PART TWO AUTORESPONDER ADVANTAGE...

By you taking to read to the bottom of the page and click through I know you're serious about doing things differently. So let's get to why it's so hard to get new readers.

 

You need to get readers to invest time in you rather than going back to a familiar author.

 

You must become their habit.

 

There is a risk in reading a new author. Voracious readers cherish the time they spend in a story world—it is precious to them and is like meditation.

 

Why risk that on a new author?

 

Therefore, they would instead read something they are familiar with rather than risk that time going to a new author.

 

You are one of the many authors bombarding them with attention requests. More and more books are being published, and authors like you are all trying to grab attention and win new readers.

 

It's not that they don’t want to read you. It's that the process of choosing is overwhelming.

 

The solution is to write a killer short story.

 

Write something that is about a chapter and helps the prospect to understand what you can deliver.

Put a micro-story on your website as a qualification page.

This story needs to give them a low-risk way to dip their toe into your story water.

 

At the end of that killer, 2,000-3,000 words provide them an opt-in for a longer story for their email.

 

This subtle change will improve your subscriber quality because some will read your short story and decide they don’t like your writing.

 

That may sting, but it’s better to have them figure this out now.

 

More important is that it gives prospects a quick taste test of your work that, if it “tastes” right, will get them interested in reading more.

 

You gave them a low-risk, quick win!

 

It also improves the probability that once they get your story magnet, they will open it up and read it.

 

That’s the dirty secret—most reader magnets die in the digital to be read pile.

 

After delivering the reader magnet, You’ll have a series of emails to help the prospect discover the story world you’ve created.

 

You’ll need to choose the point of view of your newsletter.

 

Will it be from you as the author or part of your story world with the characters' viewpoint?

 

More than ever, readers want to escape, and the faster you can immerse them in your story space, the more comfortable they will be.

 

Remember, avid readers like to read if there is a story structure. If there isn’t, it gets boring quickly.

 

Drive interest through plot and character in emails.

 

In the emails, urge them to read the novella.

 

Don’t go selling them anything because they haven’t read your entire story yet.

 

Too often, we go full salesman, before we have established the value.

 

Your work is to get them to move your novella to the top of their to-read pile. You can do this by alluding to some of the best moments in the story and things that they will learn.

 

An advanced strategy is to create an open loop from the website story that gets resolved in the novella. Then you can increase the urgency to close that loop by telling them in the emails that the loop closes in the story.

 

The last tactic in this cold email series is that you let the reader know they won’t get access to your super cool newsletter and the fun rewards unless they opt-in from the novella's back matter.

 

They don’t opt-in until after they have read your novella, or at least opened it up and clicked on the link to subscribe to them.

 

The hard part is this will drive down your newsletter sign-ups.

 

That can hurt the ego. It feels like nobody wants to come to your party.

 

The reality is most people are too lazy to read your book.

 

While the reader magnet and email sequence is the most effective tool for warming up a cold lead, it is still is low in conversion.

 

Most subscribers give a crappy email address to get free books, then rarely download or read that book.

 

The few that do read your novella are the signal we want to amplify. They will be the ones to spread your message.

 

This brings us to one of the big misunderstandings of marketing, the difference between a simple and complex contagion and how virality works.

 

I’ll dive into this idea in part three.