Episode 058 - Author Newsletters with Lee Savino
December 22, 2020
Lee Savino discusses AUTHOR NEWSLETTERS, the one area of an author’s business about which Lee says “just do it,” imagining your newsletter as a conversation with a specific person over a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, and a pep talk about how to get past the “I don’t want to pester them” mindset and recognizing that your work is a gift that you’re sharing with people who have opted in because they’re interested.
Lee Savino is a USA Today bestselling author, mom, and choco-holic. She loves connecting with other authors and writers. She moderates a Facebook group, Millionaire Author Mastermind, for authors serious about making money from their books and is the instructor, along with Nicholas Erik, of the Six Figure Author Marketing Challenge.
"When you are sending an email, you are connecting with readers. Even if all you're doing is telling them about your new book. Marketing is connection. And I'm talking about vampire romance because there are some people listening who are, 'I never want to hear about that.' Good! I don't want to tell you about it! You will never join my newsletter. You will never sign up for updates. That's great. And if you accidentally join, you would unsubscribe. You'd be like, 'Lee, I was looking for the author newsletter. Why am I getting these?' Yeah, I think that mindset is important to embrace." --Lee Savino
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Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast, today my guest is Lee Savino. Hey, Lee, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Lee: Hey, Matty, I'm doing great. So glad to be here.
[00:00:09] Matty: I am very glad to have you here. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you ...
[00:00:14] Lee Savino is a USA Today bestselling author, mom, and chocoholic. She loves connecting with other authors and writers and invites you to join her Facebook group for authors serious about making money from their books: Millionaire Author Mastermind.
[00:00:31] And we'll ask Lee to give some contact information for there at the end of our conversation.
[00:00:35] I met Lee when I signed up for the Six Figure Author Marketing Challenge course, which I found out about after talking to Nicholas Erik about his FIVE KEYS TO BUILDING A RESILIENT INDY BUSINESS, and that was in Episode 052 of the podcast. Of course, I want everybody to listen to all the episodes, but if you're thinking about going full-time as an indy author, that is a must-listen episode--052--and I'll provide a link to that as well. And Lee and Nick are co-instructors for the course, and I was especially impressed with what Lee had to say about newsletters. So I have invited her on the podcast to talk about that topic.
[00:01:11] And I think that listeners can probably tell what aspect of the writing craft and the publishing voyage I'm struggling with at any particular time based on the topics of the podcast discussions. Author newsletters is definitely something that I struggle with, not so much for my non-fiction platform, but for my fiction platform.
[00:01:28] So to get us all in the right mindset for talking through this topic, Lee, what is it about newsletters that makes you enjoy it, assuming it's something that you do enjoy?
[00:01:41] Lee: So early on, I was told by my website guy, he had been involved in direct response marketing since the olden days when it was done with mailers, you get lists of addresses. And so he had gotten a degree in this from one of the few places in the US where you can get a degree on direct response mailing and marketing. So he was so excited to say, "You can set up this email list." And I had started to read Nick Stephenson's READER MAGNETS book, where Nick was learning more about marketing from other venues and bringing it to the authors and saying, "Look, give readers a freebie that relates to your books, and I would relate it to your top series, whatever you're working on, and then they'll sign up to your email and whenever you email them, it's basically you're building your own BookBub." BookBub does not have Facebook, BookBub does not have Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn. BookBub has email and there's some statistic out there that they're more likely to buy from a newsletter than anywhere else because people check email. Email is considered more serious for people to open it. Email is a really strong way to connect with readers, to sell them something, to tell them about your books and to let them know, "Okay, the next book is out. This book is on sale," and that's how you connect with them.
[00:03:17] And the email is something that you own. So your email list, you can take with you. If your mail provider shuts down or gets shut down, you could take that email list and go somewhere else. I would not email people directly out of Gmail. You'll get your Gmail shut down as a spammer. But I would set up your newsletter via MailerLite or one of the services that knows how to follow the rules.
[00:03:41] But you can get kicked off Facebook. You lose all your followers. Same with any other platform, as far as I know -- Patreon. LinkedIn. If they think that you've broken the rules somehow -- and on Facebook, especially authors writing under a pseudonym, they might look at that pseudonym with some suspect, even if you send them in a DBA, doing business as, piece of paper -- they could just take away your Facebook. I'm pretty active on Facebook, but I know it could go away tomorrow and if it did, I'd probably get more done. I'd probably get more writing done and I probably make more money and it would be from writing and sending newsletters. ...
[00:00:06] Lee: Hey, Matty, I'm doing great. So glad to be here.
[00:00:09] Matty: I am very glad to have you here. To give our listeners a little bit of background on you ...
[00:00:14] Lee Savino is a USA Today bestselling author, mom, and chocoholic. She loves connecting with other authors and writers and invites you to join her Facebook group for authors serious about making money from their books: Millionaire Author Mastermind.
[00:00:31] And we'll ask Lee to give some contact information for there at the end of our conversation.
[00:00:35] I met Lee when I signed up for the Six Figure Author Marketing Challenge course, which I found out about after talking to Nicholas Erik about his FIVE KEYS TO BUILDING A RESILIENT INDY BUSINESS, and that was in Episode 052 of the podcast. Of course, I want everybody to listen to all the episodes, but if you're thinking about going full-time as an indy author, that is a must-listen episode--052--and I'll provide a link to that as well. And Lee and Nick are co-instructors for the course, and I was especially impressed with what Lee had to say about newsletters. So I have invited her on the podcast to talk about that topic.
[00:01:11] And I think that listeners can probably tell what aspect of the writing craft and the publishing voyage I'm struggling with at any particular time based on the topics of the podcast discussions. Author newsletters is definitely something that I struggle with, not so much for my non-fiction platform, but for my fiction platform.
[00:01:28] So to get us all in the right mindset for talking through this topic, Lee, what is it about newsletters that makes you enjoy it, assuming it's something that you do enjoy?
[00:01:41] Lee: So early on, I was told by my website guy, he had been involved in direct response marketing since the olden days when it was done with mailers, you get lists of addresses. And so he had gotten a degree in this from one of the few places in the US where you can get a degree on direct response mailing and marketing. So he was so excited to say, "You can set up this email list." And I had started to read Nick Stephenson's READER MAGNETS book, where Nick was learning more about marketing from other venues and bringing it to the authors and saying, "Look, give readers a freebie that relates to your books, and I would relate it to your top series, whatever you're working on, and then they'll sign up to your email and whenever you email them, it's basically you're building your own BookBub." BookBub does not have Facebook, BookBub does not have Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn. BookBub has email and there's some statistic out there that they're more likely to buy from a newsletter than anywhere else because people check email. Email is considered more serious for people to open it. Email is a really strong way to connect with readers, to sell them something, to tell them about your books and to let them know, "Okay, the next book is out. This book is on sale," and that's how you connect with them.
[00:03:17] And the email is something that you own. So your email list, you can take with you. If your mail provider shuts down or gets shut down, you could take that email list and go somewhere else. I would not email people directly out of Gmail. You'll get your Gmail shut down as a spammer. But I would set up your newsletter via MailerLite or one of the services that knows how to follow the rules.
[00:03:41] But you can get kicked off Facebook. You lose all your followers. Same with any other platform, as far as I know -- Patreon. LinkedIn. If they think that you've broken the rules somehow -- and on Facebook, especially authors writing under a pseudonym, they might look at that pseudonym with some suspect, even if you send them in a DBA, doing business as, piece of paper -- they could just take away your Facebook. I'm pretty active on Facebook, but I know it could go away tomorrow and if it did, I'd probably get more done. I'd probably get more writing done and I probably make more money and it would be from writing and sending newsletters. ...
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[00:04:22] Matty: It sounds as if, based on what you've talked about in the class, that you not only recognize the business value of the newsletter, but you actually enjoy it. Is that the case -- you enjoy putting that together and reaching readers that way?
[00:04:35] Lee: I love connecting with people. My personality is warm, and I want to reach out. I'm a reader, so I love talking to people who read a lot, especially when they read the types of books that I read, and I read a lot of types of books, but obviously the books I write are my favorites. So I'd love to talk to them about that.
[00:04:57] And newsletters were difficult for me because I felt like it was so one-sided, but I found ways around that. And I actually was going to answer a question down the road on how to feel like I'm engaging and there's a bit of a back-and-forth conversation. Because that was the only thing I struggled with. I couldn't see their faces and I felt like it was just so one-sided. But I value the newsletter enough, and because I started growing it correctly from the beginning, it's just really powerful and it's really great.
[00:05:32] And I'll tell you, will love newsletters when you send out an email or you schedule it, and it goes out while you're at the park and then your book sales quintuple. That will make you love emails. I tell authors, if you don't like social media, don't do it. It's a waste of time. Just don't do any of it. If you don't want to blog, don't do it. Can it be useful? Absolutely. Anything can be useful. But do it because you have another reason to do it. Do it because you really want to. And same with books. Don't write what you think will sell, write something that you actually want to write and do think will sell, put those two together.
[00:06:13] But newsletters is the one thing I'd say, even if you hate it, if you think it's weird, even if it takes a while. Like me, it took a while for me to wrap my mind around just the concept of I have a freebie, people sign up to get the freebie, I send them the freebie, then they're on my newsletter, then I send them regular mailings and I just let them know how often I'm going to send it. That took a while for me to wrap my brain around it. And once I did, I was like, this is amazing. And even if it takes a while for you to get your mind around the concept and you don't like it, this is the one area I would say, just do it. Just do it.
