How and why you should do newsletter swaps #WriterWednesday #AuthorToolboxBlogHop #AmWriting #WritingCommunity

Newsletter swaps are awesome. Not only will they help sell your book, but they are hundred-percent free!  I can’t believe it took me this long to start doing them!

First of all, what the heck is a newsletter swap? It’s simple really. You agree to mention another author’s book in your newsletter. In exchange, they agree to mention your book. Easy peasy. The best part of this? Your book doesn’t have to be on sale or free, which is something most newsletter services (bargain booksy, fussy librarian, etc.) require.

But why should I do newsletter swaps, you ask. There are three reasons: increase your exposure to readers, increase sales, and grow your newsletter list. All for the low, low price of FREE.

Not all newsletter swaps are created equally, however. You won’t always get sales. Often, there’s a perfectly logical reason for this. Which leads me to how you should do newsletter swaps.

Choose wisely. When I first started doing swaps, I was so excited someone wanted to swap with me, I’d swap with anyone. Beginner mistake. You should only swap with authors promoting books your readers will like. I’ll be honest, it took me awhile to figure this one out. I assumed since I write romance and cozy mysteries, my readers would love any romance or cozy mystery I threw at them. Wrong!

Don’t go overboard. After I started getting into the swing of things, I would sometimes have over ten books to include in my monthly newsletter. This was too much. I would get clicks on the books at the top of the newsletter but hardly any on the bottom. I’ve learned to limit my swaps to ten. I also bundle the books together by genre instead of just throwing books at my readers willy-nilly.

Deals. As I said above, you can do newsletter swaps even if your book isn’t on sale. Unfortunately, you may find that your readers are expecting bargains. I always try to include at least one or two reader magnets in my newsletter, so my readers can claim at least one free book if they want.

All this sounds great, but where do I find other writers to swap with?

Facebook groups. If you search newsletter swaps on Facebook, you’ll find a ton of groups. Ton! You’ll soon need to set up a spreadsheet or something similar to keep track of all your swaps.

StoryOrigin. This is where I find most of my swaps. It’s a free platform and it’s pretty brilliant. Not only can you find books similar to yours to include in your newsletter, but you can see how big an authors list is. Don’t stare yourself blind on the size of the list. Some smaller lists have better open and click lists than larger lists. You can also see how many clicks your book gets in a particular author’s newsletter. This can help you choose which authors to swap with in the future.

I hope I’ve convinced you to give newsletter swaps a try. I’ve had such success with mine, I’ve started doing a second newsletter each month. Have you tried newsletter swaps? What do you think? Yea or nay?

~~

This blog post is part of the #AuthorToolboxBlogHop. This is a monthly blog hop hosted by @raimeygallant. Make sure to stop by the other author blog posts in this month’s blog hop to fill up your author toolbox! Just click on the graphic to take you to the list.