Yes.
First, I’ll explain what a reader magnet is (in case anyone is wondering).
Many organisations offer some kind of enticement to encourage and incentivise current and potential customers to sign up to receive their email newsletter. For example, some shops offer you a $20 voucher redeemable against your first purchase. Some offer you a voucher after you’ve spent a certain amount. Some offer you a free birthday gift.
The idea is to provide customers with an incentive to keep buying from that organisation. It works, and having a customer loyalty programme and customer newsletter are now standard marketing practices.
Around ten years ago, some savvy authors started using this principle to sell books, offering something free to attract readers. Over time, it has become almost standard for authors to offer new newsletter subscribers a free novella or even a free novel, usually the first in a series, in the hope that subscribers will download and enjoy the free book, then go on to buy the remaining books in the series.
Because this is now so common, it’s rare that I sign up to an author newsletter that isn’t offering me an enticing free book. If I do, it’s usually because someone has recommended the newsletter for the content. If you’re interested, here are three newsletters I recommend:
However, I don’t enjoy all the newsletters I subscribe to. Some are really long, some come too often, and sometimes I read the author’s books and find it’s not to my taste. (I then tend to unsubscribe, because authors pay their email providers based onthe number of subscribers and I don’t want them to be paying for me if I’m not going to read it.)
I have recently seen a few newsletter promotions where authors band together to share their free books and newsletter signups. I’ve found some great new authors as a result!
And this question reminds me that it’s time I updated my reader magnet, as it is years out of date – although I can’t offer a free book, because I only have two so far and they are both in Kindle Unlimited (which requires that ebooks are exclusive to Amazon and not available elsewhere).
So yes, I do sign up for author newsletters to get the free reader magnet, and I often go on to read and recommend their books.
