The problems:
Email newsletters have notoriously low conversion rates for reader sites, even more for authors. Industry standards are well below 25% (mailchimp.com).
Clicks inside of email newsletters are even more abysmal.
The solution:
Test a new weekly publication that goes straight to a reader's ereader without charging the reader a subscription fee.
Although Amazon has experimented with a subscription type service for blogs and magazines, none of us have heard of any runaway success. If anyone knows of one, please share. But by and large, individual authors won't/don't have the time or resources to run a successful blog subscription service through Amazon's service.
Proposed: the eEKLY
The eEKLY is a weekly publication put out by an ereading community website, a publisher, or other group of authors with a similar marketing plan in mind. This electronic publication is made available in .mobi, .epub, and PDF so that readers can download or send the file straight to their Kindles, Nooks, or computer.
Benefits of the eEKLY
Links to books (and other products on affiliate sites) are hosted inside of the ereader so the reader has immediate access to a one-click buy environment.
Authors can use the eEKLY to give away a free copy (serialized over 3 to 4 weeks) in a qualified manner. No more thousands of downloads that who knows who will read? By serializing a "free" book, authors have access to their conversion rates of sampling, answering the question of how many readers who read the first section of your novel come back for more?
Serialized books through the eEKLY can foster discussion for a publisher or e-reading community as it taps naturally into a book club type setup, opening the door for direct author/reader interaction about the novel, because the community is on the same page with a novel at the same time.
By choosing other books to feature at the end of each section, including an author's other books and books in the same genre, there is an opportunity to humanize the "We Also Suggest" algorithm.
Readers receive a valuable publication, meaning there is content inside they WANT to open and read as opposed to an email newsletter that is 100% disposable.
Because the novel is serialized in 3-4 parts, readers will hold onto and possibly repeatedly reference the material inside each eEKLY.
Drawbacks of the eEKLY
Authors must be willing to serialize their novel, for free, with no expectation of royalties, up to 10,000 downloads or for 30 days (sites publishing the eEKLY would agree to take down the files 30 days from their release). Instead an archive file would be offered: a catalog of books that were featured that week.
Readers need training to sideload or send the file to their ereader. This is a great opportunity for authors involved in a specific eEKLY to talk to a reader about their ereader, but could also be a huge headache/cut down on reader adoption.
Eventually, involvement in the eEKLY would require a fee paid by the authors featured to compensate the editor for time compiling the files (There is no fee to be a part of the test, which is what this is).
So who wants in?
I am making a test prototype of the eEKLY (4 issues) for two ereader community sites, The-Cheap.net and eBookSwag.com. One of the books I am serializing for free is my own, but I am willing to serialize up 2 other books, and I can advertise books in each issue.
I am looking for up to 2 other titles to serialize (need word documents of manuscript and cover art to make ebook files of the eEKLY issues) that are romance, chicklit, contemporary fiction, or women's fiction oriented. There's nothing wrong with the other genres, and eventually, if the test is successful, there will be multiple genres for the eEKLY so that the "Also Bought" type algorithms are more humanly influenced.
I am looking for up to 15 additional titles per issue, for a total of 60 other books that I can feature. I will need an image of your cover (longest side 200 px) and the ASIN. I can match up and find the book on Nook if it's available there. If your book is on Nook too, first priority will be given to those titles because The-Cheap.net is strong Nook community.
If you are serializing your novel, you agree to allow each "chunk" to be made available for no more than 30 days or up to 10,000 downloads (as calculated by clicks).
What do you get?
Test out a new innovative spin to the reader newsletter housed within an e-reader for free.
Full disclosure of the clicks (Amazon) and # of downloads each eEKLY issue receives, as tracked through link clicks.
So let's get started!
Click here to register how you want to be featured in the first month of eEKLY issues.
A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby. CANCELLED is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble WIP: STONE. Never up Mom's expectations, a clothing designer kicks "Mr. Right" to the curb.
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