Email courses for authors and novelists

Non-fiction and fiction are two different problems

Non-fiction maps onto the format directly. Your book teaches something; a five-day course teaches a smaller version of the same thing; a reader who did it has evidence that the book is worth their weekend. The only real decision is which chapter to give away, and the answer is the most self-contained one, not the best one.

Fiction does not map onto it at all, and the usual response is five days of writing advice. Think about who signed up. They liked a story, and they have been sent a course on plotting by somebody they wanted to read. It is a competent lead magnet aimed at a different person, and it builds a list of aspiring writers rather than readers.

The mechanism that makes a five-day course work is not the teaching. It is the daily arrival of something small and finished from somebody the reader now recognises. That works perfectly for fiction once you stop calling it a course: letters from the world of the book, pieces of the backstory, a scene cut in the edit with a paragraph about why.

What the five days should contain

For non-fiction: take the chapter that stands alone and teach it as a course rather than excerpting it. A chapter read aloud into five emails is an excerpt, and the retailer sample already provides one. Rewrite it as five things the reader does, each small, ending with something they did not have on Monday.

For fiction: give five days of the world, not of the plot. The true story the novel started from. A photograph from the research and the thing it changed. The historical detail everybody gets wrong about this period. A scene that was cut, with a paragraph on why. Then chapter one, in full, on the last morning.

In both cases, resist the summary of your own book. The most common author sequence is five emails about what the book covers, which is a blurb served in instalments. A reader who wanted the blurb read the blurb.

One more thing specific to books: write the sequence so it is still true in three years. Nothing dated, no reference to the launch, no "out next month". Author lists are built once and left running, and the version that mentions a publication date becomes embarrassing on a schedule.

The objection your readers arrive with

For fiction it is simple and rarely stated: they want the story, not a relationship with the author. The reader who signed up after finishing your novel at midnight is not looking for a correspondence course. They want more of the thing that kept them up, and every email that is about you rather than about the world is a small withdrawal.

For non-fiction it is the reverse of the usual one. The reader is not worried that the free thing is a teaser; they are worried it is the whole book, because they have signed up for author courses that turned out to be the entire argument. Give away a chapter, say it is a chapter, and let them see how much is left.

Both audiences share a third objection, which is that an author mailing list means launch spam. They have been on one. The sequence answers it by being finite and by saying, on the form, what arrives afterwards and roughly how often. "Two or three times a year, and when there is a new book" is a real answer, and a rare one.

What your sign-up page has to say

Say plainly whether the five days contain material from the book. This is the line that stops the most complaints. A reader who signs up expecting new writing and receives chapter one repackaged feels tricked, and a reader told in advance that day five is chapter one is delighted to get it.

Name the book, name the genre in words a stranger would use, and put the cadence of what follows on the same page. An author list is a long-term relationship with long silences, and the sign-up page is the only place the silences can be explained in advance.

Say that the first email is a confirmation and that the writing begins after the click. An author list is kept for years and mailed rarely, which is the exact shape in which unconfirmed addresses rot unnoticed: nobody finds out that a third of the list was mistyped until the launch announcement goes out to it and lands, along with everything else you send, in a spam folder.

The lines an author sign-up page has to carry:

• What the five days actually are: five short pieces of fiction, or five lessons from one chapter.
• Whether any of it is from the book, and which part.
• That a confirmation click is what joins the list, so a mistyped address never sits on it for years.
• The genre or subject in plain words, because the cover is doing that job on a page nobody has visited.
• What arrives afterwards and how often, including the honest answer if it is twice a year.
• That leaving takes one click and the link is in every email.

What the day-six email asks for

Ask for a review, not a sale. A reader on day six has read five things of yours and has not necessarily bought the book, so a sales email is aimed at half the list. A request for an honest review, from whoever has already read it, is aimed at the half that can act and costs the other half nothing.

Reviews also compound in a way a single sale does not. They are what the retailer surfaces, what a stranger reads before buying, and what determines whether the next book starts from zero. One additional honest review from a reader who finished the course is worth more to a new author than the copy you did not sell them.

Where the sale is the right ask, make it specific: the format, the length, and where to get it, including the library. "Or ask your library to order it" makes the email read as somebody who wants to be read rather than somebody who wants a transaction. For a book not yet out, the ask is a preorder and the reason should be said plainly.