Continuing my series of book promotion ideas leading up to the launch of my new novel, If Love is a Lie, Finding and Losing Love Online, here’s today’s topic: Emails … Emails … Emails …

Coming a little late to the promoting party, I don’t have a Jennifer Geoghan Novels official email list yet. I started the process of collecting emails with mailchimp.com, but don’t really have enough to do get my quarterly newsletter off the ground yet. That said, that doesn’t mean I don’t have an email list.

As part of what I posted yesterday about engaging your team, I went through my personal email contact list and created a group. I put in that group friends and family far and wide that I thought would respond well to receiving an email asking for help.

HELP THE STARVING WRITER!

In my email, I’ll give them the book blurb and cover image. Above that I’ll tell them that I’m releasing my latest novel and was wondering if I could ask them to forward my email to anyone they had in their contact list who might like to read a good book with a great message. Some friends and family will be happy to help you out …. Some will not. I think we all know who those people are. (Yes, I mean you Uncle Joe! … no, I don’t really have an Uncle Joe … but we all have a few ‘Uncle Joe’s” in our lives.)

Heck, there’s no harm in asking for help. Worst that happens is that they delete your email and forget about it. I think most will forward it on to at least one person.

I added 136 names to my email list. If they all forwarded it to just one other person, then I reached 272 people with the links for my book.   If they forward to two people, that’s 408.

It’s about getting the WORD ON THE STREET! And emails are a great way if written in such a way as to ASK for help, not demand it.

So what do you think? Do you think most friends will help promote you books to the outside world? DO you utilize your personal email list in lieu of an “Official” opted in list?

-Jennifer