace function to replace all double quotation marks with singles. However, if you have used single quotation marks, the Find feature will pick up all of the apostrophes too, so you’ll have to manually change each one. Tedious!

Your fiction stories will ultimately benefit from succinct, purposeful, authentic and well-formatted dialogue, because those things enable readers to easily understand what’s being said, by whom. They also bring the narrative to life by immersing readers in characters’ lives and moving the plot forwards.

If you are stuck in a rut of writing novels you never finish, never submit or aren’t sure how to fix, then it’s your lucky day. I’m offering WITS readers the opportunity to get professional guidance about the next best steps to move their writing forwards, from an industry professional.

Book a time in Sandy’s diary here.

What dialog punctuation problems have you encountered? How did you solve it?

About Sandy 

Sandy Vaile is a traditionally published author, writing romantic-suspense for Simon & Schuster US, with more than a decade of experience in the industry, who empowers authors to write novels they are proud to share with the world (and which get noticed by agents, publishers and readers), through coaching, courses and developmental editing.

Sandy is also a motorbike-riding daredevil who isn’t content with a story unless there’s a courageous heroine and a dead body. Living in the McLaren Vale wine region means lots of prosseco and cheese platters in her down time.

Connect with Sandy Vaile on her website or social media.

Image Credits:

Top image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Dialog Formatting sheets by Sandy Vaile