Frequently Asked Questions

Because email is a shared-IP business. We send all author email through a shared Amazon SES sending pool, and one author who imports a 100,000-address scraped list and blasts it can torch deliverability for every other author on the platform. The caps mean: bring your real, opted-in subscribers; we will deliver them. Don't blast strangers; we are not the right service for that.

Free: 100 lifetime imports total. Author: 1,000 per rolling 7 days, 10,000 lifetime. Active: 5,000 per rolling 7 days, 50,000 lifetime. Pro: 25,000 per rolling 7 days, 250,000 lifetime. The embeddable signup widget is uncapped — that's the encouraged growth path.

Re-confirmation makes the imported list the same kind of clean as a list you grew from scratch with double opt-in: only people who actually want your email are on it. That single thing — list quality — is the biggest factor in whether your emails land in inboxes or in spam folders.

On the Free tier, re-confirmation is mandatory; you cannot skip it. On paid tiers, you can skip re-confirmation if (a) you attest the imported subscribers actively engaged with you in the last 90 days and (b) your account is at least 30 days old. Submitting a false attestation is a Terms violation.

Your account is automatically suspended and all your pending campaigns are cancelled. We'll email you so you can review the situation. The thresholds (rolling 7 days, after at least 100 sends): hard-bounce rate ≥ 2%, or complaint rate ≥ 0.1%. These are tighter than Amazon SES's own thresholds (5% / 0.1% sustained) so we suspend internally before AWS suspends us externally.

If you're suspended for a technical reason (one specific list went bad after you imported a stale CSV), we will, in good faith, work with you to clean it up and restore service. If you're suspended because you imported a purchased or scraped list — that's a Terms violation and the suspension is permanent.

EPUB, PDF, DOCX, and plain text. We extract up to ~250,000 characters of clean text — enough to cover most novels and a sizable chunk of even very long manuscripts. The original file is processed once and not retained.

It doesn't generalise. The first step pulls out structured material from your manuscript — themes, characters, comparable books, tone keywords, and verbatim quotable passages. Every email is then constructed around those specifics, with explicit instruction to open with a concrete moment from your book rather than generic enthusiasm. You can edit any draft, regenerate any single slot, or keep the lot as-is.

AuthorMailingLists has three kinds of campaigns. Pick whichever fits what you're trying to do — they can all run at the same time on the same list.

• One-off email — a single email you write yourself. Send now, schedule for later, or save as a draft. Optional A/B subject-line testing. Use this for announcements, news, sale alerts, anything time-bound.
• Sequence from a book — a fixed-length series the AI drafts from one of your books. Choose a template (5-email launch / 12 weekly themes / 3-email re-engagement) and review before sending. Use this for a coordinated push around a launch or a finite re-engagement run.
• Always-On (Evergreen) — a continuous engine that auto-generates one fresh email on your chosen cadence (weekly, biweekly, monthly), drawing from your book catalogue. Set it once; it keeps going forever. Use this so your list stays warm without you having to think about it.

One door, one place: Campaigns → New campaign. That opens a hub with three cards (One-off / Sequence / Always-On); pick one and the form for that subtype loads. The destination is the same whether you start from the Campaigns page, a book detail page, or a list detail page — the relevant field is just pre-filled for you.

• Click New sequence from a book detail page → that book is pre-selected.
• Click Enable Always-On from a list detail page → that list is pre-selected.

Manage in context, create at the hub.

Once you enable Always-On for a list, a background worker handles the rest:

1. ~24 hours after you enable it, the AI drafts the first email — pulling a theme, a quotable passage, or a tone hook from one of your books.
2. Depending on your approval mode, the draft either ships automatically, ships after a 24-hour review window, or waits for your explicit approval.
3. After it sends, the worker schedules the next one for cadence-period later (7 / 14 / 30 / 60 days).

The engine keeps a 90-day anti-repetition window per list — it won't reuse the same theme, hook, or quotable passage within 90 days, so subscribers don't get the same angle twice in a row.

Drafts are generated one day in advance, not weeks ahead. That means you can change cadence, edit which books it draws from, or swap approval modes at any time and the next draft will reflect your new settings.

