Episode Description:
In this episode of What If? For Authors, Claire Taylor dives into a topic that many authors struggle with: email. Claire explores the underlying reasons why authors might feel dread about managing email lists and responding to reader messages, and she offers practical advice to make the process less stressful. Whether it's removing the "shoulds" around email, creating a schedule that works for your energy, or hiring an assistant to handle the influx of messages, Claire encourages listeners to find their own path to a healthier email relationship.
Key Takeaways:
Removing the "Shoulds": Many authors feel weighed down by preconceived notions of how often they "should" email their readers. Claire emphasizes that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach and that it’s okay to do what works for you.
Email as a Creative Outlet: Claire encourages authors to see email as just another form of writing, which can be fun and creative when the content feels right. There are no rules—whether it’s memes, stories, or personal anecdotes, email can reflect who you are as an author.
Boundaries with Reader Emails: Responding to every reader email isn’t necessary, and it’s important to set boundaries that protect your time and energy. Claire explores how different Enneagram types might feel pressure to respond and offers advice on how to manage that.
Consider Outsourcing: If email truly feels overwhelming, outsourcing to a virtual assistant can be a great option. Claire shares her own experience of hiring help to handle emotionally taxing emails and encourages others to do the same if needed.
Email Lists as a Foundation: Building an email list is still one of the wisest things authors can do for long-term success, providing a direct line to readers that isn’t dependent on social media algorithms or platforms.
Why Listen? If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by managing your email list or responding to readers, this episode is for you. Claire offers both practical advice and mindset shifts to help you develop a healthier, more sustainable relationship with email. Whether you need to set new boundaries, rethink your email strategy, or hire help, this episode provides actionable steps to make email a tool that works for you, not against you.
Join the Conversation: Have a question or topic you’d like Claire to explore? Send an email to contact@ffs.media. Claire is always open to hearing from her listeners and offering support.
Happy Writing!
TRANSCRIPT:
Claire: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of What If for Authors. I'm so glad you're here. My name's Claire Taylor and I'm an Enneagram certified coach for authors as well as a humor and mystery writer. You can check out my latest book, Sustain Your Author Career by going to ffs. media forward slash sustain.
I've been thinking lately about how the popularity of the Enneagram has been increasing in the author world, and I love that. It's becoming a language that we all use together. But as with any language, it can be used to support and encourage or to cut down and diminish. I think people mostly mean well when they're using it.
Ah, but it can still come off as diminishing someone sometimes. So, just a reminder today, that we probably don't want to taint a person's experience with this tool by using it To excuse our maladaptive behavior. Like I probably don't want to be going around saying as a one, I see everything that's wrong with you and here's the list or whatever.
[00:01:00] That would sort of be weaponizing it. We probably don't want to roll our eyes at someone and say, Ugh, you're such a four. You know, that sort of thing. I have no problem with laughing together when our type becomes super apparent. That's one of the gifts of this work. You get to see how silly some of the patterns we develop are.
But laughing together on a foundation of mutual respect and trust is different from using someone's type as a diss, right? Okay. So that's just my little, little PSA today. I don't know. I felt compelled to speak on it. So we all need reminders and I'm not excluding myself from that, especially when we're dealing with an industry that conducts most of its networking online.
I see some lovely people say some pretty horrible things on social media. I noticed the impulse in myself too. And I've certainly said things over the years on social media that I didn't really think through. We all do, but the great thing is that we can do better as we gain more [00:02:00] awareness. So that's pretty cool.
Okay. So today's episode asks a very important question. What if I hate writing emails? Girl, same. Okay. So I don't hate it, but it does become overwhelming for me and it's absolutely not my favorite thing to write emails. I know a lot of authors feel conflicted about what to do if they dread everything related to their inbox.
Can they still have a successful author career? Do they have to build an email list of readers if they really, really, really don't want to? When are they supposed to respond to those draining reader emails that, you know,
The email relationships we create as authors are so weird and not normal. Um, for instance, I had to tell one of my fiction lists about my dog's death, which means that they got [00:03:00] one email in their inbox about something sad. And I kept it to the facts too. She was here. It's time to say goodbye. Now I'm behind on the timeline I told you about for this book.
So they got one email in their inbox with this news, and I certainly didn't include a picture of her. I wasn't trying to make anyone sad. What did I get back? I got like dozens and dozens of email replies from readers who not only told me about their dog's passing, but sent a picture of the dog who had passed.
