Thanks to everyone who filled out the newsletter survey for me. I also got some very sweet emails. I love you guys!

Amelia--email me!

First--using a random number generator, Amelia was chosen as the winner of the book drawing. Amelia, your name is not in your email, so please contact me to arrange to get a free book.

Survey results

Now to the survey and my decisions:

With 43 responses, that's 13.4% of my list. Alas, because of my small list, I really needed a 30% sample size for the best accuracy. However, I feel like you've reinforced my instincts, and I don't want to bug anyone any longer.

As you can see, it's a pretty even split between friends and fans, with a fair overlap of friends who are fans. This is important to me because it tells me I'm not reaching pure readers, which is the only way I'll grow my audience.

Along those lines, friend or fan, most of you want to know what's up in my life. I'm kind of surprised because I feel like this is the least interesting part of my newsletter and I'm always uncomfortable with it because it's not creative or artistic or anything. I'd actually planned on dropping it altogether for 2024, but the People Have Spoken.

I'm also surprised how few are interested in extra content stuff, but hey - that means more time to work on the actual books. Snippets and behind-the-scenes are easier.

I was very interested in how few wanted weekly as opposed to monthly updates. Most marketing gurus say you have to post weekly or more. Again, this gives me some freedom.

Conclusions

I've been hearing a lot about Substack for newsletters. I think I'll be moving to it, as it allows me to do several things, including divide my newsletter by sections: personal, Space Traipse, Vernverse, etc. It also allows folks I don't know to find me and subscribe to my stuff.

For you, you can pick what parts of my newsletter to subscribe to - the monthly personal update or the weekly long-running Space Traipse series of stories that follow Todd and Ellie, or the section about Vern (which I've not decided the content for). You can also find content from other people, like serial fiction, blog-type articles, etc., that you can subscribe to separately. I'll be able to import everyone there for my newsletter only, so you don't need to do anything.

When I'm ready to make the leap, I'll let you know. Thanks and God bless,

Karina