“If you launched your book tomorrow, how many people could you reach by name?”

That was the question Yrmis Barroeta, CEO of MyHeadquarters.club, asked during one of my Your Bestselling Book workshops this summer.

She wasn't asking how many Instagram followers, TikTok followers, LinkedIn connections, or YouTube subscribers we had.

She wanted to know how many real people we could email or text and tell, “I wrote a book.”

And, more importantly, how many of those people would actually buy it.

We all typed our numbers into the chat. Ten. Fifty. A hundred. I estimated around 2,000 for myself. One woman who runs a concierge healthcare service for women had several thousand contacts.

The exercise made us think differently about our audiences.

Yrmis's central message was simple:

Build a list that you own.

Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTbfF8gu_NY

Your Social Media Following Isn't Your Audience

Right now, most authors have their audiences scattered across different platforms.

Some people follow us on Instagram. Others listen to our podcasts. Some like a LinkedIn post while scrolling through their feeds, then immediately forget who we are.

Those connections have value, but we don't control the platforms or have direct access to everyone who follows us.

An email list gives us a more direct way to communicate with readers.

As Yrmis put it:

“A brilliant book with no readers is a stunning dress hanging in the closet, never worn.”

Yrmis is a former fashion designer who taught business at the prestigious Parsons School of Design, so you can understand why she chose that analogy.

You can spend years writing a beautiful book. But if nobody knows it exists, how will the people who need it ever find it?

Building your list before launch gives you a way to reach potential readers when the time comes.

You Don't Need to Write a Newsletter Every Week

Here's the good news: building an email list doesn't have to mean creating endless content.

Yrmis broke the process down into something manageable.

A year has 52 weeks. If you send a newsletter every other week, that's just 24 newsletters a year.

And each one can be around 250 words.

Yrmis calls these short emails “knowledge pills.”

Think about that. You don't need to write a 2,000-word essay every time you email your audience. You need one useful idea, one story, or one lesson worth sharing.

If you plan ahead, you could map out a whole year of newsletters in a single afternoon.

Start With the People Who Already Know You

You probably have more potential readers in your existing network than you realize.

Start by looking through your contacts, your Gmail, and your professional connections. Think about former colleagues, clients, friends, and people who already know your work.

Then begin building a permission-based email list using a newsletter platform such as Kit, Mailchimp, or Kajabi.

If you're using LinkedIn, your connections can also be a starting point for building relationships, although you should only add people to marketing emails when you have the appropriate permission.

You don't need a complicated launch campaign to get started.

Send a short, thoughtful update explaining that you're writing a book, what it's about, and how people can support you.

Make it personal. Give people a reason to care.

Let Substack Be Your Front Door

Yrmis describes Substack as your “front door,” the public face of your newsletter.

It's a place where people can find your writing, get to know your ideas, and choose to subscribe.

You can publish your newsletter there while maintaining a separate email list through a service you control.

The important thing is to have a plan for managing your subscriber information and keeping an appropriate backup of your audience data. Check the export options and terms of whichever platform you use, and keep your own records up to date.

Don't make your entire author platform dependent on a single website.

Your goal is to build a direct relationship with readers that you can continue nurturing over time.

Write Emails People Actually Want to Read

Yrmis shared a few other lessons that stuck with me.

Nurture your list with valuable content. Don't bombard people with promotions or beg them to subscribe.

Be real and speak from your heart. Your readers want to hear from a person, not a perfectly polished marketing machine.

Focus on one idea per email. You don't have to cover everything you know in a single newsletter.

Talk about the process itself. If you're struggling to write that week, you can ask readers what they'd like to hear about. Your writing journey can become part of the conversation.

And be careful about using AI to create content. Yrmis would rather you send nothing than fill your readers' inboxes with generic AI-generated material.

You don't need to manufacture expertise. You already have experiences, ideas, lessons, and stories worth sharing.

If you host a podcast, turn an episode into a short email. If you're writing a book, share an excerpt or a lesson from a chapter. If you're interviewing interesting people, share a thought-provoking moment from the conversation.

You can also write several newsletters in one sitting. I often write five at a time using an idea file filled with articles, observations, and stray thoughts.

The trick is to make the process manageable enough that you can keep doing it.

Your Words Are Already in You

You don't need to wait until your book is finished to start building your audience.

You don't need thousands of followers.

And you don't need to become a full-time content creator.

Start with the people you already know. Share one useful idea at a time. Give readers a reason to keep hearing from you.

If you'd like an introduction to Yrmis, reach out to me. She's built her own email newsletter list to more than 250,000 subscribers!

Hit Reply and tell me: Have you already started an email list? If not, will you start yours this week?

I read every message that lands in this inbox, and I always write back.

Aloha,
MeiMei

Tip of the Week: Plan a Year of Newsletters in One Day

Grab a sheet of paper and number it from 1 to 24.

On each line, write one idea, story, or lesson you could teach in around 250 words. Pull from your book, podcast, life story, or professional expertise.

There you go! You already have a full year of every-other-week newsletters mapped out in a single sitting.

Now write the first one.