Oh, so it was coming from a good and pure place from them. I absolutely believe that. And I don't begrudge anyone wanting to share, right? I get that. But who boy, oh boy, that was a lot. It was too much actually for me at the time. I probably should have known better. Either way, that's not a normal dynamic that we encounter outside of public life.
Um, being a public figure, that's what you are when you're an [00:04:00] author. So I, like, I could totally sit with a friend and tell them about losing my dog. And then they tell me about losing their dog. And I would have plenty of compassion to be present in that conversation with them, right? But imagine you tell a group of people your story and then they line up in each one.
Tells you theirs over and over and over again. Jesus. Yeah. The dynamic of our relationships with readers is fuckin bonkers from the start. It's just a weird framing, so we might as well acknowledge that. And I get a person's objections to participating in this dynamic. That being said, do I think that building an email list is one of the wisest things an author can do for their career?
Yes, absolutely. I've never heard of a situation where I was like, you know what, the wisest thing you can do here is not start an email list. Definitely don't do that. The reason I say this isn't because an email list will necessarily be the key to you releasing [00:05:00] each book onto the bestseller list. The reason I say this is because having direct access to your readers turns down the volume on a bunch of other anxieties you may encounter.
Remember the episode on what if your account is banned? If you have your reader emails, this becomes much less catastrophic. How many times have the, you know, the goddamn social media algorithms changed in the last 10 years?
Oh, no one is seeing your posts anymore, unless you pay. Well, guess where you don't have to pay to play your email list. Seriously, those emails are the foundation upon which authors can build some psychological security. And we all need a little bit of that to be able to keep making, you know, wise decisions for our business.
That's why I don't give anyone an out on this. You are almost guaranteed to live in an elevated state of stress if access to your readers depends solely on the whims of big tech companies. Also, use this as your [00:06:00] reminder to go and download the CSV files of your email lists.
Download those, you know, just in case MailerLite or ActiveCampaign or whoever else you use has a catastrophic failure or is hacked or whatever other weird thing you can think up. Download those spreadsheets. And then, you know, maybe set a calendar reminder to do that regularly every month. If you aren't picking up on it, the answer to what if I hate email isn't going to be, that's fine, don't have a list, delete your email account.
Instead, I'm going to hopefully change the way you feel about email so that you can make the most of this exceptional tool that builds the solid foundation of a sustainable.
So our hatred for email usually breaks down into two kinds, hatred of maintaining an email list and hatred of responding to emails. Let's look at the email list first. More than likely, you've pulled in some shoulds [00:07:00] around this activity that don't align with your energy. I hear this a lot. How often should I email my list?
Once a week? Once every two weeks? Once a month? I can tell you absolutely there is no should around this. You get to decide. You don't even have to email them on a schedule. If you email your readers out of obligation without much to say or offer, then they might say yes. Stop opening your emails. So allowing a sense of obligation to determine this isn't necessarily the wisest or most strategic approach.
Now, I will say that if you go a year without emailing your lists and then you email them about a new book, you might be disappointed by how few people click the link and buy, but that's more matter of setting your expectations appropriately or not having expectations at all. Then it is a real problem.
Speaking from experience, I have four main email lists that I keep active, active ish. One is for FFS Media, [00:08:00] where I have a bunch of authors subscribed. You might be one of them. Another is for my paranormal cozy mysteries. Another is for my humor and satire. And the last one is for my crime fiction. I've tried all kinds of approaches for my email strategy and I think I've made literally every quote unquote mistake people warn about over the years.
And here's my takeaway from all that. It's fine. It's all an experiment anyway. There aren't hard and fast rules for anything related to email lists because each person's relationship with their readers will be different. An email is simply a relationship tool. I found that my cozy readers like the relationship I build with them on a weekly basis through email.
They respond well to it. I get sales each time I send an email because I have links to my books in the footer of the email. But if I miss a week, I don't see any negative consequences, except, you know, maybe a few sales that might have happened, but we'll never know what could have [00:09:00] been. And that's okay.
With my FFS media list, I try to send once a week. But if I really have nothing of interest for people, I'm not going to waste anyone's time. It's important for me to establish the trust with those folks that if I email them, there's something inside that email that they will want to either read or sign up for.
