Hi writer friends,
Ruthless. That’s how I felt the other day after I culled 1,800+ email addresses from this newsletter.
That’s right, deleted them right off.
Not subscribers who read and engage with this newsletter, mind you. Just people who’ve been on this list for several months and don’t read, don’t engage, don’t even open. I’m getting super serious about my newsletter game this year and these “cold subscribers” were bringing down my open rate and therefore my deliverability, and well, we can’t be having that.
I will admit to feeling slightly apprehensive when I looked at the new numbers, but then I asked my email list provider if I’d have a smaller monthly bill and they said yes, and well, I like those numbers, so all was well with the world again.
(Speaking of newsletters, I’m looking to sponsor small and medium-sized newsletters. If you run a newsletter for writers and feel like we might align, get in touch with your numbers and we’ll have a chat.)
Oh, and for those who asked, current email count is 127.
In other news, yes, the cat’s out of the bag (what a strange, strange phrase—was the cat voluntarily in the bag or did it get stuck in there?)… anyway, so yes, the secret’s out, the jig is up, I can now disclose… I’m crowdfunding my next book, and my co-author and I are working with Unbound, UK, which works as a traditional publisher in all respects but one: instead of the traditional advance, we crowdfund the costs of publishing the book and once the book is published, we split the profits 50-50.
As a creative entrepreneur I love that we have ownership of this piece of work.
That we are sharing in the risk a publisher takes to bring out a book, but equally, we stand to gain in the success.
I can’t reveal what the book’s about yet, though I will drop helpful hints in my next few newsletters until we go live in mid-February, but I will tell you that I attended a crowdfunding workshop this week and suddenly everything felt a little more real, a little more frightening, and a little bit more clock-ticky (don’t send me hate mail, I know that’s not a word.)
I will, of course, go into more detail about why we chose crowdfunding over other indie options, and what we gain from working with Unbound rather than running a Kickstarter on our own, but for now, I want to say this:
Trust yourself to know what is good and right for you.
Trust that if you’re excited about doing something, it’s the right thing to do and the right time to do it.
Trust that if you feel resistance, it’s your way of telling yourself that this is not aligned right now.
Trust that if something makes you happy, it is something you should do more of, and if something makes you unhappy, you should find ways to eliminate it from your life.
Trust that the point of this career and this life is not to “succeed” in the way the world defines it, but to be happy.
Trust that happiness comes not from achieving a goal, but from enjoying the process that led you there.
I’m launching a crowdfunding campaign for my next book (I have to keep saying it to believe it).
I can’t guarantee that it will be successful, but I can guarantee right now, no question, that my co-author and I will have a lot of fun along the way.
I can’t wait to bring you along for the ride.
Thank you for being here, for opening my emails, for reading, and for sometimes responding.
I appreciate each and every one of you.
Cheers,
Natasha