Sgt. Patrick ODonnell of Cops and Writers - 076

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Transcript:

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​​This week on the Writer's Detective Bureau, some big news from ConvertKit and Sgt. Patrick O'Donnell of Cops and Writers. I'm Adam Richardson and this is the Writer's Detective Bureau. Welcome to episode number 76 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime-related fiction. In this week, I have some awesome news about ConvertKit that will be a game changer for authors just starting to grow their mailing lists.

And I brought Sgt. Patrick O'Donnell, the author of Cops and Writers: From the Academy to the Street on to the show to answer some questions about a small town with big problems in Wisconsin. But first I need to think gold shield patrons, Debra Dunbar from debradunbar.com, C.C. Jameson of ccjameson.com, Larry Keeton, Vicki Tharp, vickitharp.com, Chrysann, Larry Darter, Natalie Barelli of nataliebarelli.com, and Craig Kingsman of craigkingsman.com for their support. And I also want to send a huge thank you to my coffee club patrons.

You can find links to all of the writers supporting this episode in the show notes at writersdetective.com/76 to learn about setting up your own Patreon account for your author business or to support the show for as little as $2 per month. Visit writersdetective.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. Now, before we get into the questions, I want to talk to you about your mailing list. Having a mailing list of readers that want to buy your books is the single most important asset you can develop as an author.

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​Facebook is great, Instagram is great, but you don't own those subscribers, you don't own that list. 
So when I say "mailing list" I mean your readers e-mail addresses, to make sure you comply with anti-spam and privacy laws like can-spam which by the way I think is a hilarious name that I bet some comedian bureaucrat worked really hard to sneak through for the very serious controlling the assault of non soliciting pornography and marketing act of 2003.

What was I saying? Oh, yeah. To make sure you comply with canned spam and GDPR, you need to be using a mailing list service to send your emails to reach your readers and not using that BCC, the blind carbon copy field in your Hotmail account to send your writing newsletter. I personally use ConvertKit and if you've listened to the backlist of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the early episodes, you've heard me urge you to choose ConvertKit when you were serious enough to start paying for a mailing list service.

And I recommend convert kit because they are the only mailing list provider that focuses on the needs of individual creators, like authors, not some growing app developers, startup company or a brick and mortar store that's using their email list to send out offer coupons every week. ConvertKit is designed for individual creators like us. Designed to be fast and easy for us to use. For people that create things like books or blogs or podcasts.

So, with that in mind, I have to tell you, I am really excited about an announcement that ConvertKit put out this week. They now have a free plan. It's been years that I've been wishing this would happen. So, they have finally developed a free plan. And when you sign up for the free plan, you create a free landing page. You choose from one of 36 customizable templates, which is where you will send your readers to join your mailing list even if you don't have a website yet.

And then, if you do have a website, ConvertKit walks you through how to add the landing page to your site. It is super easy. And then, your account will remain free until you grow your list beyond 100 subscribers, which if you talk to anybody who has a mailing list, those first 100 can actually take a little bit of time. So, this is actually a much bigger deal than you might realize at first. Now, the folks at ConvertKit are really smart... ​​                                                                                                                                                                                                     Continue reading...