[00:06:50] It's like writing books. Maybe you're not the best at dialogue or plot or whatever, but you need to embrace it. You need to embrace the fact, or just write poetry and embrace that. So writing newsletters is something and having a newsletter is something that you just embrace it.
[00:07:10] It is that powerful, even if you're not warm and fuzzy, even if you don't really want to bother readers or connect with them -- and we can talk about that in a second -- embrace it. And it'll give you such great returns in a way that Facebook will not -- a Facebook group or Facebook following, an Instagram following, a TikTok following, unless you're amazing at that.
[00:07:30] If you want to do TikTok, just do it. If you're going to do it anyway, maybe there is a way to engage your fans via TikTok, but don't join a dating site to sell your books. The same as Facebook and Instagram. Are you on there because you want to be on, then you want to connect with people, not to sell your books, then you can do that. But newsletter -- do it anyway. Take your medicine and do it even if you don't want to.
[00:07:53] Matty: I think you had mentioned one of the things that I believe is a barrier for many authors, myself included, and this is different between my fiction and nonfiction. So for my nonfiction, I have no problem sending out a biweekly newsletter. In fact, I'm thinking of moving it to weekly because then I can send it out in conjunction with a new podcast episode, and I can theme the newsletter around that topic so that when a newsletter went out right after our conversation aired, I could have information about, "Oh, here's an interesting article from Publishers Weekly about emails or here is a comparison of different email sites."
[00:08:31] I can think of lots of content that I, if I were a reader of that newsletter, would really value getting. And it's easy because you have an automatic topic, the writing craft and the publishing voyage, or whatever your non-fiction topic is. But with fiction, I'm always fighting that I-don't-want-to-be-a-pest mindset. I don't want to annoy my subscribers. And so I'm almost apologetic about it. When we started talking about email newsletters in the class, I looked through how I positioned my newsletter, all my positioning for my fiction newsletter was very apologetic, like, "I'll hardly ever send anything," and it's very counterproductive. I'm sure that sense conveys itself to the people who might otherwise sign up for it. So do you have any recommendations for people to get past that I-don't-want-to-annoy-subscribers mindset?
[00:09:24] Lee: Yes. So, a few things. It's so interesting for you because there's one email that you had sent happily, and you're thinking of increasing the frequency, letting everyone know, "Hey, I'm going to talk to you weekly from now on, because I'm just finding so much good material to send to you. And I have a podcast weekly."
[00:09:44] And that mindset is very much like, I have so much to give you. So carry that over to your fiction because fiction is also a gift. You had asked me to talk about the difference between selling and connecting and how much to do. And I think of selling or marketing as connection. I'm connecting with people and as a reader, I know that they really are looking for their next vampire romance novel, truly actively searching. They have a huge to be read pile. They're not in the mood to jump into contemporary romance and they want more vampire romance.
[00:10:29] I'm like this all the time, but I'm scrolling and I'm finding new people. And if someone says, "Hey, I just read this and I think it's great," or if my favorite author says, "Oh, I just wrote one," or wrote anything really because favorite authors of mine, I just need one button where I buy everything that you've written. I would seriously do it because then I'm not like, "Oh my gosh, I missed that novella over there."
[00:10:53] So when you are sending an email, you are connecting with readers. Even if all you're doing is telling them about your new book. Marketing is connection. And I'm talking about vampire romance because there are some people listening who are, "I never want to hear about that." Good! I don't want to tell you about it! You will never join my newsletter. You will never sign up for updates. That's great. And if you accidentally join, you would unsubscribe. You'd be like, "Lee, I was looking for the author newsletter. Why am I getting these?" Yeah, I think that mindset is important to embrace.
[00:11:33] Also, when you go to set up the newsletter, when people are entering to the newsletter, make sure you've made it very clear what they're doing. "Hi, I have this free vampire romance novella about the students and this vampire she discovers and he's hot and sexy," because that's how vampire romance happens to be. Thousand-year-old creature who's beautiful and they bond over Nietzsche -- that's a joke between Nick and I -- and then they fall in love. And all the vampire romance writers are like, "Ooh, I want to read that."
[00:12:13] Oh, and he has an ancient puppy called Cerebus and was everyone who's a nerd like me who loves that sort of thing is going to be like, "Yes, give me that free novella." And I'm like, "If you get this novella, you're signing into my newsletter." The next message will be, "Hi, you have now subscribed to my newsletter and here's your free gift." And then the next email will be the same: "Hey, you signed up, you're getting this free gift, make sure you get it, here it is, and now let me tell you a little bit about me." And I have no problem with sharing with a person this way, because I have told them.
[00:12:46] Imagine it this way. If I stand outside my house and say, "Hey, I'd love to invite you into my house for some food. I have this new book that I want to tell you about," or, "Come in to eat the food, and my husband has bees. And it's all made with this honey and I also have the honey to show you that I'm selling." And I just made it very clear that if you come into my house, I'm going to talk about our honey and we're not selling honey yet, but maybe one day, and you're going to probably leave with a complimentary jar of honey. And if you want to buy some honey, it'll be available.
[00:13:17] And it's so clear. And I have no problem telling somebody. I'm already excited about it, obviously, and I'm just going to be sharing with people who enter my living room. So people are going to sign up. You've made it very clear and the content you've given them is great. And you also feel great about your fiction books.
[00:13:36] And if you don't, if you have some compunction about that, I get it because I've had impostor syndrome, too. I've collected my positive reviews and I reread those regularly, so I get encouraged, but I also sign up for writing classes. I read books on craft. I want to make sure that my vampire romance is the best possible fiction that they could be reading.
[00:13:58] But there'll be people who love my books and people who don't want to go anywhere near them. And that's okay too. Because of the internet, we can reach the 10,000 people who will love it. And we just can talk to them for the rest of their lives. We don't have to talk to anyone else. And there's way more than 10,000 people, but those 10,000 people can end up on your list.
[00:14:17] Matty: Your example of the honey made me think of many years ago, one of my very first jobs was working at a Hickory Farms. Do you remember Hickory Farms, the cheese store?
[00:14:29] Lee: Yes, okay.
[00:14:31] Matty: One of my jobs was to stand outside in my little Hickory Farms uniform with a tray of samples of whatever cheese they were selling that day. It's exactly the same thing. Some people said, "I hate cheese," and then they walked by because Hickory Farms is largely a cheese store. It was fine. And then if they sampled the cheese and liked it, they might buy some cheese, but there wasn't an expectation. Hickory Farms wasn't mean to the people who didn't then buy the cheese that they had sampled. And the store was set up nicely and there was an understanding some people would walk through and not buy anything. Some people would walk through and buy something. And I didn't find that morally offensive
[00:15:10] Lee: And if you don't want it, you're not going to pick it up. And if you love it and you want it, you're going to, if you want to try it and see if you like it, that's what the free novella can be. And for me, my free novellas, I have a couple because I've been writing since 2015, even before that I had random free books and I took one of those random books that I've written that is for sale and published nowhere right now, but I made that my freebie and that's what my website guy taught me to do. He said, "Okay, let's make this freebie." He made a graphic for me. I got a cover for it on Fiverr. This was back when I was just beginning. So I always have this freebie and people were signing up.
[00:15:55] And then once they signed up, those were the only people I emailed. I didn't email my personal friends or anything like that. So I already felt, "Oh my gosh, I have some people over here who want to hear from me." Even if it's 10 people, that's fine. And if they don't want to hear from me, they'll unsubscribe.
[00:16:11] Then I started writing really racy romance. So then I needed to make sure that my freebie matched that and wasn't this random freebie. It was a fantasy. It was romancey. It was something I wrote just for fun. So I unpublished that, got rid of that, and got something that was more sexy romance that was linked to what I was writing, what I still am writing.
[00:16:34] And so that list has grown. And what's so interesting is I'm now publishing in other languages -- in German, et cetera. -- and I got the freebie translated. I spent an extra thousand dollars to get that 20,000-word freebie short story translated. And now in my sleep, people are signing up and ending up on my German newsletter.
[00:16:59] And for me, it's okay if people unsubscribe. I just want to make sure that I'm growing more than I'm getting unsubscribes, because that will tell me that everything's in alignment. Like I said, "Hey, I'm selling cheddar cheese. Taste the cheddar cheese. If you like it, here's more." And they're not surprised by anything. Everything is consistent. Vampire romance and then here's more vampire romance. I think that if that was inconsistent, I would lose a lot of people, and then I'd be like, "Okay, how can I make sure that this is all a consistent message?"
[00:17:34] And I'm really just thinking about the reader. "Okay, they want this type of book. I want to write this type of book. I'm going to find the people in the world who want to read it and I'm going to let them know when I have something new, or I'm going to let them know when I have a sale. I actually send weekly, because I have a lot of releases, I have a lot of books and audio coming out. I have a separate list for German, so people who read in German end up on a completely separate list. Same for French, Italian, Spanish. And then my English list, it's just everybody who wants the sexy vampire romance.
[00:18:11] And then I have another list for authors. I will never send, unless I did by accident, which did happen. "Hey, do you want to make a lot of money from your books? Here's this newsletter." I totally sent that accidentally to my huge list -- and I got a lot of signups because people were like, "Oh, this is so neat." Some people were like, "Why did I get this?" But very few because I'm chatty as an author in my newsletter. So they just knew, "Oh, Lee's talking to us. Okay. What's she going to talk about next? Werewolf romance? Nope. Oh, something about authors." But I did say, "Whoops, didn't mean to send you guys that."
