Letters and mailing lists

Letters are emails you send to readers who asked for them. You write them in Inkbreaker, in your own design, and they go to the people who signed up on your Creator Page. Find them under Desk › Creator Page › Letters.

What it costs

Building a list and writing letters is free. Sending them is the Mailing lists add-on: $5 a month, with 1,500 emails included each month. It is a separate monthly charge on top of a paid Pro plan, and lifetime Pro does not include it. A trial can build a list and write letters, but cannot send them.

Past the 1,500, extra emails cost $2 per 1,000, counted in steps of 500. You set a monthly limit for extras ($10 to start). A letter that would go past it waits until you raise the limit, and a limit of 0 means you never pay for extras. Turn the add-on on from the More menu in the Letters tab.

A world can have its own list as well. Every list shares the same emails, so more lists cost nothing more: you pay for what you send. See World pages.

How readers sign up

Add a Letters section to your Creator Page and it shows a sign-up form. A reader types their email and we send them one email to check it is them. They join your list only when they tap the link in it, so nobody is added without saying yes. The form never shows whether an address is already on your list.

You can offer a free book for signing up. In the Letters tab, open Free book for signing up and upload an EPUB or PDF, or pick one of your books. Readers get it in a welcome letter after they confirm, and each EPUB copy is made for that reader. See Early reads for how those copies carry the reader’s name.

Already have readers somewhere else? On the Readers tab, Import a list… takes a CSV file from another mailing service or a spreadsheet. You confirm that these people asked for your letters, and each one gets a single email asking whether they still want them. Anyone who does not answer within 30 days is removed. Download list gives you your readers as a file whenever you want it.

Writing a letter

Choose New letter. Give it a subject and a preview line (the few words an inbox shows after the subject), pick the list it goes to, and write it in the same editor you use for your pieces. It saves as you type. A letter is never published as a piece.

Under the words you can add up to four cards: a chapter, a book, or a video.

Designing your letters

Letter design, in the Letters tab’s More menu, sets how every letter looks. It starts from your Creator Page’s look, or from a plain letter. Click any piece of the letter in the preview to change it: the header, the text, buttons and links, cards, your sign-off (typed, in your handwriting, or your name only) and the footer. The preview shows the letter in light and dark, the way an inbox would.

Every letter ends with a footer that says why the reader is getting it, a link to unsubscribe, and a postal address. You can style the footer, but you cannot remove it.

To see a letter in your own inbox first, choose Send a test to me. Tests are never counted or charged.

The cost, before every send

Choose Send… and, before anything goes out, Inkbreaker shows how many emails this letter is, how many of your included emails you have used this month, and what it will cost. It says Included in your plan when there is nothing extra to pay, or shows about how much it adds to your next bill. If it would go past your monthly limit, nothing sends until you raise the limit or send to fewer readers.

New senders start with up to 1,000 emails a day, doubling each week after their first letter, so a large list can take a few days to reach everyone. It keeps going by itself.

Scheduling

In the send box, set When to Later and pick a date and time in your time zone, at least 10 minutes away and within the next year. We check the letter again just before it goes out and send the words as they are then. To change the subject or the list, choose Back to drafts. If a scheduled letter cannot go out, it returns to your drafts and you get a notification saying why.

When sending pauses

Sending pauses if more than 4 in 100 addresses bounce back, or if more than 1 in 200 readers mark a letter as spam. You see a notice in the Letters tab and get a notification, with the reason. The pause is there so one letter cannot send your next ones to spam folders. We look within a day and tell you what we found. Your readers and drafts are safe the whole time.

An address that bounces for good, or a reader who reports a letter as spam, comes off all your lists.

Where replies go

Replies go to, in the Letters tab, decides where a reader’s reply lands: Your Desk inbox, Your email, or both, which is where it starts. Your Desk inbox is Desk › Planning › Messages. Answering from your email shows the reader your email address.

Unsubscribing

Every letter has an Unsubscribe link. One tap and the reader is off all your lists, with nothing else to confirm. If they tapped it by mistake, the page lets them sign back up.

Sending a blog post as a letter

When you publish a blog post, Post settings › Where it goes has a switch to also send it to your readers as a letter, in your letter design. It goes to your main list when the post is published, with the post’s title as the subject and a card that links back to the post.

The switch works only when you have the Mailing lists add-on and at least one reader has confirmed. A post goes out as a letter only after you have agreed to the Letters terms. If the post has links that cannot go out in an email (a link shortener, for example), or the letter would go past your monthly limit, it waits in the Letters tab instead. Open it there to see why, fix it, and send it.

After a letter goes out

Each sent letter shows how many readers it went to, how many opened it (an estimate), clicked, and left. Turn on Show on my page to list it under past letters on your Creator Page.