I’ll say it right up front – I don’t watch Fear Factor. It gives me the willies. But that’s not the point of this blog. Well, not entirely.
I’ve been noodling a new book idea for a while now. Noodling is all I’ve done. For a while. And every time I think I’m ready to start, I try to think of a different angle to take the story. Why? Because I’m scared to go there.
I’m not overly superstitious, I don’t have a problem with ladders or black cats or salt spilling. But I don’t do well talking about certain fears. Because if you talk about them, they might actually come true.
So, back to noodling.
The other day I was chatting with Laura Drake and she asked, “What’s the next book about?” I blurted, “Horses,” and hoped she wouldn’t ask more. Yeah, you guys are laughing. We all know Laura won’t leave it at that. Especially not when there’s a horse in the story.
That not-so-innocent word led to a full-blown brainstorming session. At one point we were both sniffling into tissues. By the end of the discussion, Laura left me with one bit of advice (or was it a warning?) – “You have to write THAT.”
I hemmed and hawed. She wasn’t buying. Instead, she pointed me to a blog she’d recently written for It’s Only A Novel about writing through your fear (if you guys haven’t read it, you really should).
I kept going back to a recent Facebook post. An author I follow was poking at her track record for writing things for her main character that then happened to her. See, it can happen.
Yeah, Laura wasn’t buying it either. She volleyed a Donald Maass quote at me: “Take your protagonist’s greatest fear and go there.”
But it’s not my character’s greatest fear. It’s mine.
I got the sharp end of the cowboy boot for that attempt.
So I started cooking the noodles for this story, writing down plot points, cowering from others (shh, don’t tell Laura). Then the other day I was talking to Kathryn Craft about “going there” with the hard topics. Kathryn, in her infinite wisdom, pointed out that it’s our responsibility as writers to create a world where those events happen.
You guys can hear me whimpering, right?
In a previous book, I gave one of my absolute favorite characters Alzheimer’s. It’s a disease that scares the crap out of me. And yes, I cried while writing those scenes.
There’s a sticky note on my desk with a quote that helped keep me moving forward with that book:
No tears in the writer,
No tears in the reader.
No surprise for the writer,
No surprise for the reader. - Robert Frost
I moved that sticky note to where I can see it, took off the writer floaties and jumped into this new book. Scary parts and all. I’m still cowering from one plot line and I honestly don’t know if I can go there. But I’m willing to face at least one of the fears that was keeping this book in noodle phase for so long.
What about you – have you ever shied away from a story line because you were afraid of what it would bring? Or is writing your way of facing your fears?
About Orly
After years of pushing the creativity boundary in corporate communications, Orly decided it was time for a new challenge. Three women’s fiction manuscripts later (plus a handful of picture books), it’s safe to say she’s found her creative outlet.
When she’s not talking to her imaginary friends, she’s reading or at least trying to ignore everyone around her long enough to finish “just one more paragraph.” Orly is the founding president of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association.
When Writers in the Storm asked me if I would write a post about how to design a newsletter as a follow-up to Steena Holmes’s excellent post on The How and Why of Author Newsletters.
My first thought was “sure, but that’s easy!”
Of course it’s easy—for me. I’m a mild-mannered graphic designer by day. But the truth is, it isn’t that easy to people who don’t design graphics for a living. And as it turns out, there’s more to designing an effective newsletter than just some slick graphics.
To help me illustrate what you need to do, I asked my client Lorrie Thomson to help.
Lorrie is a women’s fiction author whose debut novel, Equilibrium, was published in August 2013. I designed Lorrie’s website and I also did her Facebok page and You Tube channel to ensure complete visual consistency. That is, no matter what account of Lorrie’s you visited, you knew it was Lorrie.
That was the goal—and it’s the goal for any business in which you want to promote and protect your brand. (What’s your brand, you might be wondering? Answer: you.)
