Bo Bennett On Building Author Mailing Lists

HOST: Bo, welcome back to the show. You know, last time we were talking, you mentioned that line that basically has become the thesis of everything we've discussed: "It's not hard to publish a book, it's difficult to publish a profitable book." And I left you with a question about what happens the day after the book trailer goes live. I think AuthorMailingLists.com might be your answer to that. So, what is this service, and where does it fit? GUEST: It fits in the marketing aspect of book publishing. Once the author has the book written, they've got their website out there, they're all ready to go. Starting a reader mailing list is a fantastic first step. Something that do at the very beginning because all of your marketing could be a result of that emailing list. These are people who are interested in actually hearing more about your work. So if there are people interested in it, get their names, get their email addresses, and market to them. It's a great testing audience for your book as well. Like if you have new ideas for your book, if you're thinking about doing an author signing somewhere, or if you just want to sell people more books. Have them recommend your book to friends and family. You could really do a lot with uh with an emailing list. An authors can that is. HOST: Okay, so you're describing a list building service, helping authors gather those email addresses directly. Now, we've talked about Agent Outreach before, and I know you have a strong stance on avoiding bulk email to protect deliverability. Does AuthorMailingLists.com use a similar approach, keeping things permission based and ensuring those messages get through? GUEST: Yes, it sure does. It is fully compliant with Amazon's policy. So, it's the double authentication. You can't just sign people up. You have to Well, if if they put in their email addresses, they have to confirm it. They're going to get an email saying, "Hey, did you do this?" They click, "Yes." Boom. They're signed up. You've got the double authentication. And this is really the gold standard of of uh emailing. If you want to do some kind of uh emailing list. And all of our domains, the way that the email is sent is fully compliant with every email uh service out there. So, the deliver deliverability is certainly the maximum. HOST: That double opt in truly is key for maintaining a high quality list and protecting that sender reputation. Now, considering what you've said about AI book volume and discoverability being the real issue, how do you see AuthorMailingLists.com fitting into that larger strategy? Is owning an email list your defined answer to building a direct to reader relationship in a crowded market? GUEST: Absolutely. Yeah, direct to reader, that's the way to do it, where you actually control the emailing list. Now, there are plenty of services, and we offer some as well, that you can email a lists of readers that are interested in specific genres of books. And that's great. That's a great way to get some new readers, but you want to control that list the best you can. You want to build your own list. So you think about the lists, the the all the readers out there. They're interested in all kinds of genres. Then you could focus down to the readers that are interested in a certain genre. And then even more so, this is where author list comes in, you focus on readers that are interested in your books. So it's the most focused list that you could possibly have. HOST: You mentioned those other services where you can access lists of readers by genre. Now, given the deliverability principles you've established before, how do you prevent that access part from feeling like the bulk email campaigns you avoid, and how do you ensure permission is respected there? GUEST: Well again with our service everybody has to double opt-in. So your readers are double opting in that means they they say yes they want it they get an email back saying click here just to confirm your subscription and it gets confirmed. So that's really how we ensure the integrity of this entire email system. HOST: Got it. So even with the access part, it's still permission based Now, we've talked about AuthorPass before, where authors can really set things up and have services working for them month after month. Is AuthorMailingLists.com integrated into that benefit, or is it a separate product requiring more active involvement? GUEST: It is integrated. So yes, if you do have an Author Pass, you have this service as well. And that's kind of our goal with Author Pass, to give everybody the the very basics and as much as possible, so they could just pay one simple price per month and have access to all of these marketing tools that if they were to buy them individually, it would cost a lot more. HOST: That makes a lot of sense to maximize value for authors. Now, thinking about the psychology aspect, your motto is about exposing irrational thinking and staying rational. We know list building is something most authors know they should do, but many avoid. What do you think the actual friction point is there, and does AuthorMailingLists.com solve the behavioral problem, or just the technical one? GUEST: It solves both actually, and I could attest to that as somebody who was never really big on mailing lists, just because there's so much technical aspect to it, and it's just such a headache, and it seems like the benefit wasn't enough to go through all that, because it's so difficult to actually build an email list. But I've what I've discovered over the years is that you just have it out there, and it just keeps on building by itself. Uh, more and more, you get more and more readers, and it it's just like a a non uh non-brainer now to to a no-brainer to actually build one of these lists and have the software available. And with our software, author mailing list, it solves all of the technical technical problems, and the behavioral problems before was not wanting to face all the technical problems to actually get this done, which it now solves. So, yes, it solves both problems. HOST: It's great to hear that personal testimony that it works on both fronts. Now, Bo, we've gone through the whole pipeline from BookBud to editing, audiobook, video, outreach, and now mailing lists, ten episodes in. If an author followed every step we've mapped across these conversations, what's the one thing they'd still be missing that you haven't built yet, or that nobody in this space has built yet? GUEST: Well, I wouldn't say we've gone through the whole pipeline. We've mentioned about 10 different sites that we've done so far, but we've got over 40. So, we're going to be doing a lot of these interviews and talking about a lot of the software. So, to answer your other question, there's about 30 sites that have missed. So, we offer a lot of different tools for authors and non-authors. Again, not all of our tools are publishing and author related. A lot of them are for the general public, especially for um for marketing businesses and websites. So, we'll talk all about that in the future. Um in in terms of tools that we haven't built yet, yep, I've got a lot of stuff on the mind uh in in in uh on the back burner. But um that's not uh that's not ready to be launched yet or discussed. HOST: Well, I appreciate you correcting me there; more to come, and it's actually really good news for any listeners who want to catch some of those previous descriptions. Before we go, for listeners who want to follow up on what we covered, where can they find you and the work you're doing? GUEST: You find all about us at archyboy.com. And of course, the website that we're talking about in this episode is authormailinglists.com. HOST: Bo, thank you so much for joining me today, and for really clarifying how that link building and access works on the permission based side. And thank you for spending part of your day with us. Let's get you back on soon, Bo, because there's plenty more to cover. Until next time — that's a wrap.