The next newsletter is due out on Friday, 22nd March. And I need your help.

While I’m really excited and happy about the feedback I’ve been getting from people who are reading and following along with the story (and voting!), I need more people signing up (and voting) for me to continue writing the book.

I’m gonna be totally honest here and break all those rules that say you should never ever release stats (unless they are AH-mazing).

Lemme start by giving you hard numbers. Since I kicked this off, there have been about 90 new newsletter sign ups. I had cleaned out my newsletter list at the start of this (there were a ton of people who had never completed the sign up process and weren’t actually getting the newsletter). Right now (19 March) there are 317 people signed up for the newsletter.

When I send out a newsletter, the open rate (i.e. the number of people who receive the newsletter and then actually open it) is between 30 to 40%. I know some more people are actually reading the story via people forwarding the PDF file, but I have no way of tracking how many people are doing that (which is why I had decided to send this out via newsletter at all).

For instance, when I sent out chapter five, 107 people opened the newsletter. Then 89 of those people actually clicked the link to open the PDF file. Of those, 22 people actually sent me a vote on what they wanted to happen next.

So, okay, I totally love those 22 people (heck, those 89 people) and a few more people voted on the Chapter seven decision and presumably some more will vote on the Chapter 8 decision.

BUT (and that’s a BIG but)…

I can’t justify writing a book for less than a hundred people. I know there are more Mina fans out there than that. Shoot, I’ve gotten WAY more emails than that from different people begging me to continue the series (ha, I’ve gotten more emails than that from ONE person). I’ve got edits I’m working on for Ask Me (coming in 2014!) and about three other manuscripts I should be spending time on. I really WANT to finish Mina’s story for you guys but I’m not gonna do it for so few people when I have other stuff I should be writing (heck, if that’s truly the number of people who want to know what happens, I’ll just tell you…though, yeah, I know, the story’s the fun, not the end result).

I want to see at least 1000 people signed up (and hopefully more). I want to see some subscription growth each week. I want to see more votes coming in.

And that’s where you come in. And me, too.

Here’s what I’m going to do:

• I’m going to post the previous newsletter’s released chapters directly on my website for easy access to new fans. It won’t be the most up-to-date chapters but it will give anyone who wants to start reading a taste of the story. People will still need to sign up for the newsletter to get the latest chapters as soon as they are released and to vote.
• I will continue to post on my Facebook fan page additional prompts so you can help change the story in other ways than just voting. I really do want this to be YOUR story.
• I’m going to be contacting some writerly peeps and asking them to help spread the word too.
• I’ve started advertising on YA Books Central.
• I have a cool contest idea, but am going to have to hash out some details before I tell you any more about it.

Here’s what I need YOU to do:

• If you haven’t already signed up, do it now.
• Tell your friends. Make them sign up. (okay, don’t, like, hold them at sword point or anything, but if you think they’d like the story, make ‘em try it out. They can always unsubscribe later.)
• When you get the newsletter, open it. And read the chapters. And most importantly…vote.
• Participate on the Facebook Fan Page. Every time you like or respond to a post there, it makes it that much more likely that someone else will also see the post (that’s the way Facebook works).
• If you have a blog or Tumblr or some corner of the Internet that you call your own, please post about this. Tell ‘em how fun it is. How awesome it is to be helping shape the story. Please feel free to use the images in this post (you can link them directly to the book page at http://www.kimberlypauley.com/my-books/sucks-to-be-moi/ or the newsletter sign up page at http://www.kimberlypauley.com/newsletter ) If you need a differently sized image, just let me know and I’ll make it for you.
• If you have any ideas you’d like to share on how to get the word out, let me know. I’d really really like to make this work.