[Ashley Tegart]

Hi, all,

So I’m wanting to start an email newsletter soon. A couple of years ago I had one with MailChimp, but really didn’t like that service much. I want to try one again, especially since I’m on a mission to build an author platform without social media. I would love some advice from anyone else who has an email newsletter!

1) What service do you use? As I mentioned above, I wasn’t a huge fan of MailChimp and have been looking into some other options, such as Substack and Mailerlite. Does anyone have thoughts on what services they recommend and what ones should be avoided?

2) I’m thinking of using an email newsletter for sharing short stories. Would anyone want to read short stories through an email newsletter?

3) Is there a way to send WordPress blogposts to readers through a newsletter service?

Thanks, y’all!

-Ashley

[Rose]

I know nothing about this but I think @joy-caroline ,@joelle-stone , and @this-is-not-an-alien might be able to help you! Joy and Joelle have blogs with newsletters and Cathy is starting a newsletter!

Without darkness, there is no light. If there was no nighttime, would the stars be as bright?

[Ashley Tegart]

Thanks, Rose! 🙂

@rose-colored-fancy

 

[R.M. Archer]

1) I use MailChimp, but I’ve heard a couple of friends recently recommend Flodesk. All of my info about it is second-hand, but the folks I’ve heard from rave about it.

2) I don’t personally read short stories outside of book format very often. When I do I tend to read them on someone’s site where I’m not going to lose it if I put it off for a while before getting to it. But I rarely even go back to read one on a blog; I’m just not a big digital fiction person.

3) I have no idea. I pretty much just expect that people who want to get my blog posts will subscribe through my site to get WordPress’s email updates, and then I manually put links in my update emails at the end of a month or a quarter or whatever. I haven’t looked into whether you can set up a newsletter service to auto-send blog posts.

Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Worldbuilding enthusiast. Singer. Fan of classic literature.

[Joy Calle Martinez]

@ashley-tegart

ConvertKit is a good newsletter service you might like! I’ve personally decided to go with MailChimp, but I have a few friends who use ConvertKit for their newsletters, and it works great for them.

I personally enjoy it when bloggers share short stories through newsletters. You could always have that as a little bonus at the end of the newsletter. Those are always fun, in my opinion. You could also use short stories as incentives or rewards for subscribing to the newsletter.

Like @r-m-archer said, people will usually subscribe to your site to get WordPress’s email updates, and you can insert the links manually into your newsletter. I’m not sure whether newsletter services can send blogposts.

https://discipleshipwithjoy.com

[R.M. Archer]

Joy Calle Martinez wrote:

You could also use short stories as incentives or rewards for subscribing to the newsletter.

This is a good idea. I almost mentioned something along the same lines. If you give readers PDFs of short stories that they can download and read like ebooks, or even if you just have them somewhere easy to find on your site, that can work well.

Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Worldbuilding enthusiast. Singer. Fan of classic literature.

[Cathy]

Hiii! *bowls over with hug*
1) I use ConverterKit but I mean I haven’t actually even sent my first newsletter out yet so…so far I’ve like it, I can’t get any automations with the free version but I’m used to jimmying stuff and I’m sure I can burn that bridge when I get there XD. I was able to design my own landing page and import free royalties pics as placeholders while I draw illustrations that fit better so that’s a plus, plus personalizing the actually newsletter design and a page of stats of click rates, views, subscriptions etc. Maybe invest a lot of research into SEO especially if you’re working without social media but I’m still super new to this so idk anything 😁
2) I’m in! Would you be interested in a newsletter featuring exclusives, teasers and sample works of my co-authored with my brother @rusted-knight Prohibition Era steampunk webtoon (=comicbook) here?
3) I believe ConverterKit had a feature for that but I don’t have WordPress so idk much about it. At all. XD.
Good luck!

To be a light to the world you must shine in the darkness.

[Author]

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