Three options when you enable or edit an Always-On campaign:

• Review or default-ship (24h window) — recommended default. The draft sits for 24 hours; you can edit it or cancel it, and if you do nothing it ships on schedule. Best of both worlds: hands-off when life is busy, but you always have a safety window.
• Auto-ship — the draft generates and sends without any review pause. Pure set-and-forget. Use this once you trust the output and don't want any friction.
• Review required — the draft waits indefinitely until you approve it. Nothing ships without your explicit click. Use this for high-stakes lists where you'd rather miss a send than send something you didn't see.

You can change the approval mode at any time from the list detail page → Always-On panel → Edit settings.

Two ways to get to the editor:

• From the Campaigns page — find the Always-On row, click the Source cell ("all books" / "2 books") or the Edit button on the right. Either drops you straight into the source-books picker with the panel pre-expanded.
• From the list detail page — scroll to the Always-On panel and expand Edit settings — cadence, approval, source books.

Tick specific books to limit the rotation to just those, or leave them all unchecked to draw from every book in your catalogue with extracted themes. Changes take effect on the next draft generation (within ~24 hours).

Pick a book that has finished theme extraction, then pick a template:

• 5-email launch — for the week or two around a release. Builds anticipation, hits launch day, follows up with social proof.
• 12 weekly themes — three months of newsletters, each one drawing on a different theme from the book. Good for new lists or sustained engagement.
• 3-email re-engagement — a short, low-key sequence aimed at warming up cold subscribers before you give up on them.

The AI drafts every slot up front (1-3 minutes). You then review the drafts, edit anything you want, and bulk-schedule them into a list. Sequences are fixed-length — they finish when the last slot sends, unlike Always-On which never stops.

Yes — all three controls live on the list detail page, in the Always-On panel:

• Pause — stops generating new drafts and stops scheduled sends. Existing drafts that are mid-review window stay where they are.
• Resume — picks back up on the same cadence, scheduling the next draft from "now."
• Disable — turns it off entirely. No more drafts; no more sends. You'd need to re-create it from Campaigns → New campaign → Always-On if you want it back.

Pausing does not count against your monthly email cap — the cap is based on what actually ships.

Yes. A list can have one Always-On engine plus any number of one-offs plus any number of sequences targeted at it, all running together. The sender, footer, and unsubscribe behaviour are identical across the three — they're just different ways of generating the email content.

The only thing the system protects you from is sending two emails to the same subscriber on the same day from the same list. If a one-off is scheduled and an Always-On draft would land the same day, the Always-On draft is bumped to the next morning so subscribers don't get two from you in one inbox session.

Yes — that's the Content template setting on every Always-On engine. Pick one when you enable it, or change it any time from the list page’s Edit settings panel.

Changes take effect on the next draft generation (within ~24 hours). Drafts that are already mid-review window keep whatever they were generated under.

Because deliverability is the product. A clean confirmed list lands in inboxes; a bloated list with stale or fake addresses ends up in spam — and once you're in spam, even your good emails go there. We default to confirm-by-email (with optional override for highly engaged lists you're importing).

Hard bounces flip the subscriber to bounced; complaints to complained. Both are automatically suppressed from future sends. We surface bounce + complaint counts on every campaign, and we auto-suppress chronically unengaged subscribers (no opens in 90+ days, after at least 120 days on the list) to protect your sender reputation.

Not currently. Emails send from a shared authormailinglists.com domain that the platform manages, including DKIM signing. Per-author custom sending domains are planned for the Pro tier but are not yet available.

Three things: (1) we charge by emails sent per month, not subscriber count — your list can grow without your bill changing; (2) you upload your book and AI generates a year of marketing emails grounded in your actual themes, characters, and quotable lines; (3) genre-segmented lists are first-class — your romance subscribers never get your sci-fi releases.

