1110. This week, we talk with Jane Friedman, an expert on the business of being a writer. We look at how to build a strong email newsletter and why it's a critical tool for authors in today's publishing world. Jane shares her best tips for getting started, what to write about, and how to get new subscribers — offering advice that can help any writer create a platform that lasts.
1110. This week, we talk with Jane Friedman, an expert on the business of being a writer. We look at how to build a strong email newsletter and why it's a critical tool for authors in today's publishing world. Jane shares her best tips for getting started, what to write about, and how to get new subscribers — offering advice that can help any writer create a platform that lasts.
This episode was originally a bonus episode released in May for people who support the show, the Grammarpaloozians. If you'd like to support the show, and get ad-free podcasts and bonuses right away, visit quickanddirtytips.com/bonus for more information.
Jane's book, "The Business of Being a Writer"
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This episode was originally a bonus episode. I hope you're having a great summer, and thanks for your support.
Grammar Girl here, I'm Mignon Fogarty. Today's show was originally released back in May as a bonus segment for our Grammarpaloozians. Our supporters.
If YOU want to become a Grammarpaloozina too, visit quickanddirtytips.com/bonus to learn more.
And now, on to the show.
MIGNON:
Greetings, Grammarpaloozians! I'm here today with Jane Friedman.
This is your bonus episode. If you listen to the main episode, you'll hear a whole rundown of her new book, “The Business of Being a Writer,” and sort of what's changed over the years in publishing. It's very interesting, but she also has two very successful email newsletters. And I thought today we would benefit from learning about those newsletters.
Jane's one of the leading experts in the publishing industry. She has newsletters, books, a website, social media, courses, books. She helps writers understand the business of writing and building a successful life as a writer. Jane Friedman, thank you so much for being here.
JANE:
Thank you.
MIGNON:
So you have two email newsletters. Can you quickly just give a rundown of what they are and how they're different?
JANE:
Yeah. The first one, the biggest one, is “Electric Speed.” So this launched around 2009. And it began by me getting conference-goers, people who attended my classes in person, to sign up for my newsletter so I could stay in touch.
And then later on, as time progressed, most of the people signing up came from my website, people who are reading my blog. So as of today, it has more than 30,000 subscribers; it's entirely free. It comes out every two weeks and it has a little personal note from me. It shares some digital tools and resources that I've discovered, and I also have a reader recommendation section.
So that's it in a nutshell. It's meant to be light. I don't typically get very serious with it. You should be able to go through it in a couple of minutes.
MIGNON:
Yeah, I like it. I think I've bought things you've recommended or your listeners have recommended ... your readers.
JANE:
So that's—I mentioned that it's light and easy to get through because my paid newsletter is probably on the opposite side of the spectrum. It's called “The Bottom Line.” It used to be called “The Hot Sheet,” for those who've been following me for a while, but it's the same newsletter. It comes out every Wednesday at lunchtime, and it’s publishing industry analysis. So, it’s people who are fairly serious about writing and publishing; they're probably making a living at it or want to. I have maybe half the list; they're like agents, editors, people somehow inside the industry. And then I would say the other half are authors of some kind, ghostwriters, etc. So that's, you know, usually involves some level of reporting, like there's one long-form article in it, like a couple thousand words, and then I have news updates, new opportunities, agencies, publishers, links of interest. So that's been going since 2015. So it's pretty long-lived as well.
MIGNON:
Yeah, so that takes a lot of your time.
JANE:
Yeah.
MIGNON:
So, why? I know why, but tell our listeners why it's so important to have an email newsletter.
JANE:
It's an asset that grows exponentially in value over time if you're building it properly. And by building it properly, I mean these are people who are interested in your books or your articles, what you're writing, what you have to say, and they want to learn when something new is happening or what you think about XYZ. So, you know, where things get a little confusing, I have to put this up front, is that Substack, I think, has muddied the waters a lot as to what a newsletter is for. So when I talk about authors having a newsletter, it's usually in the old-school style of having a newsletter, where this is really something to keep your fans, your readers, your colleagues up to date on what's happening.
It might only come out once a month. I mean, that's usually what I recommend for, you know, just to get, to have some consistency, to stay top of mind for people. I think most writers have at least a couple things to say once a month. And I don't think it has to be this big burden.
Sometimes I recommend the media consumption list, where you talk about shows or books or podcasts or whatever you've been enjoying and share that because you probably have something in common with your readership.
So when you gather those people together in the same place, it makes you less, via email specifically, it makes you less dependent on the publisher, on your agent, on publicists, on social media. You know, you're not buffeted as much by the winds of technology or what the market is doing because you've always got that group of people who want to hear from you, that have proactively asked to hear from you and what's happening.
So that means when you talk about your book coming out, or if you want them to buy something from you, it could be anything, they're not going to see it as some kind of hard marketing and promotion or some hard sales tactic. They're going to see it, "Oh, this person I really like is doing something new. How exciting! And I'm gonna tell all my friends." So that's like the old-school newsletter. Substack is a little bit different. Like you could use that in the old-school style, but Substack really wants you to charge for your email. And while I do have a paid newsletter, it's, how to put it, it's like running a magazine. Like, it's like running any sort of subscription service. It's fairly transactional. So if I stop delivering it, if I stop providing the value that people are paying for, they will drop off the list.