So some weeks I have no idea what I'm going to send. And then I come up with something awesome out of nowhere. And then some weeks I have no idea what I'm going to send. And I don't come up with anything. So I skip that week. I haven't seen any negative effects of this approach. And It just works really well with my energy levels.
Now, my humor list gets an email almost never at this point. And I'll be honest, I do lament that reality somewhat. But at the same time, I haven't felt especially funny lately. And my sci fi comedy series that I'm kind of in the middle of, it isn't selling like I hoped, no matter what I throw at [00:10:00] it. So my attention has shifted away from that pen name.
Until I have something else to write and publish for them. I don't think anyone on that list really minds, I mean, sure, they would take more emails from me, but what usually happens is I pop up every few months, like, Hey guys, wanna hear a batshit insane story that'll make you laugh? And of course they do.
So, in my mind, I perceive that all is forgiven when I do that. I actually have the closest relationships with my humor readers. Some of them have been emailing with me for years. So this approach is clearly working for them enough, and it's working for me and where my attention is flowing right now. So that's important to remember.
You only have a limited amount of attention factor that into your email strategy, rather than building some. You know, ideal schedule for an ideal form of you that has never existed or, you know, maybe existed when you were in your 20s and had the energy of a horny rabbit in spring. We want to be real with our energy and what we have to give.
We don't need to be [00:11:00] planning anything for some ideal version of ourselves. Okay, so lastly, my crime fiction list is getting super neglected lately, and that's because the books I have out didn't perform like I'd hoped and I was Getting a much better ROI on advertising other series. So I love writing crime fiction and I'll keep writing it at some point, but probably not until 2025.
So I'll probably just see if I can resurrect that existing list when the time comes. It'll work a little bit. I'm sure that's not worth forcing out emails to those folks. And I have no book news to speak of though. It's not worth it to me, at least. So that's my rationale with my lists. You can see that I don't take any standard approach here.
I treat each list the way that works for me and that my list seems to appreciate. So to some extent you can train your readers. On what to expect from you. I think sometimes authors forget that. They forget who's in charge. It's your list. You don't have to run it like a [00:12:00] tyrant, but you also don't have to provide it like free services to the people who subscribe, right?
You don't have to be their pro bono therapist or their individual customer service when they don't know how to click a link and you don't have to work on any one person's schedule. Right. Now, will people ask you to do all these things and more? Of course. And I'll talk a little bit more about that when I go into how to deal with emails from readers.
But what about what we put in our email newsletters? What are the shoulds we've picked up there? Again, there really are no hard shoulds on this. You can literally do whatever you want with your email list. Like you're a writer, get creative, be weird, be, be creative, be real, be whatever you want to be. They signed up to hear from you.
There are kind of no rules here. I mean, maybe don't give out like your home address, but that seems more like common sense than a rule. So there seems to be this idea that You, the author, have to share about [00:13:00] yourself in your emails to your readers. And that is not correct. If you feel comfortable sharing from the heart, great.
That can create a strong emotional connection with folks and engender lots of loyalty from readers. But if you're an Enneagram five, don't worry, you don't have to share about your feelings or personal life.
You can still maintain boundaries between you and your readers. So here's my suggestion. Share about your interests. Share about things you learned. Share your research that you've been doing for your work in progress. Or even share snippets of your work or short stories. Thanks. So these are going to be more comfortable things for a five to share who likes to have some separation from the energy suck that relationships with strangers can be.
I will repeat, you can share whatever feels nice to you with your readers. Memes that made you laugh, Wikipedia articles you browsed, pictures you've taken, reviews of books you really enjoyed reading, [00:14:00] on and on and on. There is no format you must follow to any of this. You don't even have to follow the same format, email after email.
Mix it up. Make the rules. And then at the bottom of your email, just below the signature, you can remind them that you have books they can buy. Include a picture of the covers in a link. They'll click it. So it really can be this simple, and you don't have to email regularly. You can tell people who sign up, I send emails when I have something to share.
You know, just communicate how things are going to be run around these parts, and people will adjust. Or, they won't adjust, and they'll show themselves out. And that's okay too. So much of the dislike I hear about email lists from authors is self imposed. You hate forcing yourself to think of things to send out.
