In terms of author news I feel like things were a little less hectic this week, and part of that was because of things going unexpectedly smoother than I expected with switching mailing list providers. That almost never happens! The only other activity on the author front was that I received my copy edits on book three, but have not yet had a chance to go through them.
Smooth Sailing on the Mailing List Switch
I don’t like to jinx myself, but it would appear that switching mailing list providers was not nearly the headache I thought it would be. I kind of wish I hadn’t put this off for so long. My bank account agrees with that sentiment.
So, to recap, for years I had been a customer of MailChimp, and while at the beginning they had been a good fit for me, the evolution of their business model meant that they had shifted their focus to bigger brands, while they were offering a lot more, they were also charging a lot more, and none of what they were offering was especially useful to someone like me who was sending about one email a month.
These days there are a lot of email mailing list providers out there, and they each have their pros and cons. I haven’t tested others out, so I can’t provide reviews or even a comparison of their features. For me, I knew I didn’t really need much–just a provider that would allow me to send an email on roughly a monthly basis to a mailing list of some 10,000 fans.
I did some basic price-shopping and looked at features, and ended up choosing SendinBlue. Now, keep in mind I haven’t actually sent out any emails to my list with my new provider yet. All, I’ve done so far was transfer over all of my subscribers, and set up an autoresponder for people signing up for my mailing list, and all of that seemed to go smoothly.
I had no problem downloading my subscribers from MailChimp and then uploading them to SendinBlue. I actually have two separate mailing lists as I have the big newsletter mailing list and then a smaller advance team mailing list, and so I had no problem setting up two separate lists and importing the subscribers. My only real issue (which is very minor) is that for whatever reason the autoresponder setting doesn’t allow you to send an instant message to new subscribers, and forces you to have a delay of at least one minute. It’s not really that big of a deal, but seems a little strange to me.
I do have to do a big shoutout to Elegant Themes whose templates I use for my website because one of the things I was dreading with the mailing list switchover was changing the signup form on my website. I had it in my head that this was going to be a difficult ordeal that would take me awhile to figure out and get right. I use the Bloom Opt-In Forms plugin from Elegant Themes and it was so stupidly easy to change the mailing list provider on the form. What I thought would take me hours took me two minutes. So, that was a very pleasant surprise.
Anyway, I’m keeping my fingers crossed then when it actually is time to send a new email out to my subscribers things will still be sailing along smoothly.
More Edits
Continuing the smooth sailing theme this week, the editor I hired through Reedsy is ahead of schedule, and just sent over the copy edits for book three in my series. I actually haven’t even had a chance to take a look at them yet, but that’s on my agenda for tomorrow.
Speaking of being ahead of schedule, I’m so thankful that I decided to hold off until January to publish the first book in the series. We all have a different style and pace at which we like to do things. I hate to feel rushed, and giving myself enough time to make sure everything is set up correctly instead of trying to rush to get everything done in time for the launch just works so much better for me.
That said, I’m sure in January I’ll realize there’s something I didn’t do or which needs to be corrected and scrambling will ensue, but for now, all is looking good!