I didn’t design Lorrie’s newsletter, however, although we always meant to get to that eventually. Meanwhile, Lorrie has sent two newsletters since her publishing debut, and I wanted to see if they’d been successful. The open rate—or the percentage of people who opened the newsletter—wasn’t huge. So that was one of things I wanted to help resolve.
But first, let’s talk about the basics of designing a newsletter.
1. Sign up for a newsletter service.
Steena touched on newsletter services in her post. Most newsletter services are free to use (but usually cost a small amount to send the emails), allow a high degree of customization, and provide excellent statistical information.
Statistics let you know who is opening your newsletter, what they’re clicking through to, and all kinds of other valuable knowledge—so you can better focus your content. We’ll talk more about how to focus content based on statistics below.
Some high-quality and easy to use newsletter services are MailChimp and Vertical Response, both of which I have used and liked. Other services I haven’t used but which come recommended are Constant Contact and iContact.
Note: To find a comparison of top email services, click here.
One of the biggest advantages of a mailing service is that they adhere to anti-spam laws so you don’t have to worry about it. Plus, they automate subscriptions and unsubscriptions, which can be a nightmare to manage on your own.
One last note about newsletters and services. They assume you obtain your list members legitimately—that is, people willingly subscribed. Do not add anyone to your list who hasn’t opted in. It will only annoy them and your newsletter will have had zero effect.
2. Decide how the newsletter should look.
Here’s the part where you might groan and say, “It’s easy for you. I don’t even have Photoshop!” Don’t worry. If you’re not hiring a designer, then a good newsletter service will provide templates. Typically, you can use a wizard, a template, free-form text, or upload a professional design.
Tip: if you hire a designer for your website, ask about newsletter templates, You Tube, Twitter, and Facebook branding to be packaged in as well.
Here are some thoughts from Steena and I on the the subject:
Steena Holmes said in her post: "Newsletters should match your website brand or your book cover." I agree.
Also keep in mind, subscribers may not remember they signed up for your newsletter! Make sure your name is displayed prominently.
Also, include a picture of both you and your book somewhere in the newsletter text to break up the chunks of text and increase readability.
If you’re not sure how to recreate a graphic, the best bet is to go with your name, large and clear.
Lorrie Thomson’s first newsletter used one of the stock generic templates provided by her newsletter service, Vertical Response. It was fine, but it lacked her name and any other identifying information about her:
For her second newsletter, Lorrie went in and pasted a graphic from her website and her picture. Now we have her book and her photo.
Much nicer! But it could be better. I wanted to see her name blazing across the top, bigger. That’s an easy fix. Steena recommended using the same format each time with a newsletter, and you can do this nicely with a template that provides graphics for each section. That’s what I did for Lorrie. Here’s the third version, which I designed for her as part of this post.
Everything is simple here—I made custom graphics for the header and the subheads. The rest I took from Lorrie’s web site. You can do this, too. Read on.
3. Get your hands a tiny bit dirty.
You can customize a newsletter with a little work. I’ve created a blank template for you to use. Click here to download.
Note: There are a few steps to complete once you go to that link so that you can use the template.
Right click on the newsletter template and select Save As.
Save it as an HTML file (choose HTML from your file type drop down box).
Then you can upload the HTML file to your newsletter service.
Addendum: You can also open the file in a text editor like Notepad and select all the code that way (just do a Control- A on a PC to get it all quickly).
You’ll need to play with the HTML a tiny bit. Here’s how to do it:
Create your own image and then upload to your web space. Use the header and subheader images in my template as a size guide—download them and paste your own graphics over them.
Upload the images to your web space. In the HTML, replace the full image URL in my newsletter template with yours. For example, your image URL might be “http://www.yourname.com/images/yourheader.jpg”
With your mailing service, start a new draft email and click on the “code” or “HTML” view.
Copy the entire HTML code for the newsletter template and paste it in your draft email code view.
Make sure to test your links and make sure that all your images are showing up correctly. Common problems include not pasting the image URL properly.