[00:18:49] Matty: You had shared some really good information about the importance of picturing the person you're sending the email to. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:18:58] Lee: Yeah. So this is like canon in direct response marketing, to the point where I have read if somebody has a business selling investment opportunities, or investment newsletters, which is a huge business, in direct marketing, like a billion-dollar business, they will put up for reader avatar that is so detailed. Okay, I'm going to stop talking marketing speak. Think of your ideal reader. it might be yourself. It might be someone, or maybe a Facebook group. I've met some of my fans over the years.
[00:19:35] And so I know that my ideal reader, she's a huge fan of all sorts of sexy books. I have two. I have one that's in her thirties and one that's in her fifties. And both of them are women. Both of them are very loving and nurturing and they're reading sexy books because it's a great inexpensive way to take a break from their life, which is very busy where they have kids or grandkids or fur babies or work volunteering at church or whatever, and they're just so busy and this is a great escape. And The books are max going to be $5, or they have Kindle unlimited so they can download one and then they can get the next one tomorrow.
[00:20:17] And they'll read these very short 150-page, sexy vampire romances, and they just want a long series. They want to read a bunch of them. And when I think of that person and, I can think of exact people, but I can also meld them together and be like, okay, it's a woman and she's sitting in my living room and what am I going to tell Mary, what am I going to tell Mary today? How do I give Mary something in my newsletter today that's fun and enjoyable and surprising?
[00:20:49] And for me, I'm more willing to talk about some personal things. I keep everything very happy. So I share the personality, the side of myself that loves to read, loves to write loves dragons, loves vampires, is excited about tea and dragon mugs. I'm not talking about the side of myself that is complaining and is tired because of my kids. I do share about my kids. I don't really share about other members of my family that often, but I felt comfortable talking about when I was having babies, so I do share that. You do not have to; a lot of people just share about their pets. But you don't really have to put anything super personal in. What I'm doing is I'm choosing facets of myself that will foster this kind of fun, light, enjoyable.
[00:21:47] I don't really talk about national tragedies. I have mentioned, "Guys, we're all quarantining, I hope you guys are saying, stay safe and healthy, and I love you. I'm staying in with a good book," that sort of thing, because that's me. But I'm not talking about politics. I didn't mention the election in the US. it's one facet of me and I feel good about that because I want to create this fun, positive place where, okay, in this email, I'm always going to feel good and I'm going to learn about sexy vampire romance, and that's pretty much what I'm giving them. And that's what they're opening the email for.
[00:22:26] Matty: Do you feel that the content has to be different if you're active on a social media platform? So for example, I'm pretty active on Facebook for both my fiction and nonfiction, and I'll share pictures of my dogs and here's a picture from a walk and things like that. Do you feel that the newsletter has to be different or can you reuse content across those two platforms?
[00:22:46] Lee: I would definitely reuse that content. I would take exactly what you're doing. Cause Facebook for me was easier and some people hate it. If you hate it, don't do it. But I love it because I could see faces and newsletter was difficult for me because I wanted to see faces, which is why I talked about the reader avatar or your ideal reader that you can picture in your head. They're sitting across from me in the living room and you're like, "Oh, I have a new audio book out. Oh, here's a picture of my cat being fat and lazy. Isn't that awesome?" Stuff like that.
[00:23:17] So if you're already doing that on Facebook group for your fiction, I'd take exactly the same content, and put it in your newsletter and maybe you get a slightly different voice, but maybe it's just the same voice. You can do different things in different mediums, so sometimes you tweak things a little bit. But take the picture of the cat. Say the same thing. Say the same thing about the picture of the walk.
[00:23:39] I also know that people signed up to hear about my book, so I'm going to tell them. I also love to share snippets of my writing, so I do that as much as possible. Here's a scene. Here's an excerpt. This is what's coming. I love selling books before they're available to buy. So I talk about what's coming all the time. Maybe because I feel really comfortable with that. I'm like, that's not an ask that's I'm giving you something ahead of time. And then when the time comes for them to, they can purchase the pre-order or the book itself, they're so excited. They're like, "Oh my gosh, I've been waiting. I've been dying to read more."
[00:24:21] Matty: The episode right before this one is a whole episode on pre-orders with Joe Lallo. That'll be fun for people to listen to that one and then think about how they can play that out in their email newsletter.
[00:24:33] Lee: Yes. Play it out. Share your writing, I love sharing the writing content and finding really juicy excerpts. I like to showcase my writing because I'm confident as a writer. I like prose. I like pretty writing. So I'm always trying to find something that leaves that reader with that feeling of, "Oh my gosh!" And also, I write erotic books so I can put really racy stuff in a newsletter, and I would not do that on Facebook.
[00:25:06] Matty: You don't want to accidentally send that to your author list.
[00:25:10] Lee: No. Oh, my audience pretty much knows what I write, so they would just laugh. But yeah, I, am careful, that only happened once, and it was interesting because a lot of my readers turned out to be either authors or aspiring authors. And I think it was meant to go out to them. I don't know how it happened.
[00:25:28] Matty: Continuing our conversation about content a little bit, I find that the emails that I enjoy getting from fiction authors have a theme. One of my favorite email newsletters that I sent out, and I should go back and look at the stats to see if anybody else found this interesting, is that many years ago, my husband and I were thinking about getting a place in the Adirondacks. That never panned out, but we did go up and we saw a house that I loved, and it became the house that my first character lived in in THE SENSE OF DEATH, Ann Kinnear's Adirondack cabin. And then I must have been signed up for some kind of notification thing on Zillow because I got a notice that a place was for sale and I opened it up and it was this cabin. And so I sent out a newsletter saying, "Look, Ann Kinnear's cabin is for sale, you can actually go through and see pictures of it."
[00:26:22] And it was not a sell. ideally someone would say, "Oh, I love the Adirondacks. I'm going to read the book that was the setting for," but I didn't do any explicit selling, but it was tied in with the book. I think the exception to that is pets. People like to see pets regardless of whether they have anything to do with your book. But do you think it's a good idea to stick with things that are in some way related to the content of your fiction or do you feel like anything's game when it comes to newsletter content?
[00:26:52] Lee: I think anything's game because it's you and you're the only one having your experience and you're putting those things together yourself. I think that's awesome. Obviously, you were excited to share that content and if you feel like you want the theme and you want it just to all to relate to the books then do that. And you'll attract the readers and the newsletter subscribers that really enjoy that.
[00:27:17] Matty: I think it makes it easier for me to think in those terms. I'm all about templates and Excel spreadsheets. So if I think of a newsletter and it's going to be like, here are my upcoming author events, here's a new book launch, here's some attractive pictures from Chester County, Pennsylvania, which is where most of my stories are set. Oh, look, here's a story about mount Desert Island, which is where some of my other stories are set.
[00:27:43] If I know it's going to be author appearances, book plug, interesting pictures, fun fact about something related to my books, I'm not sitting down and being faced on top of all the other problems, with a blank page. I'm like, "Oh, I just have to go find some attractive pictures of Bar Harbor. That's easy."
[00:28:04] Lee: Then that's what you want to share. And that's what you feel comfortable sharing. So I would, do that and I would lean into that. And also if you don't have those to share in that particular newsletter, but you have something to talk about, like a new audio release or something, you can pull from Facebook and the picture of the dog, the picture of the walk you took and, yeah, relate it back to your books. But also remember the living room. Maybe I'm just bad at conversation, which is also possible, but I just talk about the most random stuff with people. And the conversation just bumbles along and if you have a brain like mine, it completely makes sense to be talking about Nietzsche and then cheese, like totally, let's do it.
[00:28:48] Yeah, if, that is what you're excited about, I would definitely share that, and you can theme your newsletters that way -- setting and place. And if someone watching is not comfortable sharing anything personal, then don't share anything personal.
[00:29:05] Your books are personal though. So what in your books can you share about, can you talk about a certain character? Did you get drawings of this character? Did you get a map done? Even if it's a silly hand drawn map, you could still share it and be like, "Yeah, guys, I know my, to pick up to typography skills are really insanely great."
[00:29:29] And make jokes. If you're funny, my goodness, be funny.
[00:29:32] Lean into that and do that if you have that gift and if you're more analytical and you have other things. Nick and I are both doing an author course together. He's more analytical. He has all this data and I have, I'm pretty -- no, I'm kidding. I have a warm personality and I love connecting with people. And I love talking about newsletters and branding and how to write a book series that will sell that.
[00:30:00] And Nick and I have very different styles, but we can talk about the same subjects in different ways.
[00:30:05] And people are getting a lot out of the course because we're serving people in many different ways who are thinking about things many different ways. And of course his newsletters are very analytical, but they're very long and he does talk, and he cusses a little bit in them, which I like, I'm like, yeah, I like it when people are real, so cuss away. That's fine. He makes some little jokes. But he's talking about data and he obviously loves writing these emails cause they're like 3000 words each and I really enjoy reading them. And he's one of the few authors that I still subscribe to, until maybe my life changes and, I don't have time to read 3000-word emails on author marketing, which is possible, and then I would unsubscribe and no hard feelings.
[00:30:51] And then mine are going to be more chatty Cathy. So you can take that personality that you have -- and it's your personality and what you like is already coming out in your books -- and imagine someone like you, imagine that ideal reader sitting in your living room, or you're chatting with them while you're playing a video game if that's you, and what you'd be talking about. And talk about a few of those things.