Okay, then don't force yourself. You're a writer. You'll have ideas pop up. You'll run sales now and again, and you'll want to tell people about it. You'll have new releases to email to them. [00:15:00] Add in a little flair if you have the energy for it and don't add anything if you're tired. I've sent out emails that are little more than just, Hey, the new book is here.
Click this link to buy it. And people bought it. I've also sent out emails that have the link to my new book and a little behind the scenes story about the creation of the book. People enjoyed that too. I have seen no noticeable difference in sales, depending on my approach there.
So if you don't like dealing with your email list. It's time to open up your skull and rustle around in there for whatever shoulds are making that process unpleasant. And then, you know, just get those out of there. Toss them out. Not only will you feel better, but as your resistance to the idea of email goes down, your ideas for what to send will increase.
Also, if you find that you prefer to have a schedule for your emails, Then create a damn schedule. If it works for you, then do it. If it doesn't work for you, [00:16:00] then don't do it. . That's my point. Okay, so let's talk about the second grievance. A lot of authors have about email, and that's responding to reader emails.
If you want your business to continue functioning, there are some emails that must be responded to, you know, feedback for cover designers, questions from clients about how to pay you and so forth. This doesn't mean that you have to be the one to answer with these emails though. Not all the time. If you really, really feel dread when you open your inbox, it might be worth your time to pay a virtual assistant.
One with a trustworthy reputation. Cause you're letting them in your inbox. Yes. To answer those emails for you as much as possible. Some of them you have to answer and that's life, right? We can't make our career completely without pain points. I have tried, trust me, but we can narrow the pain points down to a manageable amount so that they don't outweigh the parts of the job that give us a lot of energy.
So you can have someone else respond to your emails and clear out the clutter in your [00:17:00] inbox. So I had to do that when I got those dozens of dead pet emails. I just couldn't do it. There was no amount of forcing myself that would have worked. Because it was too much pain for me while I was also grieving my own pet loss.
So I paid my wonderful virtual assistant, Emily. Hi, Emily. She edits these episodes. I paid Emily to respond on my behalf, and I'm sure it wasn't easy for her either. But my hope was that it didn't feel as personal. So maybe it was slightly easier. Also getting paid for it might've made things better. Uh, whereas I would not have been getting paid to respond to those emails.
I would have been losing money and been completely drained. So you can bring someone on to handle your emails. And a lot of authors are long overdue for this, frankly. But here's another option. You can, hear me out, not respond to emails from readers. Seriously. Most of the emails you receive aren't urgent.
[00:18:00] Would the reader like a response? Sure. But are they entitled to one? Not at all. That is important to remember. Let's look at why each type might be afraid to not reply to the garden variety reader emails. Okay, so let's do this. 1. The reformers may feel a sense of personal obligation to respond to every reader email and may be afraid that if they don't, the reader will start criticizing them publicly.
2. The helpers 3s may be afraid that if they don't respond, the reader will be mad at them and stop loving them, and that's really painful for a 2 to think about. 3s, the achievers, may be afraid that if they don't respond to some of these emails, it'll make them look bad and the person will go out after their reputation.
And possibly even turn other people against them. Fours, the individualists may feel like not responding will make them seem aloof or like a sellout rather than an authentic down to earth, uh, artist or in person. Fives, [00:19:00] the investigators usually really, really don't feel like responding, uh, but they feel a sense of unmet reciprocation and that feeling of unmet reciprocation can be a drain on their energy.
Six is the loyalists may worry that if they don't respond, they'll lose all the support of their readers. And they won't have a safety net of fans anymore. 7s, the enthusiasts, may be afraid that they will lose their status as fun and friendly with the reader if they don't respond. And they're usually not as upset about the distraction of emails as other types, maybe.
8s, the challengers, and I really had to stretch for this one, but they may feel like the reader email is a demand on their time that they didn't ask for. In other words, the reader is trying to control them with the expectation of a response. That may feel like a challenge to the challenger and they may respond, but not necessarily in the most friendly way.
So this would be kind of a worst case scenario for [00:20:00] eights who are fed up with all this reader email. And then nines, the peacemakers. may fear that not responding will create conflict with that reader that they may have to deal with later. So does your type's fear resonate at all? I don't know, just noticing the fear at work is a great first step to recognizing that it's probably not as scary as we originally felt it might be.
to simply not respond to emails from readers that we just don't feel compelled to respond to. But it also makes sense of why some of us get so anxious about leaving emails unresponded to. So one easy thing you can do is to let your readers know that you do read almost all of your emails, but you can't possibly respond to them all and Write your books.