Whereas with your free old-school newsletter, I mean, theoretically, you could disappear for some time, and people aren't gonna be angry. They'll just be concerned. "Are you okay?" "I'm sorry I haven't heard from you lately."
MIGNON:
Yeah, so that's a good tip. So don't, you know, for authors who may feel daunted by the fact that, oh, I have to start a newsletter. You don't have to send it every week, and it doesn't have to be long.
JANE:
Correct.
MIGNON:
What are some of the other things that you see writers worrying about when it comes to the idea of a newsletter?
JANE:
I think the time issue is one of the biggest. And I try to just reduce the burden and say, "Look, if you send a really short email that's only a few hundred words, no one is gonna write you and say, 'Why didn't you make that longer?'"
Like never in the history of my life has someone complained my newsletter was too short. So don't worry about that. Just show up authentically as yourself. And if you don't have much to say, that's fine. You know, share a quote, share a picture of your cat; that will thrill people, and it'll be fine.
Mignon:
Right, your garden. Yeah.
Jane:
Yes. So, the time is one issue. The other issue, I think people don't know what to say. Or they feel a little bit awkward. Or they think they have to put on their marketing hat. Or people have strange ideas about email newsletters and what goes in them. Or they're thinking about all those times they've received emails that annoyed them. They're worried about being that person in the inbox that no one wants to be there.
So to help remedy that, I just tell people, make sure that when people join the list, it's because they wanted to. Like, don't add all of your LinkedIn contacts. Don't add all your Gmail contacts into your newsletter list. Let it build slowly over time with the people who are actually interested. And then if you can, you know, really commit, I think this is another problem: people won't commit because they have that awkwardness, or they think no one's paying attention—a million reasons. Try to commit to once a month or once every other month. Try to commit to some sort of initial format, like decide in advance what you're going to put in. Is there going to be a pet photo? Is there going to be a book recommendation? Are you going to talk about events you've attended? Could you feature a roundup of, "Here's what I've said and done lately over on Instagram?" Because not everyone is on Instagram. Whatever it happens to be, just decide in advance what’s the rough structure going to be, and then plug in the pieces of content rather than sitting down to the blank page.
//
Mignon:
Yeah. That's a lesson that hit home with me last week. Even people who I know like me and follow me and tend to consume my stuff, they don't know everything I've done. People will send me things like, "Oh, did you see this?" Well, yeah, I posted it two days ago. That happens all the time. Don't be afraid to put something in your newsletter that you posted on social media because, like you said, not everybody's on Instagram, or not everybody's on Bluesky. They haven't seen everything you did, almost like a book. It's a nice place to like round up everything that you've done over the last month or something like that.
JANE:
Yeah, I just had my launch event for that book, and I've been mentioning that book launch event since October of last year, everywhere. Like I feel like there can't be a person who hasn't heard me mention this event. Yet when I mentioned it in the last newsletter before the event, I made it like a kind of a bigger mention—like instead of a couple of lines, it was like a big paragraph—and someone was like, "Oh, I saw that. I didn't realize you were doing an event."
MIGNON:
It's amazing. People are like, I've had people say to me, "I didn't know you do a podcast."
JANE:
Oh my God.
MIGNON:
It's so funny. I mean, people see you where they see you and not everywhere you are. Yeah. So, you know, let's say someone's just starting out, how do you recommend that people get people starting to subscribe to your newsletter?
JANE:
Well, first of all, if you have an author website, make sure that the sign-up is prominent on the website—not in the footer, not buried under three menu systems, you know—prominent.
That means like homepage, above the fold and on the primary menu. I know people hate pop-ups, but pop-ups work. Just don't let people miss it. And it's, you know, people might only spend 15 seconds on your site, so it's got to be front and center. Okay, so the next area, I would say, your email signature. I'm assuming this is important to folks. I think it's important. It's the asset, you know, that grows over time. So in the email signature, let people know it exists. And I try to recommend people use language that's unique to them. So rather than saying, "Sign up for my email newsletter," which sounds pretty boring, say, "Get my favorite cookie recipe at the bottom of every email I send." Like, I don't know, whatever it is that you do that's unique to your newsletter, make sure that's evident.
Be a little bit charming with it; show the voice or personality that people are going to expect. And that should obviously be in your sign-up language wherever it is, like on your website too. If you're able to get the mention in your book, do so. You know, you might have to talk with your publisher nicely about that, but usually, they're fine with you mentioning the fact you have a newsletter in your bio or in your "About the Author." Make sure it's in all of those social media bios mentioned somehow, somewhere. If you have the link-in-bio tool, which allows you to put different links in one place, do that. And then, when you have events online or in person, make sure you have that newsletter sign-up link ready to go to share. You just really have to be consistent in mentioning it and never assume people will just stumble on it. You have to put it in front of their face.
