Would you rather have 10,000 followers on LinkedIn, or 500 email subscribers?
We recommend setting your email list as the core of your author platform.
Here’s why.
1. Email Gets The Highest Engagement
“What?” you’re asking. “With so many emails sitting unread in people’s spam folders, how is email ‘high-engagement’?”
It is . . . compared to everything else.
Here are typical engagement rates (average number of likes, reactions, shares, and clicks per post, divided by follower count) for various social media platforms for 2024:1
Keep in mind, this is the engagement rate—not the percentage of your followers clicking through to buy your book (which is going to be much, much lower).
Also, with all these platforms, the more followers you gain, the lower your engagement rate will drop. (One study found that Facebook pages with 100,000+ followers had an engagement rate one-tenth that of pages with fewer than 10,000 followers.)
Compare that with email. A good email list can have an open rate between 30% and 45%, and a click-through rate between 2% and 5%.
This means you can get the same results with an email list of 500 people as you can with a social media following 10 or even 100 times larger.
1. Statistics for engagement rates vary widely from source to source, depending on their definition (engagement per follower count, engagement per impressions, engagement per reach, etc.), what kinds of accounts they are looking at (influencers vs. large brands vs. all accounts), what area (U.S., worldwide), etc. We did our best to find numbers that reflected engagement rates for influencers, thought leaders, and authors and that were in the middle of the range of values given by multiple sources.
2. You Own Your Email List
You don’t own your Facebook following. Facebook does. When you post, Facebook decides who it shows your post to, not you.
And what dictates that decision? Facebook’s interests, not yours.
Meaning if it’s a choice between showing a user your post and showing that user a post Facebook thinks they will like more, or an ad that’s putting money in Facebook’s pocket, which one do you think it’s going to favor?
With email, you’re not at the whim of algorithms, fads, or censorship. As long as you’re getting through people’s spam filters, you have a 100% guarantee of your email landing in the inbox of each of your subscribers.
3. Your Email List Isn’t Going Anywhere
When TikTok was briefly banned in the U.S. in January 2025, could the creators who had built their livelihoods on TikTok instantly export their followers to Instagram or YouTube?
Or when Elon Musk bought Twitter and millions of users left the site, could authors who had built a following of millions on Twitter easily move that following elsewhere?
Nope.
Your email list can’t disappear overnight. It’s not dependent on one specific platform that could get banned, blocked, or boycotted. (Even if your email marketing software goes out of business, you can back up your list as an Excel file and import it into a new software in a matter of minutes.)
Also, email addresses themselves are remarkably stable. People open, close, or forget about their social media accounts all the time. They even change physical addresses and phone numbers more often than they do their email address.
4. Email Is One of the Few Link-Friendly Platforms Left
Social media used to be a friendly place for out-bound links (links taking the user to a different website).
Not anymore.
Facebook actively penalizes posts that contain outbound links. Instagram doesn’t even make the links clickable. All these sites want the user to stay on their site as long as possible. The only links they want them to click on are ads.
Email doesn’t care. You can put as many links in your email as you want (within reason).
5. Email is Segmentable
Any email marketing software worth its salt will break down analytics per user. You can see exactly which emails John Doe has opened, when, and which links he clicked on.
If someone buys your self-guided course, you can tag them and send them an automated email series about your in-person coaching program.
Or you can send a targeted email to all the people who joined your list from your latest speaking tour.
The customization and personalization options are endless!
6. Email Catches People When They Are Ready to Act
If someone’s standing in line at the grocery store and idly scrolling through Instagram for 10 seconds, they’re not in a position to click on the link in your post to buy your book—even if they want to.
In general, people use social media when they’re bored and want to be entertained. But they typically read their emails when they’re ready to process and act on those emails.
7. Email Is Ethical
Nearly every social media site has one over-arching goal: Make the content more addictive, so people spend more time on the site, so they view more ads, so the site makes more money.
Social media addiction is wreaking havoc on our society. Every time you post on social media, you are just adding to that problem.
But when was the last time you heard someone complain about wasting three hours endlessly scrolling through their emails?
(Yes, people complain about too many emails, but that’s different. People check their email not because they’re bored and want to be mindlessly entertained. They check their email because they want to make sure they’re paying their bills or responding to their boss.)
If you are concerned about social media’s impact on society, email is a more ethical way for you to communicate with your followers.
8. Email Is Easy
“What?” you say again. “Writing a good newsletter is not easy.”
Yes . . . but to keep your email list engaged, you only need to send them an email once or twice a month.
Whereas, if you want to build and sustain an engaged following on LinkedIn, Instagram, or virtually any other platform, you’ll need to post multiple times a week.
Take your choice.
So how do you build an email-centric author platform?
At BookPlan, our annual nonfiction book marketing workshop, you’ll learn how to
- Define exactly who is your audience is, what they need, and what you provide them that no one else does.
- Build a reader magnet and subscription system to effortlessly turn leads into loyal email subscribers
- Simplify and sharpen your message
- Write compelling emails to your list to build their trust
- Use AI tools to repurpose your content for social media posts, videos, and more.
- Create an outreach strategy to get your content in front of new readers.
- And more!
Our next BookPlan workshop runs April 22–24, 2026. Register today!
This article was written by Jeremy Madsen, operations manager for BK Authors, administrative contractor for Berrett-Koehler Publishers, former operations manager for LDSPMA, and founder of Iron Rock Press.