[00:31:15] But also know that talking about your books isn't selling necessarily. "Buy my book" is a pretty on the nose sell, but if you're thinking of your books as gifts to readers and they can get it for $5 and have hours of entertainment, then "buy my book" is actually a way you're giving them something. You're connecting with them. So start to think of things that way.
[00:31:42] Matty: Are there any specific pieces of advice you'd have for an author who maybe is planning to write 50 books, but they've only got one, or an author who's working away, but their schedule is one book a year, let's say.
[00:31:55] Lee: Yeah. That's great because of certain types of genres for sure lend themselves to really intricately plotted and detailed and well-researched type books. I would just stick to your schedule and to your own inspiration. For me, I had the opposite problem. People were telling me, okay, it's time to make a bigger splash and to hit your goals as an author, you should write longer books and release them slower. And I was thinking about that and mulling over how I would do that. And meanwhile, my kids are two and four and they interrupt me every 30 seconds, and I realized that I don't want to write longer books at this time in my life. The thought of it isn't fun, so why would I do it?
[00:32:46] And again, I do think about marketing and how to sell books, but I was like, I've done really well with lots of short books, really short, that I released rapidly. So one a month, one every other month, why would I change what's working? And it is working because I've just made it work. I've just done it since 2015. And now I have long series and I write a new book and I can put book one on sale. And whenever I email, once a week, I can have a free book in that email every single week if I want it. And I love giving away books. So that would make me feel really happy. Sometimes I do that. I'm like, Oh, what do I have to offer? I want to give them something free this week. What can I do? And I'll go and I'll make a book free real quick and send it to them.
[00:33:32] So if your schedule is the other way, and you're just doing one a year, I would not send probably an email weekly. I would tell them it'll be once a month or once every six months. I just tell them how often I'm going to be sharing.
[00:33:46] And obviously you're probably researching a lot, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, you're researching the locale. You're researching the subject. If it's historical, you're uncovering tons of history. So talk about that. Talk about your writing process and what's going on behind the scenes, and then share a snippet of the writing. And then the next email is six months later, and you have the book up for pre-order and you just start talking to them probably a little bit more frequently, maybe once a month until the book releases, and you're giving them snippets. You're telling them about the writing process, the places, sharing the maps, sharing the pictures of the places you might've visited, talking about the basis of the characters. Tell a little story.
[00:34:34] Readers on your list, if you tell them, "Hey, I just email once a year because that's my writing schedule," and they found you and they know the types of books you write, they're probably like, "Okay, we're here for that. Just let me know when you write another book."
[00:34:46] Matty: If someone is changing the frequency, let's say I decide to daringly back off my commitment to only send anything when I launch a book, how do you set that up with readers so they don't feel like there was a bait and switch there, especially if you're emailing more frequently than maybe you originally set the expectation you would do.
[00:35:09] Lee: Yeah. There are a couple of different ways to do it. One is, "Hey, I want to email weekly now. And I've been doing it only every other week and it's going to be on the special topic, so sign up to this list if you want to get those newsletters, which will be sent weekly." That's one way to do it. You split your list. I've done this before. If I have a launch, I'm like, "Hi, I really want to share with you some extra stuff about this launch, click here if you want to be the first to know about the launch and to get some sneak peeks." And I email every day, but I only email that core of 500 people who sign up to just hear about that book launch. And I've separated them out -- in MailerLite you separate them out into a different group -- so I just emailed that group. They're the first to know. And then I'm just emailing my other newsletter weekly, which is still very frequent. And I don't do that often. I've maybe done it twice in my career because it's a lot of work.
[00:36:03] But, you might say, "I would love to let you know more about this launch, so click here and you're going to get a sneak peek, and then the next day I'm doing a contest," and this and that and the other. So that's one way to do it -- split off the list, either temporarily for a launch or permanently you're splitting it. Or just tell people and let the people who aren't into it unsubscribed.
[00:36:27] Because unsubscribing is not bad. I want you to embrace your unsubscribes. People who are unsubscribing either want to take a break. Like I just unsubscribed from two author newsletters today. I just needed a break. It was like this newsletter isn't bringing me joy anymore. I always know I can resubscribe. In fact, I probably will.
[00:36:46] One day I'll be like, "Oh, I love those newsletters." I save author newsletters. And right now if this whole subject is like, "Whoa," go right now -- this is your one piece of homework -- and sign up for your favorite author's newsletters, download their freebie, figure out how to sign up for new release news, whatever it is. And then save your favorite emails, read the emails, unsubscribe from the ones you're not into and notice what makes you open, what makes you click, and take those ideas and use them in your own newsletter.
[00:37:18] Matty: I love that advice. Is there some percentage of unsubscribes that you should start thinking about that it may be a problem?
[00:37:29] Lee: Yes. So my newsletter right now, I have one that's organic subscribers, it's 18,000 people. And I have this other one that I get from lots of promos and it's thousands of people. I do not watch my unsubscribes. I am more watching monthly to make sure overall I am either maintaining a level of subscribers or gaining. If I was losing subscribers at an insane rate, I would make sure that I was in alignment. I write a lot of paranormal romance. I'm going to write some just plain contemporary romance and I've started a separate contemporary romance newsletter, and I've set up that I emailed them less frequently and I might just end up merging them all later.
[00:38:14] But I think that if I started to send the contemporary romance readers non-contemporary romance books, they were surprised. They might start unsubscribing faster. Or not. I would just make sure that my message is in alignment. And if I've promised contemporary readers contemporary romance books only, which I did, then I would not send them the werewolf and the vampire, which is interesting because there's probably a lot of overlap of who would read both.
[00:38:43] For my author newsletter, my nonfiction newsletter, I'm not going to ever drag them in to a launch. If it got to the point where month over month, I just was losing way more subscribers than gaining ... and I'm not the data person, remember. I'm like, I'm like eagle view, gut level instinct type person, and it works for me. So I can't tell you, "Okay, if it was four per hundred ..." I don't track numbers very granularly, but I would just watch it and make sure that my overall numbers are climbing month over a month.
[00:39:19] Matty: Switching to some very logistical details. What mechanism do you use to provide the giveaway that you're offering as an incentive to the people who subscribe to your newsletter?
[00:39:31] Lee: I use BookFunnel because the books are longer. I have considered doing a hidden page on my website. My website is woefully out of date all the time, because I just don't update it. That's just the way I am. Not proud of it. But I do have BookFunnel set up. So you get a landing page that connects to BookFunnel to give away the book. And I cheat and I just use BookFunnel landing pages, which is bad, but it's done, not perfect.
[00:40:02] So those Germans subscribers are just set up on the German list, the Italian list, the French list. And in the back of the book, I did use a Geniuslink, which is paid. It's like a short link, so I could change where that Geniuslink is pointing to, but it points to BookFunnel and the German readers land on BookFunnel landing page, and then they subscribe to the email list and BookFunnel integrates with MailerLite. That's what I've got going on. And that's just because I'm not as comfortable updating my website.
[00:40:34] Matty: I would think that the benefit of using BookFunnel, which is what I use, is that if there are technical problems, the reader's calling BookFunnel and not you, whereas if they go to their website and they can't download it, then you start getting technical support questions.
[00:40:48] Lee: Yes. We do lots of check your expenses in the course where we're looking out at all our expenses and how could you just survive? And the reality is I could cut tons of expenses and get to the bare minimum, but BookFunnel would be probably the last thing I would unsubscribe from or cut that subscription. It's $20 a month or so and it integrates with MailerLite. There are readers signing up right now to my newsletter and I have a bunch scheduled to go out because I have some German releases coming up. So it's just scheduled when the pre-orders go live. If I had to cut my business to the bare bones, I write, I would have my newsletter, and I probably integrate with BookFunnel. Those would be my costs. And my website. That's it.
[00:41:42] Matty: The whole idea of having a freebie to give away to entice people to subscribe is canon among author recommendations. I have a short story that I give away to my subscribers of my fiction newsletter. Another recommendation I love, I haven't actually acted on this yet, but the idea of an actual cut scene I love because sometimes it makes it less painful to cut the scene because, you can use it for something. So I have a standalone that's in the wings and I have a cut scene from that I'll use as a giveaway when it makes more sense, when that book is coming out. What are some other ideas that you would have for things that people can use as giveaways?
[00:42:23] Lee: I want people who read eBooks, so I'm going to give them an ebook. But it can be really short. If you're ever been invited to a box set and you have this idea for a story, so you wrote it for the box set and then you get it back after the box set contract is complete, you don't know what to do with it, make that your freebie for a little bit, or just give it away free to build your newsletter, like a BookFunnel promo-type thing.
[00:42:44] Don't be afraid to repurpose content or write new content. to give readers a little free extra and to get more people onto the list. Don't feel like you have to change up freebies. I'm reading about market penetration and if something's working, people tend to want to change it cause it's old to them, but if it's working, you should just keep it forever until it doesn't work. Because market penetration is, you're the same five years later and you're starting to find all the people and go in deep.
[00:43:14] But you can be creative about what you offer as a freebie. I would just say, if it's not working, change it up. If it is working or if you love it, maybe you have, this would be cool, but even a graphic or graphic novel type page that you got storyboarded or something just for fun.
[00:43:35] What I wouldn't do is anything physical. That would be cool but it's so much extra work. You really want this to be a piece of content that you can send in a PDF and you can set it and forget it so that when people are downloading it in the middle of the night, you have nothing to do. I did nothing to get these people on my list but set that freebie up and pay for the BookFunnel costs and the MailerLite costs and then I just email them.
