2019 Goals

This year one of our main goals is to grow our newsletter. In fact we’re hoping to double our subscribers! We learned a lot of important lessons in 2018 and they all tie into the importance of being able to reach customers directly.

Help Us Reach Our Goal

Doubling subscribers is not going to be easy. There are always some people who unsubscribe so growing the list is an uphill battle. We try to include something of value to our subscribers in every issue including free e-books and promo packs. We’re also developing some interesting raffle contests and planning new content. You can help by urging people to sign up at this link: eepurl.com/yhfCX 

It works best if you can give them a reason. Tell them there are awesome free ebooks, prizes and inside author info. Tell them Indie presses rock and supporting them is crucial. 

Why We Think a Strong Mailing List is Important

In small press publishing there isn’t usually a lot of time for strategic planning and goal-setting. It’s mostly chasing deadlines and putting out fires. While 2018 was a reasonably good year for RDSP, the print industry is still going through lots of changes and businesses that don’t adapt are not likely to be able to continue. 

Probably the biggest change in 2018 was Amazon’s shift away from trying to stock everything themselves and handing over sales to merchants instead. Suddenly books that have always been available and are still available are showing up as out of stock. There does not seem to be any logic to which titles Amazon supports and which they don’t. 

Another thing that has been shifting is social media which many small businesses use as their exclusive advertising venue. The popularity of Facebook has been waning for some time and their policies have made it harder to reach people reliably. Many companies have learned the hard way that when you invest in a social media platform you are at the whims of their policies which can change any time.

To combat these changes we have set two main goals for 2019.

• Reduce our reliance on Amazon
• Increase direct interaction with our customers

A strong, active mailing list will allow us to point customers to any retailer or encourage them to buy directly from us. It lets us have direct contact with fans so we can learn what they want and make sure they know about our releases. And most importantly we control our newsletter and get to make all the decisions about content and who/when/where to send it.

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