The Unexpected Importance of Author Email Signatures

I’m back today to discuss how authors can use the signature line in their email correspondences to continually promote their publications in a form of passive email marketing. Using an email signature line is specifically a great way to promote an author’s writing to all those they correspond with in everyday emails to friends, family or colleagues. Signature lines in email can automatically populate below a new email’s text, based on email signature settings, or can manually be pasted in every time an email is sent.

A good author email signature line is very simple and to the point, ideally containing no more than several lines of information. The type of compact information an author will typically want to include in their signature line are things such as: full name, address, perhaps a phone number, social media link(s) and/or author website link—and above all—mention of their book or writings. I’ve also seen authors include their job title/department/company, logo, a link to their LinkedIn page, an inspirational quote about writing, or even review praise or an author blurb/endorsement they’ve gotten for one of their books. The signature line might include a suggested action such as: “Order my book now,” “Available for pre-order,” or “Please visit my website for more info.”

I’ve shared a couple of examples of author email signatures from clients I’ve worked with at the Trident Media Group literary agency to lend a feel for how one might construct an author email signature of their own:

Gmail and Microsoft Outlook have very simple instructions for creating email signatures. If you don’t use Gmail or Outlook, simply performing a Google search for something like, “How to create an email signature using ___” ought to yield some good results. There is also a way to insert hyperlinks into the text such that longer links beginning with “http//…” do not need to be used. Alternatively, social media buttons or book covers can contain hyperlinks in the place of text. I’ve even seen authors get fancy with things such as GIFs contained within their email signatures.

Hopefully these ideas for making an email signature are helpful in constructing or improving upon an author email signature...and who knows, maybe it results in more book sales.