[00:43:59] Matty: One of my favorite ideas for a giveaway was the one that Mark Dawson did, or maybe still does, for his John Milton books. And it was John Milton's confidential dossier from the British secret service organization he belongs to, even with parts redacted so it looked really official and he made letterhead and everything. I thought that was super clever.
[00:44:20] Lee: That is awesome. And that's fun. And yeah, character notes, more about the character. Cut scenes could be something that just gives more insight into a character or their pets or something. It doesn't have to be a full story. It's just a little bit extra that gives that reader that little taste. It's like a little bit of a dessert, right?
[00:44:38] The one thing I would caution against is don't give them too much. I signed up for a newsletter and they gave me three books in the series as a starter library, and I felt overwhelmed and I felt, "Oh my gosh, I have to read all these three books before I can even think about buying something from this person." And that's not the feeling I would want to give to my readers. I want them to read my freebie and go, "Oh my gosh, I want more. That was so good."
[00:45:01] And it was just enough. Like at the most famous ... The French Laundry is a restaurant in the US. Thomas Keller is the head chef and founded it and he talked about the law of diminishing returns, which means he wanted to give people a plate of food and it was one bite less than satisfaction. It never filled them to bloated satiety. They were just like, "Oh, if I could just have one more bite of that dish." So the portions were considered very small, but that was his intent.
[00:45:36] That should be your intent with your freebie. You give them just a taste more and they want more of your books. And so when the next email comes, you're like, "Did you get your Berserker freebie? Here's the next book in the series! I love writing these characters. Here's some stock photos that I bought of the way the characters might look. Here's a collage I made of their pictures." I like to put art in there, but that can fill up your newsletter and you just want to keep it clean and neat. As few links and as few images, just mostly text, as possible for deliverability. I'm really bad at that. But yeah, just give them one bite less than satiety.
[00:46:14] Matty: I like that advice. I hadn't thought about it -- the fewer links the better -- because if there are too many links, the system will consider it spam.
[00:46:22] Lee: That. And then the fewer types of font, which is hard for me because I usually have a title and a subtitle and then an excerpt in italics and then my note at the bottom, that's not in italics and then those all register as different types of font. And then the hyperlink is different type of font. I was told to keep it to three or less.
[00:46:46] Matty: I guess you can turn that into a benefit rather than a detriment by linking to your author website, for example.
[00:46:52] Lee: Yes.
[00:46:54] Matty: What I have tended to do in the past is whenever there's a reference to a specific book, I linked to the specific book, but if I just linked them to my website, I'm both complying with minimizing the links, but I'm also exposing them to everything rather than just showing them the one little bit that I'm referencing in the email.
[00:47:13] Lee: That's if you have a nice website, Matty.
[00:47:16] Matty: That will be a separate episode on author websites.
[00:47:20] Lee: Yes.
[00:47:21] Matty: Lee, this has been so great. Please let the listeners know more about the Millionaire Author Mastermind and also other places they can find you in your work online.
[00:47:29] Lee: So if you go to Facebook and type in Millionaire Author Mastermind, the group will pop up and I run that group. It is my Facebook group for authors. It is free, obviously. And you just get in there. There's a lot of really good stuff in there. It's not organized. It's more for people to ask questions and talk face to face. There's a lot of really good content in there. I hear a lot from especially new authors who are starting to get serious about this as a career. This is a business and I want to run it like that.
[00:48:00] And I titled it so that people who are turned off by the idea of making millions from their books will not join. I titled it on purpose. I started to be excited and talk about making money from my books with my friends and a few of them, I think, either were really jealous or got weirded out. So I made this group so I could talk freely about what I like to talk about and if you don't want it, don't join, but it is really fun.
[00:48:26] Matty: And if people were intrigued by the werewolves and space aliens and so on, where should they go to find those books?
[00:48:33] Lee: They can go to leesavino.com and download a free book.
[00:48:38] Matty: Lee, thank you so much. This has been very helpful.
[00:48:41] Lee: Awesome. Thank you, Matty. So glad to be here.
[00:04:35] Lee: I love connecting with people. My personality is warm, and I want to reach out. I'm a reader, so I love talking to people who read a lot, especially when they read the types of books that I read, and I read a lot of types of books, but obviously the books I write are my favorites. So I'd love to talk to them about that.
[00:04:57] And newsletters were difficult for me because I felt like it was so one-sided, but I found ways around that. And I actually was going to answer a question down the road on how to feel like I'm engaging and there's a bit of a back-and-forth conversation. Because that was the only thing I struggled with. I couldn't see their faces and I felt like it was just so one-sided. But I value the newsletter enough, and because I started growing it correctly from the beginning, it's just really powerful and it's really great.
[00:05:32] And I'll tell you, will love newsletters when you send out an email or you schedule it, and it goes out while you're at the park and then your book sales quintuple. That will make you love emails. I tell authors, if you don't like social media, don't do it. It's a waste of time. Just don't do any of it. If you don't want to blog, don't do it. Can it be useful? Absolutely. Anything can be useful. But do it because you have another reason to do it. Do it because you really want to. And same with books. Don't write what you think will sell, write something that you actually want to write and do think will sell, put those two together.
[00:06:13] But newsletters is the one thing I'd say, even if you hate it, if you think it's weird, even if it takes a while. Like me, it took a while for me to wrap my mind around just the concept of I have a freebie, people sign up to get the freebie, I send them the freebie, then they're on my newsletter, then I send them regular mailings and I just let them know how often I'm going to send it. That took a while for me to wrap my brain around it. And once I did, I was like, this is amazing. And even if it takes a while for you to get your mind around the concept and you don't like it, this is the one area I would say, just do it. Just do it.
[00:06:50] It's like writing books. Maybe you're not the best at dialogue or plot or whatever, but you need to embrace it. You need to embrace the fact, or just write poetry and embrace that. So writing newsletters is something and having a newsletter is something that you just embrace it.
[00:07:10] It is that powerful, even if you're not warm and fuzzy, even if you don't really want to bother readers or connect with them -- and we can talk about that in a second -- embrace it. And it'll give you such great returns in a way that Facebook will not -- a Facebook group or Facebook following, an Instagram following, a TikTok following, unless you're amazing at that.
[00:07:30] If you want to do TikTok, just do it. If you're going to do it anyway, maybe there is a way to engage your fans via TikTok, but don't join a dating site to sell your books. The same as Facebook and Instagram. Are you on there because you want to be on, then you want to connect with people, not to sell your books, then you can do that. But newsletter -- do it anyway. Take your medicine and do it even if you don't want to.
[00:07:53] Matty: I think you had mentioned one of the things that I believe is a barrier for many authors, myself included, and this is different between my fiction and nonfiction. So for my nonfiction, I have no problem sending out a biweekly newsletter. In fact, I'm thinking of moving it to weekly because then I can send it out in conjunction with a new podcast episode, and I can theme the newsletter around that topic so that when a newsletter went out right after our conversation aired, I could have information about, "Oh, here's an interesting article from Publishers Weekly about emails or here is a comparison of different email sites."
[00:08:31] I can think of lots of content that I, if I were a reader of that newsletter, would really value getting. And it's easy because you have an automatic topic, the writing craft and the publishing voyage, or whatever your non-fiction topic is. But with fiction, I'm always fighting that I-don't-want-to-be-a-pest mindset. I don't want to annoy my subscribers. And so I'm almost apologetic about it. When we started talking about email newsletters in the class, I looked through how I positioned my newsletter, all my positioning for my fiction newsletter was very apologetic, like, "I'll hardly ever send anything," and it's very counterproductive. I'm sure that sense conveys itself to the people who might otherwise sign up for it. So do you have any recommendations for people to get past that I-don't-want-to-annoy-subscribers mindset?
[00:09:24] Lee: Yes. So, a few things. It's so interesting for you because there's one email that you had sent happily, and you're thinking of increasing the frequency, letting everyone know, "Hey, I'm going to talk to you weekly from now on, because I'm just finding so much good material to send to you. And I have a podcast weekly."
[00:09:44] And that mindset is very much like, I have so much to give you. So carry that over to your fiction because fiction is also a gift. You had asked me to talk about the difference between selling and connecting and how much to do. And I think of selling or marketing as connection. I'm connecting with people and as a reader, I know that they really are looking for their next vampire romance novel, truly actively searching. They have a huge to be read pile. They're not in the mood to jump into contemporary romance and they want more vampire romance.
[00:10:29] I'm like this all the time, but I'm scrolling and I'm finding new people. And if someone says, "Hey, I just read this and I think it's great," or if my favorite author says, "Oh, I just wrote one," or wrote anything really because favorite authors of mine, I just need one button where I buy everything that you've written. I would seriously do it because then I'm not like, "Oh my gosh, I missed that novella over there."
[00:10:53] So when you are sending an email, you are connecting with readers. Even if all you're doing is telling them about your new book. Marketing is connection. And I'm talking about vampire romance because there are some people listening who are, "I never want to hear about that." Good! I don't want to tell you about it! You will never join my newsletter. You will never sign up for updates. That's great. And if you accidentally join, you would unsubscribe. You'd be like, "Lee, I was looking for the author newsletter. Why am I getting these?" Yeah, I think that mindset is important to embrace.
[00:11:33] Also, when you go to set up the newsletter, when people are entering to the newsletter, make sure you've made it very clear what they're doing. "Hi, I have this free vampire romance novella about the students and this vampire she discovers and he's hot and sexy," because that's how vampire romance happens to be. Thousand-year-old creature who's beautiful and they bond over Nietzsche -- that's a joke between Nick and I -- and then they fall in love. And all the vampire romance writers are like, "Ooh, I want to read that."