A Welcome Series is a short AI-drafted onboarding sequence — up to 4 emails — tied to a specific list. When you enable one, every new subscriber who confirms their email is automatically enrolled and receives the emails on a staggered schedule. You generate the drafts from one of your books (using extracted themes and characters), review or edit each one, then enable the series. New enrollments start immediately; existing subscribers are not retroactively included. You can pause, re-generate, or disable the series at any time from the list detail page.

Yes. Each list has a Reader Magnet URL field (Lists › your list › Edit). Paste the URL of your free chapter, PDF, or any download link there. When a subscriber confirms their email, the confirmation page automatically shows a download link to that URL — no extra steps for you or the reader. The reader magnet is per-list, so your romance list and your sci-fi list can each deliver a different freebie. This feature is available on the Author plan and above.

Yes. Every list has a hosted signup page at a shareable URL — you can find it on the list's Embed code page. The page is publicly accessible: readers go to the link, enter their email, and get the same double opt-in confirmation as the embedded widget. Drop the link on a social profile, a bio page, or anywhere you can't paste a script tag.

Yes. The campaign composer includes a header banner upload slot. Upload any image (PNG, JPG, GIF, or WEBP, up to 3 MB) and the platform automatically centre-crops and resizes it to a clean 600px-wide 16:9 banner — so phone photos and portrait images come out polished without any manual resizing. The banner appears at the top of the email, above the subject and body. You can also set a default banner for each Always-On campaign from the list settings page.

Yes. The one-off campaign composer includes several starter body templates you can pick from a dropdown — including a full author newsletter structure (opening hook, author note, main feature, exclusive preview, book spotlight, reader engagement, review ask) and a shorter quick-update format. Selecting a template fills in the body with editable placeholder text so you have a sensible structure to start from rather than a blank page.

Yes. All three paid plans offer an annual option — roughly two months free compared to paying month-to-month. Prices: Author $90/year (vs. $108 billed monthly); Active $190/year (vs. $228); Pro $490/year (vs. $588). Choose annual billing on the pricing page when you first subscribe, or switch from the billing section of your account settings at any time.

Available on the Active plan and above. The platform automatically classifies every confirmed subscriber as hot, warm, or cold based on recent open and click activity, and keeps these tags current after every send. You can then filter a campaign to target only a specific tier — for example, point a re-engagement sequence at cold subscribers, or send a launch email only to your warm-and-hot readers. Targeting engaged segments keeps your sender reputation healthy and your click rates meaningful.

Scheduled campaigns that would exceed your cap are held and not sent. The platform checks your remaining quota before each send and will block it rather than partially deliver to some subscribers. Your cap resets on the 1st of each calendar month. If you are regularly bumping against the limit, upgrading your plan expands the cap — or you can reduce send frequency on one of your lists. The monthly cap is based on emails sent (subscribers × sends), not on list size.

Yes — all three are under Dashboard → Settings. Your author display name appears in the "From" name on emails you send, so subscribers see your name rather than your login email. Your author website URL is included in subscriber confirmation emails, helping new readers identify which author they’re confirming with. Your timezone controls all dashboard date/time display — campaign schedules, subscriber activity, and stats all show in your local time rather than UTC.

Yes. Your subscriber data is yours. From the dashboard, open any list and click the download/export button to get a CSV of all subscribers on that list — email address, first name, status, and date added. All plans include export. If you ever cancel or switch platforms, export before you leave; downgraded accounts stay on the Free tier (not deleted) so you have time to retrieve your data.

You will not be able to add more books or lists until you either upgrade your plan or remove an existing one. The platform blocks the action and shows a prompt with your current limit and the next plan that lifts it. Your existing books, lists, and subscribers are not affected — only new additions are blocked.

If you are regularly hitting the limit, upgrading expands the cap: Free — 2 lists, 2 books; Author — 5 lists, 10 books; Active — 20 lists, 50 books; Pro — unlimited. Note: the monthly email cap is separate from list and book caps — see the plan-cap question below for how that works.

No. If your AuthorMailingLists account uses the same email address as your SelfPublishing.pro account, the book upload page will offer a list of your existing SPP books to import directly — no re-upload needed. Choose a book from the list and we pull the file automatically so you can start theme extraction right away.

