Email marketing for authors or short video: do authors need social media, or is a newsletter enough? Dave and Patty each take one side and stick to it. Dave says short video finds new readers faster than anything else right now. Patty says an email list is the only audience you own. Followers are rented, and the app decides who sees your clip.

You'll hear how a faceless hook test works: your hands, the book, one line of text on screen and a new first line each day. You'll also hear how Claude Code can pull candidate hooks from a manuscript, and how a sign-up link in the back of the book with a bonus scene turns readers into a launch list. In What Would You Do?, Dave and Patty take three cases: a new author with no list, a thriller series whose list has gone quiet, and an AI-assisted author building a faceless channel. That last case covers voice-cloning terms, the FTC rule on fake testimonials, and why the freebie can't be your ebook while it's enrolled in KDP Select.

In Myth or Money, they rule on four claims: whether anyone still reads email, whether trending words belong in your KDP keywords, how soon a video hit pays off, and whether you can trade free copies for reviews. Store rules are quoted as of October 2026, so check the current pages before you act.

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Topics: email marketing for authors, do authors need social media, author newsletter, how to build an author email list, short video for authors, faceless TikTok for authors, reader magnet ideas, book marketing for self-published authors

Voices are AI-generated (ElevenLabs) versions of the hosts, Dave and Patty of Publish at Scale. Scripts are written with AI and checked against a dated fact sheet. Not affiliated with Amazon, Kindle Direct Publishing or Anthropic. No income claims: results depend on your books and your work.