4. Use statistics to focus content.
I sent out a holiday mailing to my business clients last year. After the mailing, I checked my statistics. I could see that my mailing had an 83% open rate (people opened the email and looked at it), which was pretty good.
I included a link in the email where people could download a PDF of gift tags I’d specially made for the holiday mailing. The download had a 20% click through rate—all right, but not great. That got me thinking. If fewer people opened the link, perhaps the link wasn’t well placed or it wasn’t relevant.
This statistic allows me to rethink my links and what I was presenting. You can do the same thing—and you should do it each time you send out a newsletter. Try different things and then pay attention to the statistics. This is called conversion testing and marketers do this all the time.
Lorrie’s first newsletter, the one with the generic fall template, had a 52% open rate and a 0% click rate (meaning no one clicked on any links in her newsletter). That’s not so hot.
Her second newsletter with branding she’d included still had only a 56% open rate, but a 1% click rate. With a mailing list that hovers near 100 people, that wasn’t good enough.
So now that we know our challenge is to get Lorrie to have a higher click rate, we’ll consider different ways to encourage that.
5. Use content strategically.
Scott Stratten, the clear-talking mind behind the UnMarketing brand, says that there are three categories we put email in when it arrives in our inboxes:
Obviously, we want our newsletters to be in the third category. Scott suggests creating a relationship with the reader before the newsletter even arrives—and you should.
Your newsletter signup page should thank the reader for signing up. Be funny. Be unique. Engage with readers, because frankly, newsletters are asking a lot: they ask a reader to spend time in their regular day of email deluge to read yours.
Steena made the point very well that newsletters are about the reader, not the author. What can your newsletter do for the reader?
6. Email subject titles are incredibly important.
CopyHackers did a test for newsletter subject lines and found that the emails with the name of the sender in them had a higher open rate. According to their tests, CopyHackers says including your name in the subject line increased conversion rates.
Lorrie’s first newsletter had the subject “Fun Fall happenings” with the 52% total open rate. Her second newsletter had the subject “E-book sales, blogging, and book clubs" with the 56% total open rate.
Her third newsletter had the subject “Wrap up the holidays with Lorrie Thomson's signed Equilibrium.” It had a 50% open rate one day after sending, which was excellent. Even more promising, it had a 3% click rate. So more people were opening it faster, and they were clicking on links. With a full week of people getting back to work after Thanksgiving, this out-of-the-gate result was already looking good.
As CopyHackers says, be conscious of your subject lines and conduct your own experiments. Play around with it, but think about subject lines as part of your newsletter design. Test different ways. Include your name.
7. The Art of War for newsletters?
In The Art of War, Sun Tzu says:
“Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.”
Sun Tzu probably didn’t know that his point about engaging people applies equally well to newsletters as it does to war. If Sun Tzu had sent out newsletters, what would he have done?
He would have chosen a good mailing service so subscription options are easy for his readers.
He would have known that people have a limited amount of time to read email, so he would engage the reader from the get go by creating a relationship.
He would make sure to use graphics that reflect his branding (my guess is his involve knives) and his name would blaze clearly.
He would craft subject lines to capture the reader’s attention and he would definitely study his statistics to see where to improve – so he could deliver that extraordinary newsletter.
Have fun with your newsletter and remember that even if you don’t get it right the first time, you can keep playing with it—but do try different things.
Have you created some newsletters already?
Are you willing to share what worked and what didn't?
Do you have any questions for Sierra?
We want to hear all about it down in the comments!
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About Sierra
Sierra writes fiction that features strong heroines who grow from the challenges they face and always get the guy in the end. A graphic designer by day, she lives in the swampy yet arid wastelands of the San Francisco Bay Area with her family. She has zero will power when it comes to chocolate. In fact, she is the inventor of mix-less trail mix -- just leave the chocolate chips.
Thanks so much to Shar and Jenny for inviting me to guest blog today! When you see the title of this blog, take into account that I’m a Libra, aka an air sign, so that’s probably why, instead of saying I write fast, I have to make the statement airy-fairy. But since you’re Writers in the Storm, it fits, right?
