MFRW: #MFRWorg The MFRW Newsletter History

Saturday, March 8, 2014

#MFRWorg The MFRW Newsletter History

When I started the January issue of the MFRW Newsletter, I reflected on how far we’ve come since we began back in November of 2008. There weren’t very many of us in MFRW back then and the Newsletter was about ten pages long each month. Now we’re up to sixty-plus pages some months, and in January we had a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author on our cover. Who ever would have thought we’d be helping a best-selling author to promote her books? Incredible.

I now have a staff of three assistant editors without whom I couldn’t possibly get this baby out the door. Each month in this column, I’ll highlight one of us so you can get to know us better.

So: How do you put together a successful Newsletter? First, decide how often you’re going to issue it. Once a week? Month? Quarter? I wouldn’t go any farther out than quarterly. You want to keep your audience engaged. I think monthly works, unless you have help. After all—you want your newsletter to be attractive, fun, and informative, but you also need time to write and keep up with your other promotional activities.

Next, what information do you want to disseminate in your newsletter? Of course you want to announce new releases and maybe keep your readers apprised of how you’re doing on your works in progress. Do you want to have guest authors? How much space do you want to give them? Do you want to post a bio? Interview? Tag Line? Blurb? Excerpt? What about cover art and photos? Don’t forget—the same copyright rules apply to photos you use in your newsletter as on your blog. How do you assemble this material? We’ll cover that in upcoming months.

Meanwhile, check out the MFRW Newsletter. You can access it both in our files and at Issuu.com. Here are the URLs.

Our Files: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/MarketingForRomanceWriters/files/MFRW-Newsletter/2014%20MFRW%20Newsletter/

Issue: Issuu.com: http://issuu.com/mfrw/docs

And here’s a bit about me:

Rochelle Weber is a Navy veteran and holds a BA in Communications from Columbia College in Chicago with an emphasis on creative writing. “Would you like fries with that?” Her non-fiction article, “Bulimia,” was featured in Hair Trigger 9 & 10, the acclaimed Columbia College student anthology. Her first novel, Rock Bound, is available at CreateSpace, Smashwords, Amazon and BN.com. The digital version of her second novel, Rock Crazy is available at MuseItUp Publishing, Inc., and the print version’s available at CreateSpace and Amazon. She edits the Marketing for Romance Writers Newsletter, and for Jupiter Gardens Press. Rochelle lives in Round Lake Beach, Illinois.