[00:12:13] Oh, and he has an ancient puppy called Cerebus and was everyone who's a nerd like me who loves that sort of thing is going to be like, "Yes, give me that free novella." And I'm like, "If you get this novella, you're signing into my newsletter." The next message will be, "Hi, you have now subscribed to my newsletter and here's your free gift." And then the next email will be the same: "Hey, you signed up, you're getting this free gift, make sure you get it, here it is, and now let me tell you a little bit about me." And I have no problem with sharing with a person this way, because I have told them.
[00:12:46] Imagine it this way. If I stand outside my house and say, "Hey, I'd love to invite you into my house for some food. I have this new book that I want to tell you about," or, "Come in to eat the food, and my husband has bees. And it's all made with this honey and I also have the honey to show you that I'm selling." And I just made it very clear that if you come into my house, I'm going to talk about our honey and we're not selling honey yet, but maybe one day, and you're going to probably leave with a complimentary jar of honey. And if you want to buy some honey, it'll be available.
[00:13:17] And it's so clear. And I have no problem telling somebody. I'm already excited about it, obviously, and I'm just going to be sharing with people who enter my living room. So people are going to sign up. You've made it very clear and the content you've given them is great. And you also feel great about your fiction books.
[00:13:36] And if you don't, if you have some compunction about that, I get it because I've had impostor syndrome, too. I've collected my positive reviews and I reread those regularly, so I get encouraged, but I also sign up for writing classes. I read books on craft. I want to make sure that my vampire romance is the best possible fiction that they could be reading.
[00:13:58] But there'll be people who love my books and people who don't want to go anywhere near them. And that's okay too. Because of the internet, we can reach the 10,000 people who will love it. And we just can talk to them for the rest of their lives. We don't have to talk to anyone else. And there's way more than 10,000 people, but those 10,000 people can end up on your list.
[00:14:17] Matty: Your example of the honey made me think of many years ago, one of my very first jobs was working at a Hickory Farms. Do you remember Hickory Farms, the cheese store?
[00:14:29] Lee: Yes, okay.
[00:14:31] Matty: One of my jobs was to stand outside in my little Hickory Farms uniform with a tray of samples of whatever cheese they were selling that day. It's exactly the same thing. Some people said, "I hate cheese," and then they walked by because Hickory Farms is largely a cheese store. It was fine. And then if they sampled the cheese and liked it, they might buy some cheese, but there wasn't an expectation. Hickory Farms wasn't mean to the people who didn't then buy the cheese that they had sampled. And the store was set up nicely and there was an understanding some people would walk through and not buy anything. Some people would walk through and buy something. And I didn't find that morally offensive
[00:15:10] Lee: And if you don't want it, you're not going to pick it up. And if you love it and you want it, you're going to, if you want to try it and see if you like it, that's what the free novella can be. And for me, my free novellas, I have a couple because I've been writing since 2015, even before that I had random free books and I took one of those random books that I've written that is for sale and published nowhere right now, but I made that my freebie and that's what my website guy taught me to do. He said, "Okay, let's make this freebie." He made a graphic for me. I got a cover for it on Fiverr. This was back when I was just beginning. So I always have this freebie and people were signing up.
[00:15:55] And then once they signed up, those were the only people I emailed. I didn't email my personal friends or anything like that. So I already felt, "Oh my gosh, I have some people over here who want to hear from me." Even if it's 10 people, that's fine. And if they don't want to hear from me, they'll unsubscribe.
[00:16:11] Then I started writing really racy romance. So then I needed to make sure that my freebie matched that and wasn't this random freebie. It was a fantasy. It was romancey. It was something I wrote just for fun. So I unpublished that, got rid of that, and got something that was more sexy romance that was linked to what I was writing, what I still am writing.
[00:16:34] And so that list has grown. And what's so interesting is I'm now publishing in other languages -- in German, et cetera. -- and I got the freebie translated. I spent an extra thousand dollars to get that 20,000-word freebie short story translated. And now in my sleep, people are signing up and ending up on my German newsletter.
[00:16:59] And for me, it's okay if people unsubscribe. I just want to make sure that I'm growing more than I'm getting unsubscribes, because that will tell me that everything's in alignment. Like I said, "Hey, I'm selling cheddar cheese. Taste the cheddar cheese. If you like it, here's more." And they're not surprised by anything. Everything is consistent. Vampire romance and then here's more vampire romance. I think that if that was inconsistent, I would lose a lot of people, and then I'd be like, "Okay, how can I make sure that this is all a consistent message?"
[00:17:34] And I'm really just thinking about the reader. "Okay, they want this type of book. I want to write this type of book. I'm going to find the people in the world who want to read it and I'm going to let them know when I have something new, or I'm going to let them know when I have a sale. I actually send weekly, because I have a lot of releases, I have a lot of books and audio coming out. I have a separate list for German, so people who read in German end up on a completely separate list. Same for French, Italian, Spanish. And then my English list, it's just everybody who wants the sexy vampire romance.
[00:18:11] And then I have another list for authors. I will never send, unless I did by accident, which did happen. "Hey, do you want to make a lot of money from your books? Here's this newsletter." I totally sent that accidentally to my huge list -- and I got a lot of signups because people were like, "Oh, this is so neat." Some people were like, "Why did I get this?" But very few because I'm chatty as an author in my newsletter. So they just knew, "Oh, Lee's talking to us. Okay. What's she going to talk about next? Werewolf romance? Nope. Oh, something about authors." But I did say, "Whoops, didn't mean to send you guys that."
[00:18:49] Matty: You had shared some really good information about the importance of picturing the person you're sending the email to. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:18:58] Lee: Yeah. So this is like canon in direct response marketing, to the point where I have read if somebody has a business selling investment opportunities, or investment newsletters, which is a huge business, in direct marketing, like a billion-dollar business, they will put up for reader avatar that is so detailed. Okay, I'm going to stop talking marketing speak. Think of your ideal reader. it might be yourself. It might be someone, or maybe a Facebook group. I've met some of my fans over the years.
[00:19:35] And so I know that my ideal reader, she's a huge fan of all sorts of sexy books. I have two. I have one that's in her thirties and one that's in her fifties. And both of them are women. Both of them are very loving and nurturing and they're reading sexy books because it's a great inexpensive way to take a break from their life, which is very busy where they have kids or grandkids or fur babies or work volunteering at church or whatever, and they're just so busy and this is a great escape. And The books are max going to be $5, or they have Kindle unlimited so they can download one and then they can get the next one tomorrow.
[00:20:17] And they'll read these very short 150-page, sexy vampire romances, and they just want a long series. They want to read a bunch of them. And when I think of that person and, I can think of exact people, but I can also meld them together and be like, okay, it's a woman and she's sitting in my living room and what am I going to tell Mary, what am I going to tell Mary today? How do I give Mary something in my newsletter today that's fun and enjoyable and surprising?
[00:20:49] And for me, I'm more willing to talk about some personal things. I keep everything very happy. So I share the personality, the side of myself that loves to read, loves to write loves dragons, loves vampires, is excited about tea and dragon mugs. I'm not talking about the side of myself that is complaining and is tired because of my kids. I do share about my kids. I don't really share about other members of my family that often, but I felt comfortable talking about when I was having babies, so I do share that. You do not have to; a lot of people just share about their pets. But you don't really have to put anything super personal in. What I'm doing is I'm choosing facets of myself that will foster this kind of fun, light, enjoyable.
[00:21:47] I don't really talk about national tragedies. I have mentioned, "Guys, we're all quarantining, I hope you guys are saying, stay safe and healthy, and I love you. I'm staying in with a good book," that sort of thing, because that's me. But I'm not talking about politics. I didn't mention the election in the US. it's one facet of me and I feel good about that because I want to create this fun, positive place where, okay, in this email, I'm always going to feel good and I'm going to learn about sexy vampire romance, and that's pretty much what I'm giving them. And that's what they're opening the email for.
[00:22:26] Matty: Do you feel that the content has to be different if you're active on a social media platform? So for example, I'm pretty active on Facebook for both my fiction and nonfiction, and I'll share pictures of my dogs and here's a picture from a walk and things like that. Do you feel that the newsletter has to be different or can you reuse content across those two platforms?
[00:22:46] Lee: I would definitely reuse that content. I would take exactly what you're doing. Cause Facebook for me was easier and some people hate it. If you hate it, don't do it. But I love it because I could see faces and newsletter was difficult for me because I wanted to see faces, which is why I talked about the reader avatar or your ideal reader that you can picture in your head. They're sitting across from me in the living room and you're like, "Oh, I have a new audio book out. Oh, here's a picture of my cat being fat and lazy. Isn't that awesome?" Stuff like that.
[00:23:17] So if you're already doing that on Facebook group for your fiction, I'd take exactly the same content, and put it in your newsletter and maybe you get a slightly different voice, but maybe it's just the same voice. You can do different things in different mediums, so sometimes you tweak things a little bit. But take the picture of the cat. Say the same thing. Say the same thing about the picture of the walk.
[00:23:39] I also know that people signed up to hear about my book, so I'm going to tell them. I also love to share snippets of my writing, so I do that as much as possible. Here's a scene. Here's an excerpt. This is what's coming. I love selling books before they're available to buy. So I talk about what's coming all the time. Maybe because I feel really comfortable with that. I'm like, that's not an ask that's I'm giving you something ahead of time. And then when the time comes for them to, they can purchase the pre-order or the book itself, they're so excited. They're like, "Oh my gosh, I've been waiting. I've been dying to read more."
