Email Training for Authors

Issue #919 May 26, 2015
Publisher: Joan Stewart

“Tips, Tricks and Tools for Free Publicity”

In This Issue

Email Training for Authors
Canva for Business
Amazon Challenges Etsy
Hound Video of the Week

This Weekend in the Hound House:

I’ll know this week if I’ve found a solution to the annoying squeaking coming from my $135 pair of Abeo walking shoes. You can hear me coming a quarter mile away. A few articles I found recommend sprinkling baby powder or corn starch under the inner soles. It makes the seams of the shoe slightly more slippery, so they can rub against each other more smoothly. We’ll see…

1. Email Training for Authors

It started out as a simple cheat sheet for authors on how to use email to create SuperFans.

Less than a month later, it has morphed into a live training program that starts next week. Based on the flood of comments and questions that authors have sent me about email marketing, it’s clear that most of them don’t know the basics of how to use email as a powerful marketing tool.

I’ve spent all weekend building the outline for “Author Email Boot Camp–How to Use Email to Create SuperFans,” a six-week pilot course that will teach you how to make much more money from your books, products and services. How? By emailing high-quality content regularly without pestering people who have given you permission to email them.

Only the first 20 people who register will be accepted. The first online class starts June 4.

Ideal candidates include fiction or nonfiction authors (even if you don’t have a book yet), publishers, small presses, B2B marketers who serve the publishing community, book coaches and book publicists.

To guarantee quantifiable results, you’ll need to meet a list of criteria before enrolling in the program.

If you attend the classes, complete all your assignments and ask for help when you need it, you’ll be able to build your email list, offer top-quality content, grow your fan base and sell more books and services–or your money back. Registration starts now and ends at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, May 30.

Read all the details at of how to take advantage of this valuable training.

2. Canva for Business

If you’re not using Canva yet–the slick online platform that lets you create posters, dazzling graphics and images for social sharing–you’re missing out on the best free graphics tool I’ve found in several years.

I’ve been pleading with Canva to offer more business-related images and options, and they heard me!

If you want to join the waiting list for Canva Work and get early access and freebies, pre-register with your email. When I asked Canva if my hunch is correct, that this will be a paid version, they said they can’t release those details now “but rest assured there will always be a free version of Canva.”

3. Amazon Challenges Etsy

Amazon has been putting out feelers to people who sell handmade items on Etsy, asking them complete a form about their businesses and if they’d be interested in a selling on “Handmade at Amazon.”

It looks like the first major challenge to Etsy, the giant crafts marketplace.

The results will be interesting because Etsy vendors have been complaining for years about Etsy’s high fees. But Amazon’s seller fees are even higher.

4. Hound Video of the Week

Thanks to Publicity Hound Lois Turley of Fort Smith, Ark., for this step-by-step video on how to turn an old broken end table into a luxurious four-poster bed for your dog or cat. The video is in the center of the page. It would take me five days to make this! That’s why God made kennels.

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