Free — 500 emails/month, 2 lists, 2 books, embeddable widget, double opt-in, 1 AI draft preview. Our footer branding on every send. Author $9/mo — 10,000 emails/month, 5 lists, 10 books, full AI generation, sequence templates, reader-magnet delivery, ConvertKit + CSV importers, no footer. Active $19/mo — 40,000 emails/month, 20 lists, 50 books, A/B subject testing, engagement-based segmentation (hot/warm/cold), Mailchimp + ConvertKit importers, priority support. Pro $49/mo — 150,000 emails/month, unlimited lists and books, priority deliverability, dedicated support.

The cap is total emails sent — subscribers × sends. So Author covers a 2,500-subscriber list emailed weekly, or a 10,000-subscriber list emailed monthly. Pick your shape.

Yes. Cancel from your dashboard; you keep paid access through the end of your current billing period, then drop to the Free tier — your subscribers and lists stay intact. Upgrades are prorated; downgrades take effect at period end.

No. We use Claude as our primary AI for theme extraction and email drafting. Your manuscript text stays in your account database and is not shared with other authors or used as training data. No AI provider we work with retains or trains on your book content.

Tick the A/B box on the campaign composer, write Subject B, set the test percentage (10–50% of the list, default 30%) and the winner-decide window (default 4 hours). We send both subjects to evenly-split halves of the test cohort, measure open rates, then send the winning subject to the rest of the list automatically. A/B testing is available on the Active plan and above.

Every campaign detail page now has both:

• Live preview — renders the campaign through the exact same email wrapper subscribers receive, with {% raw %}{{first_name}}{% endraw %} and other merge tags already filled in. There's a Preview as: dropdown at the top — pick the default synthetic subscriber (Sarah Mitchell) or any of your real confirmed subscribers to see the email exactly as they'll receive it.
• Send a test copy — fires a single test email to your own address (or to a confirmed subscriber on your list, if you type a different address). Subject is prefixed [TEST] so it's obvious in the inbox, merge tags resolve against whatever first name you type (or the default Sarah persona).

What test sends don't do:

• Don't count toward your monthly email cap
• Don't show up in campaign analytics (opens, clicks, bounces, A/B variant stats)
• Don't consume an unsubscribe token — the link in the footer is a sentinel, not a real unsub
• Throttled to 5 per campaign per hour so an accidental loop can't burn your reputation or quota

For abuse protection, test sends can only go to your own email address or a confirmed subscriber on one of your lists — the dashboard isn't a generic SES relay.

You get a one-line <script> tag per list. Drop it into any page on your website (WordPress, Squarespace, plain HTML, etc.). Visitors enter their email; we send a confirmation email; only confirmed addresses become mailable. Cross-origin safe, no jQuery required, mobile-friendly.

Yes. ConvertKit imports via API key (paste from kit.com → Account → Account Info). Mailchimp imports via OAuth — read-only access, we only pull subscribed members. Both flows default to re-confirmation emails for imported addresses, which we strongly recommend; you can opt out for lists where every subscriber has actively engaged in the last 90 days.

Yes. By design the widget already inherits two things from your site automatically: the font and the text color. Drop it onto a serif site and the field labels render in serif; drop it onto a dark theme and the heading text shows up light. No configuration needed.

For colors that aren't inherited — the button color, the button text color, and the input border color — each list has its own controls on the Embed code page (Lists › your list › Embed code › Customize appearance). You get:

• Three color pickers with both swatch + hex-text input
• Six one-click presets (Neutral dark, Coral, Bootstrap blue, Forest green, Royal purple, Outlined)
• Override the widget’s title, description text, and button label with your own copy — or leave blank to inherit from your list name and description automatically
• A live preview that shows how the widget will look on both light and dark backgrounds
• Toggle to use a clean system font instead of inheriting (rare, but useful if your site’s body font doesn’t play nicely with form inputs)

The default is neutral dark — a charcoal button on a transparent background — chosen because it sits cleanly on virtually every author site without tweaking.

Changes take effect within ~5 minutes (we cache the widget JS at the CDN edge for that long).