So you're choosing the books. That way, they feel heard, but they also understand that if you don't write back, it's not personal. And then if you do feel compelled to write back, they'll feel extra special. [00:21:00] I've never seen this approach not work. Sure, you might have a super entitled reader every now and then, but you can let them show themselves out.
It's really a gift, I promise. You're gonna encounter some Really, the only way I can describe it is unhinged people when you choose this career, right? There's no amount of caution you can take that would allow you to avoid encountering those people. The wisest approach is usually to not respond and let them move on.
Save the email if it's harassment. You need that evidence and a lot of the women listening probably already have a folder on their computer desktop for screenshots of online harassment and general creepiness, but keep those receipts. Weirdos who feel entitled to your attention are also one of those pain points of this job that you can't really get around, but you can certainly roast them privately with your trusted friends.
And I find that I feel a lot better after a session like that. I could tell you some stories about what men have offered, uh, in my [00:22:00] inbox, not even like spam, like an actual human being. So, yes, uh, some of the threats, some of the offers, um, to help me reproduce, all kinds of interesting things. So, it happens, yeah.
Your inbox doesn't have to be a huge source of stress for you though. If you don't feel comfortable deleting emails you don't plan on responding to, you can just like create a folder for them. Emails I haven't read and won't read, right? Name it something like that.
Uh, and just chuck those emails over there and get them out of sight. Clean the place up. Tidy up. So I'll be honest with all my pen names and author services that I provide and authors emailing me out of the blue and project based emails from cover designers, so forth. I basically take a triage approach to my inbox.
Emails that my career depends on get answered first, then the ones that could be beneficial to answer in a timely manner, those get answered, then the ones that are done out of the goodness of my heart [00:23:00] get a response, and then I delete the ones that are just obnoxious. So sorry to say it, but yeah, sometimes this includes emails from people I've never had a conversation with who are like, how do I publish a book?
If my response would essentially be, let me Google that for you. I don't respond for the sake of my own sanity. And you know what? It feels like a little treat to myself. Do people sometimes get weird and aggressive when I don't give them the attention they ask for from me for free? Sure, that's life. Some people are not super healthy.
And I've just kind of decided at this point that I'm not going to twist myself into a pretzel or waste my own time as a result of their unhealthiness. You're actually free to do the same. It's, it's wonderful. Highly recommend. So as your audience grows, the demands on your time and energy in your inbox will grow as well.
It's really important that we make some rules for ourselves on what we will and won't spend time on. Your rules will not be someone else's rules. But I hope that [00:24:00] each of us can stop pretending that we can do it all and accept that there are going to be trade offs that we make. Time and attention spent on emails is time and attention not spent on other things, period.
Do you want to spend your time apologizing to a reader who you owe nothing to just to make sure you don't run afoul of their sense of entitlement?
Or do you want to use those minutes of your precious life to, I don't know, prepare a healthy meal? Do you want to show a reader how to click a link that you sent, or do you want to take a break from the computer and go pet your cat? So really, where are your boundaries here? What is the line that you won't cross with your time and energy in your inbox?
The sooner you get those sorted out, the less stress you'll feel around email, I promise. So to answer the question of what if I hate writing emails, I'll say that you likely don't hate emails. You just hate the shoulds you've picked up about the process. So root out those shoulds, get creative, look at your fear about not [00:25:00] responding to readers head on, and then set some rules for yourself around email that feel right and kind of nice to you.
Sending emails is just writing. It's just writing. You're a writer. So writing is presumably an enjoyable activity if the content is right. If it's not fun, that's because your idea of what the content should be Is too narrow, broaden it to fit who you are, and then only respond to the emails you want to respond to and the ones that move your business along.
And if even that feels like too much, consider hiring an assistant to help out for a couple of hours a week. All right. I think that's enough for this episode. Don't you? Let's stop talking about email and go move on with our lives. All right. So thank you for listening. If you want to reach out, you can, of course, email me at contact at FFS dot media.
And if your email is compelling enough and doesn't make me want to go, let me Google that for you. I'll reply at my earliest [00:26:00] convenience. The world didn't end when I set that boundary. Anyway, I'm Claire Taylor and thanks for listening to another episode of the What If For Authors podcast.