Publishing
A launch email has two jobs, and publishers sometimes forget that they are not the same job.
One is to sell the book. Fair enough. The other is to remind people why they subscribed in the first place, which is usually because they wanted something worth opening.
The trouble starts when every message sounds like “exciting news” in the same slightly breathless tone. That kind of enthusiasm is easy to ignore. Readers can smell template language a mile off.
A decent launch email should feel like it knows who it is talking to, not just what it is trying to move.
One is to sell the book. Fair enough. The other is to remind people why they subscribed in the first place, which is usually because they wanted something worth opening.
The trouble starts when every message sounds like “exciting news” in the same slightly breathless tone. That kind of enthusiasm is easy to ignore. Readers can smell template language a mile off.
A decent launch email should feel like it knows who it is talking to, not just what it is trying to move.
The bit that gets missed is that a launch email is often carrying the weight of a whole list, not just one book. If the newsletter has become a parade of “new release” notices, the problem started months earlier. People open for voice, not volume. One decent paragraph about why this book exists will usually do more than three exclamation marks and a buy link.