How to Gain Newsletter Readers by Publishing a Story.

How to publish a story in your newsletter for readers?

It’s said that a writers’ or authors’ newsletter is the most important marketing tool in your toolbox. Books like Newsletter Ninja 1 & 2 are great resources. Today we are going to chat about publishing short stories as an incentive to get readers to sign up for your newsletter.

What do you want to get when you sign up for an authors' newsletter?

I want exclusive news, and a close relationship with my favorite author. Short stories that happen between novels in a series or one-shots are a great exclusive to give readers. As well as a great tool to help push your new novel with readers.

How do you do this?

Short stories or one-shots aren’t as hard as you think. Short stories range anywhere from 1,500 to 30,000 words; Novellas run from 30,000 to 50,000. Essentially, you want to take all the beats of a novel and achieve them quickly.

I feel that there is more weight to an exclusive if it is part of a series or about a character in the series.

Here is an example. I’m releasing a short story that takes place between The Fire Inside book 2 of The Fire Series out March 7th, 2022, preorder now and Book 3 of The Fire Series If the Seas Catch Fire. This short story is Home Fires, a seasonal short for The Fire Series. At a later date I will compile these short stories and make a box set for the series.

Home Fires synopsis

Raven is creating her own cooking internet show and afraid that Travis is going to dump her for a new model before the Christmas Holidays.

How important communication is in a relationship and how bad are assumptions?

Will Raven let her fears cost her love?

Tell me more about Home Fires.

Home Fires picks up around the end of November when Anna has moved to Seattle, Washington. Raven is afraid that Travis will tire of her and want someone more fitting to his world of the rich and famous. It doesn’t help when he becomes secretive and has been caught on camera out and about in town with a thinner, taller, younger model type.

Different ways to publish a story in your newsletter.

I have seen a few methods of how to share material in your newsletter.

If you use Google Docs, you can share a folder with the stories. Simply open Google Docs, make a folder containing the story and click the share button on the top right-hand side. Click the change to anyone who has the link and then copy the link and include it in your newsletter.

You can also save documents as html which makes them a web page with an address.

In your newsletter you will want to have a section for the story with a photo, synopsis, and links to the chapters or story. Often Authors include this on the bottom of their newsletter.