But first a disclaimer about the title. It’s not exactly true. The steps may sound easy, but things can sometimes sound easy until you try to do them, right? It works for me, though.
I’m on a 25 pages per day clip right now, not counting blog writing. Here’s how I do it:
1. I’m old school, so I write my specific page goal for the day on a piece of paper and put it on the fridge door.
It’s a constant reminder of where I need to be before I go to bed.
2. I set aside a period of time, two weeks if I’m lucky, and do my level best not to schedule anything during that time.
No hair, dentist, or doctor appointments, and definitely no lunch dates! Yes, life can throw you a curve and tank the plan, but you have more control over your calendar than you might think.
3. I live alone, so I stock in the food I need.
My goal is to shop for food as little as possible. If you live with others who can cook or fetch food for you, enlist them. Snack food you can eat at the computer is also helpful.
4. I keep my internet presence to a minimum.
The pressure of that page goal on the fridge helps enormously with that. I feel guilty for every minute I spend on email or Facebook because it’s not moving me toward that goal.
5. I follow my exercise program.
For me, that’s walking about two miles every morning and stretching before I go to bed. Your routine may well be different, but I hope you have one, because it’s critical to stay energized and healthy. This is not the time to slack off. Getting sick is not an option!
6. I have a deadline and I’m serious about meeting it.
The daily page goal is based on my deadline. Sometimes it’s a publisher deadline and other times it’s a personal deadline now that I’m a hybrid author who’s also self-publishing. Doesn’t matter. Deadlines are sacrosanct.
7. I let friends and family know I’m on a Write Like the Wind schedule.
Now that I’ve spent 30-plus years of writing for a living, most of the people in my life get that, but it’s taken time and training. When I meet my goal, then I turn into a social butterfly. Until then, I’m wrapped in my cocoon. They’ve learned to respect that.
8. I give myself a couple of small rewards during the day.
One is a quick tarot card reading, which is my hobby, and the other is writing morning pages. Some of you may recognize morning pages from Julia Cameron’s THE ARTIST’S WAY. While writing morning pages may seem counterintuitive, it’s a treat for me to write random thoughts with pen and paper because I’m not typing narrative and dialogue.
9. I don’t watch the news or read about awful things happening in the world.
My creativity is negatively impacted by bad news. Sometimes the bad news is too important or too close to home to ignore, and when that happens, my Write Like the Wind program is shot to hell. So whenever possible, I avoid bad news that doesn’t require an immediate response from me.
10. I remind myself every day, sometimes every hour, how lucky I am to have found work that I love.
Too many people in the world have no idea what kind of work makes them happy. If you’ve discovered that writing makes you happy, you’re way ahead of the game. If you’ve managed to make money doing it, you’re really blessed.
That’s it! I realize that my Write Like the Wind method won’t work for everyone. We all have different circumstances and different personalities. But I started this list with the page goal on the fridge because it’s honestly the most concrete, kick-in-the-butt trick I know. If you take nothing else from the list, I urge you to try it. And now I need to get back to meeting my current page goal! It’s on the fridge!
What sort of tricks do you have up your sleeve
to help you Write Like the Wind?
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GIVEAWAY: Vicki is giving away TWO copies of her book, Cowboys & Angels, to two lucky commenters (international or domestic WITS readers can win) so let's shower her with comment love!!
About Vicki
A romance writing career has brought Vicki Lewis Thompson many wonderful things –New York Times bestseller status, an appearance on LIVE with Regis and Kelly, the Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award from Romance Writers of America, thousands of readers, many dear friends, and the cutest little yellow convertible in the world. Her career has also given her work she loves.
Although she’s written more than 100 books, she continues to be fascinated by the many ways that a man and woman fall in love. The age-old story remains a challenging puzzle to be solved anew with each book. That makes her a very lucky person, indeed.