[00:24:21] Matty: The episode right before this one is a whole episode on pre-orders with Joe Lallo. That'll be fun for people to listen to that one and then think about how they can play that out in their email newsletter.
[00:24:33] Lee: Yes. Play it out. Share your writing, I love sharing the writing content and finding really juicy excerpts. I like to showcase my writing because I'm confident as a writer. I like prose. I like pretty writing. So I'm always trying to find something that leaves that reader with that feeling of, "Oh my gosh!" And also, I write erotic books so I can put really racy stuff in a newsletter, and I would not do that on Facebook.
[00:25:06] Matty: You don't want to accidentally send that to your author list.
[00:25:10] Lee: No. Oh, my audience pretty much knows what I write, so they would just laugh. But yeah, I, am careful, that only happened once, and it was interesting because a lot of my readers turned out to be either authors or aspiring authors. And I think it was meant to go out to them. I don't know how it happened.
[00:25:28] Matty: Continuing our conversation about content a little bit, I find that the emails that I enjoy getting from fiction authors have a theme. One of my favorite email newsletters that I sent out, and I should go back and look at the stats to see if anybody else found this interesting, is that many years ago, my husband and I were thinking about getting a place in the Adirondacks. That never panned out, but we did go up and we saw a house that I loved, and it became the house that my first character lived in in THE SENSE OF DEATH, Ann Kinnear's Adirondack cabin. And then I must have been signed up for some kind of notification thing on Zillow because I got a notice that a place was for sale and I opened it up and it was this cabin. And so I sent out a newsletter saying, "Look, Ann Kinnear's cabin is for sale, you can actually go through and see pictures of it."
[00:26:22] And it was not a sell. ideally someone would say, "Oh, I love the Adirondacks. I'm going to read the book that was the setting for," but I didn't do any explicit selling, but it was tied in with the book. I think the exception to that is pets. People like to see pets regardless of whether they have anything to do with your book. But do you think it's a good idea to stick with things that are in some way related to the content of your fiction or do you feel like anything's game when it comes to newsletter content?
[00:26:52] Lee: I think anything's game because it's you and you're the only one having your experience and you're putting those things together yourself. I think that's awesome. Obviously, you were excited to share that content and if you feel like you want the theme and you want it just to all to relate to the books then do that. And you'll attract the readers and the newsletter subscribers that really enjoy that.
[00:27:17] Matty: I think it makes it easier for me to think in those terms. I'm all about templates and Excel spreadsheets. So if I think of a newsletter and it's going to be like, here are my upcoming author events, here's a new book launch, here's some attractive pictures from Chester County, Pennsylvania, which is where most of my stories are set. Oh, look, here's a story about mount Desert Island, which is where some of my other stories are set.
[00:27:43] If I know it's going to be author appearances, book plug, interesting pictures, fun fact about something related to my books, I'm not sitting down and being faced on top of all the other problems, with a blank page. I'm like, "Oh, I just have to go find some attractive pictures of Bar Harbor. That's easy."
[00:28:04] Lee: Then that's what you want to share. And that's what you feel comfortable sharing. So I would, do that and I would lean into that. And also if you don't have those to share in that particular newsletter, but you have something to talk about, like a new audio release or something, you can pull from Facebook and the picture of the dog, the picture of the walk you took and, yeah, relate it back to your books. But also remember the living room. Maybe I'm just bad at conversation, which is also possible, but I just talk about the most random stuff with people. And the conversation just bumbles along and if you have a brain like mine, it completely makes sense to be talking about Nietzsche and then cheese, like totally, let's do it.
[00:28:48] Yeah, if, that is what you're excited about, I would definitely share that, and you can theme your newsletters that way -- setting and place. And if someone watching is not comfortable sharing anything personal, then don't share anything personal.
[00:29:05] Your books are personal though. So what in your books can you share about, can you talk about a certain character? Did you get drawings of this character? Did you get a map done? Even if it's a silly hand drawn map, you could still share it and be like, "Yeah, guys, I know my, to pick up to typography skills are really insanely great."
[00:29:29] And make jokes. If you're funny, my goodness, be funny.
[00:29:32] Lean into that and do that if you have that gift and if you're more analytical and you have other things. Nick and I are both doing an author course together. He's more analytical. He has all this data and I have, I'm pretty -- no, I'm kidding. I have a warm personality and I love connecting with people. And I love talking about newsletters and branding and how to write a book series that will sell that.
[00:30:00] And Nick and I have very different styles, but we can talk about the same subjects in different ways.
[00:30:05] And people are getting a lot out of the course because we're serving people in many different ways who are thinking about things many different ways. And of course his newsletters are very analytical, but they're very long and he does talk, and he cusses a little bit in them, which I like, I'm like, yeah, I like it when people are real, so cuss away. That's fine. He makes some little jokes. But he's talking about data and he obviously loves writing these emails cause they're like 3000 words each and I really enjoy reading them. And he's one of the few authors that I still subscribe to, until maybe my life changes and, I don't have time to read 3000-word emails on author marketing, which is possible, and then I would unsubscribe and no hard feelings.
[00:30:51] And then mine are going to be more chatty Cathy. So you can take that personality that you have -- and it's your personality and what you like is already coming out in your books -- and imagine someone like you, imagine that ideal reader sitting in your living room, or you're chatting with them while you're playing a video game if that's you, and what you'd be talking about. And talk about a few of those things.
[00:31:15] But also know that talking about your books isn't selling necessarily. "Buy my book" is a pretty on the nose sell, but if you're thinking of your books as gifts to readers and they can get it for $5 and have hours of entertainment, then "buy my book" is actually a way you're giving them something. You're connecting with them. So start to think of things that way.
[00:31:42] Matty: Are there any specific pieces of advice you'd have for an author who maybe is planning to write 50 books, but they've only got one, or an author who's working away, but their schedule is one book a year, let's say.
[00:31:55] Lee: Yeah. That's great because of certain types of genres for sure lend themselves to really intricately plotted and detailed and well-researched type books. I would just stick to your schedule and to your own inspiration. For me, I had the opposite problem. People were telling me, okay, it's time to make a bigger splash and to hit your goals as an author, you should write longer books and release them slower. And I was thinking about that and mulling over how I would do that. And meanwhile, my kids are two and four and they interrupt me every 30 seconds, and I realized that I don't want to write longer books at this time in my life. The thought of it isn't fun, so why would I do it?
[00:32:46] And again, I do think about marketing and how to sell books, but I was like, I've done really well with lots of short books, really short, that I released rapidly. So one a month, one every other month, why would I change what's working? And it is working because I've just made it work. I've just done it since 2015. And now I have long series and I write a new book and I can put book one on sale. And whenever I email, once a week, I can have a free book in that email every single week if I want it. And I love giving away books. So that would make me feel really happy. Sometimes I do that. I'm like, Oh, what do I have to offer? I want to give them something free this week. What can I do? And I'll go and I'll make a book free real quick and send it to them.
[00:33:32] So if your schedule is the other way, and you're just doing one a year, I would not send probably an email weekly. I would tell them it'll be once a month or once every six months. I just tell them how often I'm going to be sharing.
[00:33:46] And obviously you're probably researching a lot, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, you're researching the locale. You're researching the subject. If it's historical, you're uncovering tons of history. So talk about that. Talk about your writing process and what's going on behind the scenes, and then share a snippet of the writing. And then the next email is six months later, and you have the book up for pre-order and you just start talking to them probably a little bit more frequently, maybe once a month until the book releases, and you're giving them snippets. You're telling them about the writing process, the places, sharing the maps, sharing the pictures of the places you might've visited, talking about the basis of the characters. Tell a little story.
[00:34:34] Readers on your list, if you tell them, "Hey, I just email once a year because that's my writing schedule," and they found you and they know the types of books you write, they're probably like, "Okay, we're here for that. Just let me know when you write another book."
[00:34:46] Matty: If someone is changing the frequency, let's say I decide to daringly back off my commitment to only send anything when I launch a book, how do you set that up with readers so they don't feel like there was a bait and switch there, especially if you're emailing more frequently than maybe you originally set the expectation you would do.
[00:35:09] Lee: Yeah. There are a couple of different ways to do it. One is, "Hey, I want to email weekly now. And I've been doing it only every other week and it's going to be on the special topic, so sign up to this list if you want to get those newsletters, which will be sent weekly." That's one way to do it. You split your list. I've done this before. If I have a launch, I'm like, "Hi, I really want to share with you some extra stuff about this launch, click here if you want to be the first to know about the launch and to get some sneak peeks." And I email every day, but I only email that core of 500 people who sign up to just hear about that book launch. And I've separated them out -- in MailerLite you separate them out into a different group -- so I just emailed that group. They're the first to know. And then I'm just emailing my other newsletter weekly, which is still very frequent. And I don't do that often. I've maybe done it twice in my career because it's a lot of work.
[00:36:03] But, you might say, "I would love to let you know more about this launch, so click here and you're going to get a sneak peek, and then the next day I'm doing a contest," and this and that and the other. So that's one way to do it -- split off the list, either temporarily for a launch or permanently you're splitting it. Or just tell people and let the people who aren't into it unsubscribed.
[00:36:27] Because unsubscribing is not bad. I want you to embrace your unsubscribes. People who are unsubscribing either want to take a break. Like I just unsubscribed from two author newsletters today. I just needed a break. It was like this newsletter isn't bringing me joy anymore. I always know I can resubscribe. In fact, I probably will.
