The Newsletter Cometh

[hrj]

Having listened to the promotional strategy advice of a wide variety of people, I'm planning to accomplish two things this weekend. One will be to set up Hootsuite (or some equivalent social media manager, but that's the one people seem to prefer) to handle automated promotional reminders that I rarely have the emotional energy to do manually. The other will be to set up an opt-in (of course!) newsletter for fans and readers to provide both a direct way to communicate announcements and other information, and to provide special content in exchange for access to attention. I figure to aim for absolutely not more often than once a month except for things like unexpected special sales (which I never know about in advance). Maybe less often than once a month, we'll see. I have a hard time planning these things because I'm not a newsletter reader myself, so I have to figure out what works for people who are.

So what sort of content will the newsletter provide? A lot of it will be just basic information:

• Upcoming/New publication information


• Upcoming appearances


• Current projects

But I'll also be offering some special content not available to people who don't subscribe to the newsletter. And that's where you come in. Here are some ideas of my own, plus suggestions people have made online. Which of these would entice you to sign up for and read a newsletter? What other content would entice you?

• Worldbuilding information (Alpennian language, geography, history, etc.)


• Snippets of work in progress (no spoilers!)


• Exclusive previews of Alpennian short fiction (stories that will eventually be released either free or as a collection, but that I'm not trying to sell individually)


• Discussions of my writing process (for example, I kept a diary of how the plot of Daughter of Mystery developed as I was drafting it)


• Alpennia fan art (with the artists' permissions, of course!)


• Access to Alpennia swag (there is none yet, but I have some ideas percolating -- what would you be interested in?)

Let me know what you think. I'm still trying to get my mind around the psychological aspects of doing a newsletter and how it would differ from my blog, other than providing me with a list of people who have expressed a particular level of commitment and interest to following my writing.

 

Comments

[hrj]

Different authors have different attitudes towards fan writing and have had different experiences. MZB began with a very welcoming approach, starting with sponsoring a fanzine that included fan fiction, and even putting out a series of anthologies of Darkover fiction by both professional and fan writers. But then she got burned by having a fan writer come up with a story element that was coincidentally similar to something MZB was working on and demanding to be given author credit for the concept. After that she wouldn't even read fan fiction, much less be involved in publishing it.

Some authors are simply deeply uncomfortable with other people "playing house" with their characters and worlds (even aside from the subset of fanfic that's erotic in nature). For some, they'll actively ask people not to write it, others are content to pretend it doesn't exist.

My attitude is that I would be immensely flattered to have people want to write in my world -- there are plenty of stories that I'm not going to write that have threads hanging off them to be picked up -- but if they do, I want to allow elbow room for them to have fun and not feel like I'm watching and judging. And there are potential legal issues with giving official "approval", especially if it involves elements I'm going to be working with myself in the future.