An effective way of building your email list for your author platform is using giveaway and newsletter swaps. Services like instaFreebie can give you powerful options.
Here you can build a dedicated list of fans by offering free book in return for their optin details. Instafreebie will then deliver the book file and you can either download a csv of emails or it will happen automatically if you have mailchimp (Aweber integration coming soon apparently).
You can control the amount of copies and the duration of the giveaway from your dashboard and access stats.
Of course you can do this on your website (and you should be) but Instafreebie potentially gives you a wider reach, especially if they feature your free book on their website. Also by teaming up with other authors in your genre you can create a more powerful offering. I’m fast approaching an extra 800 subscribers and expecting to double my list over the next two or three weeks with upcoming promotions.
Coordinate giveaways with other authors on the Instafreebie forum or better still join Mark Dawson’s Ads for Authors group. They have set up facebook groups for several genres so you can arrange giveaways and email swaps with other authors. You’ll need to join Mark Dawson’s list to get access. Mark and his team have also set up The Book Locker, a portal for genre specific instafreebie books available.