[00:36:46] One day I'll be like, "Oh, I love those newsletters." I save author newsletters. And right now if this whole subject is like, "Whoa," go right now -- this is your one piece of homework -- and sign up for your favorite author's newsletters, download their freebie, figure out how to sign up for new release news, whatever it is. And then save your favorite emails, read the emails, unsubscribe from the ones you're not into and notice what makes you open, what makes you click, and take those ideas and use them in your own newsletter.
[00:37:18] Matty: I love that advice. Is there some percentage of unsubscribes that you should start thinking about that it may be a problem?
[00:37:29] Lee: Yes. So my newsletter right now, I have one that's organic subscribers, it's 18,000 people. And I have this other one that I get from lots of promos and it's thousands of people. I do not watch my unsubscribes. I am more watching monthly to make sure overall I am either maintaining a level of subscribers or gaining. If I was losing subscribers at an insane rate, I would make sure that I was in alignment. I write a lot of paranormal romance. I'm going to write some just plain contemporary romance and I've started a separate contemporary romance newsletter, and I've set up that I emailed them less frequently and I might just end up merging them all later.
[00:38:14] But I think that if I started to send the contemporary romance readers non-contemporary romance books, they were surprised. They might start unsubscribing faster. Or not. I would just make sure that my message is in alignment. And if I've promised contemporary readers contemporary romance books only, which I did, then I would not send them the werewolf and the vampire, which is interesting because there's probably a lot of overlap of who would read both.
[00:38:43] For my author newsletter, my nonfiction newsletter, I'm not going to ever drag them in to a launch. If it got to the point where month over month, I just was losing way more subscribers than gaining ... and I'm not the data person, remember. I'm like, I'm like eagle view, gut level instinct type person, and it works for me. So I can't tell you, "Okay, if it was four per hundred ..." I don't track numbers very granularly, but I would just watch it and make sure that my overall numbers are climbing month over a month.
[00:39:19] Matty: Switching to some very logistical details. What mechanism do you use to provide the giveaway that you're offering as an incentive to the people who subscribe to your newsletter?
[00:39:31] Lee: I use BookFunnel because the books are longer. I have considered doing a hidden page on my website. My website is woefully out of date all the time, because I just don't update it. That's just the way I am. Not proud of it. But I do have BookFunnel set up. So you get a landing page that connects to BookFunnel to give away the book. And I cheat and I just use BookFunnel landing pages, which is bad, but it's done, not perfect.
[00:40:02] So those Germans subscribers are just set up on the German list, the Italian list, the French list. And in the back of the book, I did use a Geniuslink, which is paid. It's like a short link, so I could change where that Geniuslink is pointing to, but it points to BookFunnel and the German readers land on BookFunnel landing page, and then they subscribe to the email list and BookFunnel integrates with MailerLite. That's what I've got going on. And that's just because I'm not as comfortable updating my website.
[00:40:34] Matty: I would think that the benefit of using BookFunnel, which is what I use, is that if there are technical problems, the reader's calling BookFunnel and not you, whereas if they go to their website and they can't download it, then you start getting technical support questions.
[00:40:48] Lee: Yes. We do lots of check your expenses in the course where we're looking out at all our expenses and how could you just survive? And the reality is I could cut tons of expenses and get to the bare minimum, but BookFunnel would be probably the last thing I would unsubscribe from or cut that subscription. It's $20 a month or so and it integrates with MailerLite. There are readers signing up right now to my newsletter and I have a bunch scheduled to go out because I have some German releases coming up. So it's just scheduled when the pre-orders go live. If I had to cut my business to the bare bones, I write, I would have my newsletter, and I probably integrate with BookFunnel. Those would be my costs. And my website. That's it.
[00:41:42] Matty: The whole idea of having a freebie to give away to entice people to subscribe is canon among author recommendations. I have a short story that I give away to my subscribers of my fiction newsletter. Another recommendation I love, I haven't actually acted on this yet, but the idea of an actual cut scene I love because sometimes it makes it less painful to cut the scene because, you can use it for something. So I have a standalone that's in the wings and I have a cut scene from that I'll use as a giveaway when it makes more sense, when that book is coming out. What are some other ideas that you would have for things that people can use as giveaways?
[00:42:23] Lee: I want people who read eBooks, so I'm going to give them an ebook. But it can be really short. If you're ever been invited to a box set and you have this idea for a story, so you wrote it for the box set and then you get it back after the box set contract is complete, you don't know what to do with it, make that your freebie for a little bit, or just give it away free to build your newsletter, like a BookFunnel promo-type thing.
[00:42:44] Don't be afraid to repurpose content or write new content. to give readers a little free extra and to get more people onto the list. Don't feel like you have to change up freebies. I'm reading about market penetration and if something's working, people tend to want to change it cause it's old to them, but if it's working, you should just keep it forever until it doesn't work. Because market penetration is, you're the same five years later and you're starting to find all the people and go in deep.
[00:43:14] But you can be creative about what you offer as a freebie. I would just say, if it's not working, change it up. If it is working or if you love it, maybe you have, this would be cool, but even a graphic or graphic novel type page that you got storyboarded or something just for fun.
[00:43:35] What I wouldn't do is anything physical. That would be cool but it's so much extra work. You really want this to be a piece of content that you can send in a PDF and you can set it and forget it so that when people are downloading it in the middle of the night, you have nothing to do. I did nothing to get these people on my list but set that freebie up and pay for the BookFunnel costs and the MailerLite costs and then I just email them.
[00:43:59] Matty: One of my favorite ideas for a giveaway was the one that Mark Dawson did, or maybe still does, for his John Milton books. And it was John Milton's confidential dossier from the British secret service organization he belongs to, even with parts redacted so it looked really official and he made letterhead and everything. I thought that was super clever.
[00:44:20] Lee: That is awesome. And that's fun. And yeah, character notes, more about the character. Cut scenes could be something that just gives more insight into a character or their pets or something. It doesn't have to be a full story. It's just a little bit extra that gives that reader that little taste. It's like a little bit of a dessert, right?
[00:44:38] The one thing I would caution against is don't give them too much. I signed up for a newsletter and they gave me three books in the series as a starter library, and I felt overwhelmed and I felt, "Oh my gosh, I have to read all these three books before I can even think about buying something from this person." And that's not the feeling I would want to give to my readers. I want them to read my freebie and go, "Oh my gosh, I want more. That was so good."
[00:45:01] And it was just enough. Like at the most famous ... The French Laundry is a restaurant in the US. Thomas Keller is the head chef and founded it and he talked about the law of diminishing returns, which means he wanted to give people a plate of food and it was one bite less than satisfaction. It never filled them to bloated satiety. They were just like, "Oh, if I could just have one more bite of that dish." So the portions were considered very small, but that was his intent.
[00:45:36] That should be your intent with your freebie. You give them just a taste more and they want more of your books. And so when the next email comes, you're like, "Did you get your Berserker freebie? Here's the next book in the series! I love writing these characters. Here's some stock photos that I bought of the way the characters might look. Here's a collage I made of their pictures." I like to put art in there, but that can fill up your newsletter and you just want to keep it clean and neat. As few links and as few images, just mostly text, as possible for deliverability. I'm really bad at that. But yeah, just give them one bite less than satiety.
[00:46:14] Matty: I like that advice. I hadn't thought about it -- the fewer links the better -- because if there are too many links, the system will consider it spam.
[00:46:22] Lee: That. And then the fewer types of font, which is hard for me because I usually have a title and a subtitle and then an excerpt in italics and then my note at the bottom, that's not in italics and then those all register as different types of font. And then the hyperlink is different type of font. I was told to keep it to three or less.
[00:46:46] Matty: I guess you can turn that into a benefit rather than a detriment by linking to your author website, for example.
[00:46:52] Lee: Yes.
[00:46:54] Matty: What I have tended to do in the past is whenever there's a reference to a specific book, I linked to the specific book, but if I just linked them to my website, I'm both complying with minimizing the links, but I'm also exposing them to everything rather than just showing them the one little bit that I'm referencing in the email.
[00:47:13] Lee: That's if you have a nice website, Matty.
[00:47:16] Matty: That will be a separate episode on author websites.
[00:47:20] Lee: Yes.
[00:47:21] Matty: Lee, this has been so great. Please let the listeners know more about the Millionaire Author Mastermind and also other places they can find you in your work online.
[00:47:29] Lee: So if you go to Facebook and type in Millionaire Author Mastermind, the group will pop up and I run that group. It is my Facebook group for authors. It is free, obviously. And you just get in there. There's a lot of really good stuff in there. It's not organized. It's more for people to ask questions and talk face to face. There's a lot of really good content in there. I hear a lot from especially new authors who are starting to get serious about this as a career. This is a business and I want to run it like that.
[00:48:00] And I titled it so that people who are turned off by the idea of making millions from their books will not join. I titled it on purpose. I started to be excited and talk about making money from my books with my friends and a few of them, I think, either were really jealous or got weirded out. So I made this group so I could talk freely about what I like to talk about and if you don't want it, don't join, but it is really fun.
[00:48:26] Matty: And if people were intrigued by the werewolves and space aliens and so on, where should they go to find those books?
[00:48:33] Lee: They can go to leesavino.com and download a free book.
[00:48:38] Matty: Lee, thank you so much. This has been very helpful.
[00:48:41] Lee: Awesome. Thank you, Matty. So glad to be here.
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