MIGNON:
Yeah. And what are some creative things that you've seen writers do in their newsletters? Like, I love that you have the reader recommendations at the end. You ask them, and then, in every newsletter you ask readers for some sort of recommendation, and you round them up next time. And that's fun.
JANE:
It is fun. I learned something about my readers from doing that. And I think a lot of author newsletters that have good reader engagement have something like that going on. And it's really delightful to the people who receive them. So, like I, Austin Kleon's newsletter, I think this is still the case, I think at the bottom of every newsletter, he has a reader image—a photo that someone took that he stumbled upon, or maybe that a reader sent him—usually of his book out in the wild. Not always, but there's something there that ties into Austin Kleon and his readers engaging. I think that's lovely.
I've seen some writers have success stories from other writers in their community. Like someone gets an article published, or they win an award, or there's some little piece of success. And so they celebrate with their readers these things. This is going back a long time...Anne Friedman, no relation. She's like one of the original newsletter writers who kind of popularized the idea before Substack. She always has a hand-drawn pie chart in her newsletter, which is, you know, again, very voice-driven, very charming. It's what people look forward to. So it's that thing that people look forward to. I've had people say they look forward to the recipe. I do, in fact, put a recipe—it's not always a cookie recipe—but a recipe at the end of every issue of “Electric Speed” because it's fun. And it gets people to scroll to the end.
MIGNON:
Yeah, no, that's important. That's a great tip to have something fun at the end. I do that too in my newsletter. I have a link that's called "Completely Unrelated," and it's just some fun thing I saw this week that has nothing to do with anything else—just something that delighted me. And it's always at the end.
JANE:
Yeah. I've also seen people do kind of like a juicy link to click on—not something manipulative, but something that's interesting. So, like, for instance, I do a little PS about the most popular blog post at my site that week. People really like that; it gets a lot of clicks. And I've seen other people do things comparable where they'll say, "Most clicked link in my last newsletter was this."
MIGNON:
That's a good idea.
JANE:
So, for people who might have missed it, now they have another chance to see what was so fascinating to other people.
MIGNON:
Oh, that's great. I love that. You have so many great tips. It's just wonderful. And, we learn so much about news. I've been inspired to do more things with my newsletter. The book is "The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition," newly updated for our world today. Okay. And now it's time for my favorite part of the show, which has become getting your three book recommendations. So, Jane, what books are you telling your friends that you love these days?
JANE:
Well, I just finished a super short book called "The Lessons of History" by Will and Ariel Durant. And for those who don't know who Will Durant is, he's this historian, no longer alive, who did like this multi-volume history of civilization. Like, I don't, it's like 10, 15 volumes. Most people don't read that.
MIGNON:
Yeah.
JANE:
It's enormous. And I suspect that his publisher said, "You know, after writing that, might you have some short, pithy things to say about civilization?" And that's what "The Lessons of History" is. And I read it recently; I can't remember how I stumbled on it, but it must have been because of the socio-political situation that we're currently in. Because when I read this book, even though it was written 60 or 70 years ago, I felt like it was speaking to me at this moment in time. It was just really profound. And so I think he, like if his publisher did give him that assignment, I think he aced it because he's very humble about what he's trying to say about the lessons of history and how civilizations rise and fall. But he's also quite firm and clear about what he's observed over thousands of years. And it's just, you feel like, yeah, you're getting his level of wisdom in about 30 minutes of reading. Can't recommend it highly enough.
MIGNON:
That's great. What else?
JANE:
The second book is "The Courage to Be Disliked." This is by—this is a work in translation. It's by some Japanese authors whose names I will not butcher on the show. It's a philosophical conversation. It's also a pretty slim volume that I found really, again, comforting to read at this moment in time, although I read it maybe four or five years ago at this point. It's just a reminder that you have agency. I think that's maybe what I could boil down the book to, that you get to decide how to live. And I think it's just a very powerful message, even though it sounds simple, that's reinforced in ways that are profound. You can see I go for the profound books.
The third one is an illustrated book by Wendy MacNaughton, "How to Say Goodbye." I'll just leave it at that and let people discover what's in it.
MIGNON:
Okay, these are really heavy books.
JANE:
They are.
MIGNON:
Well, that's great. I guess some people will definitely be in the mood for that. I like that at least the first two are short.
JANE:
Yeah, well, the third one is short too. Usually, when I read things, it's newsletters, articles, magazines. It's rare that I actually crack open a book, not because I don't like them, but because I love reading short things. So maybe that's why these books are short.
MIGNON:
Great. Well, they do sound wise and profound. Well, Jane Friedman, thank you again so much for being here. The book is called "The Business of Being a Writer." Fabulous book; I’ve already recommended it to people. Why don't you, just to sum up, tell the listeners one more time where they can find you?
JANE:
Janefriedman.com is the best place you can learn about all of the things that I do: newsletters, classes, etc. at that site.
MIGNON:
And you have some sample queries and things like that, right?
JANE:
Right. So if you go to that website, you'll also find my book website connected to it, where you can find examples of free submission materials. You don't have to have the book. It's available for everyone.
MIGNON:
Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much for being here.
JANE:
Thank you.