Marg McAlister: an indie author managing five pen names on one list

Marg McAlister has spent years in genre fiction, but she rarely publishes under a single name. Across five pen names, she writes cosy mysteries, sweet small-town romance, and soon, cosy fantasy, with more than 60 books between them, all released through her own imprint – Blue Gem Publishing. Somewhere between drafting one series, editing another, and waiting on cover art for a third, she also manages every one of those pen names' subscribers from a single EmailOctopus account, segmented with nothing more than fields and tags.

We spoke to Marg about her writing schedule, single-list management, and what she'd tell an author too nervous to start building a community of readers.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your writing. You publish under several pen names – what genres do you write under, and how did you come to have multiple author identities?

I'm an author who writes in a range of genres, both under my own name and under various pen names. In total, I have five pen names, and between them, I have around 63 books published (plus boxed sets). For example, I write cozy mystery under my own name, Marg McAlister, and sweet small-town romance under the pen name Tess Brennan. I'm about to launch a new cozy fantasy series as Marg McAlister.

The pen names happened organically rather than by grand design – different genres attract different readers, and romance readers in particular tend to have strong expectations about what they're picking up. Mixing a cozy mystery author and a romance author under one name felt like it would confuse everyone, including me. So each pen name has its own identity, its own voice, and its own readership. My EmailOctopus account is under my Indie publishing imprint, Blue Gem Publishing.

Marg McAlister – author behind five pen names and the imprint Blue Gem Publishing.

What does a typical writing day look like for you?

Chaotic, if I'm honest! I'm usually juggling writing or editing one book while another is drafted and a third is at the cover design stage. All my books are in a series, so I have to plan ahead – the entire series arc plus each individual story. The challenge with multiple pen names isn't just the writing. It's keeping all the moving parts organised – newsletters, cover designs, ARC readers, and promotional opportunities. There's always something waiting for attention.

I'm a morning person, so it works for me to be at the computer any time between 4 am and 6 am. After lunch, forget it! I save easy/fun tasks for the afternoon (I can spend hours messing about with book cover design or promo graphics). I work from home, like many people these days, with the "musts" being a comfortable chair and a decent-sized monitor.

How long have you been using EmailOctopus, and what made you choose it over other platforms?

I've been using EmailOctopus for about a year now, and the honest answer to why I chose it is cost. When my previous platform became too expensive, I looked around for an alternative, and EmailOctopus got good reviews. I was able to sign up and take it for a test drive with a couple of pen names before exporting all my lists, which was handy.

I've been using email platforms for about 20 years and have tried most of them. As your list grows, the monthly cost becomes your single biggest publishing expense, and EmailOctopus is significantly more affordable than the alternatives. For 5,000 subscribers, I'm paying roughly a third less per year than I was with my previous platform.

But cost alone wouldn't keep me here. What's kept me is the support. I've never experienced anything like it with an email platform – responses are fast, genuinely helpful, and they actually try to solve your problem rather than pointing you to a help article. Test emails arrive within seconds. And the team is clearly working on new features all the time. For an indie author operating on tight margins, that combination of price and support is hard to walk away from.

The Marg McAlister website, showing her Vintage Trailer Mysteries and Australian Adventure Novels series. At the bottom, the Marg McAlister sign-up form.

You manage all your pen names under a single EmailOctopus account, with a single list for all your readers, using custom fields and tags to keep everyone organised. How does that setup work for you day-to-day, and what made you decide to keep everyone in one list rather than separating them out?

Keeping everyone in one list was a practical decision. I'm planning to grow my lists even more, and some subscribers will be interested in more than one genre. If someone appears on multiple lists, they'd be counted multiple times towards the plan limit. With one list, custom fields, and tags, I can see my whole readership in one place and segment from there.

Day-to-day, it means that when I'm sending a Tess Brennan romance newsletter, I can filter by the relevant segment, and only those readers receive it. A cozy mystery reader doesn't hear about a romance release that isn't their thing, and vice versa. It keeps the emails relevant, which I think readers appreciate – nobody wants their inbox filled with books they'd never read.

I use BookFunnel to deliver freebies and ARC books (Advance Review Copy) to readers. Because I chose to use a single list rather than separate lists, I use its advanced option to assign a tag to each signup. That tag is set up in EmailOctopus beforehand. The reader is added to an automation with the trigger "Contact added" and filtered by the relevant tag or "Contact tag added" trigger, depending on the automation.

Once a contact joins the list and gets a tag automatically added, they trigger the tag-based welcome automation, set up for new Marg McAlister subscribers.

Could you walk us through how you use the segmentation? For example, how do you make sure readers of one pen name only receive content relevant to them?

I use custom fields and tags for segments. For example, two segments are "Tess Brennan Mailout" and "Cozy Mystery Mailout" based on sign-up tags. I do have some cross-genre readers who are happy to read anything I write as Marg or Tess, so I have another segment, "Marg Anything". I also set up tags such as "Cozy Mystery Only" or "All Cozies" for readers who enjoy both cozy mystery and cozy fantasy.

I've just sent a preference email to my combined Marg/Tess list with four options presented as buttons – cozy mystery readers, cozy mystery and cozy fantasy readers, romance readers, and readers who want everything, so subscribers can self-select exactly what they want to receive with a single click. It's a more active approach than relying solely on how they originally joined the list, and I expect it will improve engagement across the board.

When I'm sending a campaign, I can then select the "Advanced" tab to segment the campaign audience to exclude anyone who might not want to receive the email.

How do you promote your sign-up forms, and where do readers typically find them?

I have a website for each of the five author names I use, and that's where you'll find my sign-up forms. There's a very practical reason for this – I have the link to my reader newsletter on the back of every book, which takes them to the website page. Then, I can just include the form code I get from EmailOctopus on each website.

In addition, it helps deliverability to have your emails from a name associated with a website, rather than a generic free email address.

Marg's website for her Tess Brennan pen name, showcasing her Hope Valley Romance series.

Tess Brennan's sign-up form added to the website.

You have a welcome automation set up for each pen name. What does a typical welcome sequence look like for one of your pen names?

I actually have a couple of automations set up for each author, depending on where the subscribers are coming from. It's usually only the first email that's different; the rest of the sequence stays the same. For example, if subscribers come in via a promotion, I might include, in the first paragraph, a thank-you for taking part in the recent promotion (to keep it fairly generic) and say, "Here's your free book for subscribing".

Some author names have more than one free book that I've written just for subscribers, so the welcome sequence will be, say, three automated emails spread over a few weeks, with a little bit about me as the author and a link to download their freebie.

The welcome sequence is just a short getting-to-know-you series that leads into the campaigns I send out, on average, once a month for each author name. The campaign emails are just to stay in touch, share some personal details, let them know about new releases or any special offers.

The welcome email Tess Brennan's subscribers receive after signing up with a link to their free book.

How do you keep your newsletters engaging across such different audiences? Do you have a different voice or approach for each pen name?

This is something I spent some time puzzling over to begin with, wondering how I should approach it… and in the end, it was easy.

I'm just myself.

My personality is the same, my sense of humor is the same, my outlook on life is the same. I don't share family details or mention politics or religion, but the rest is straightforward. I do tailor what I talk about according to my readership and what I know of their interests. I try to talk to readers as I might to a friend, in the same easy tone. That works, I think, no matter what the genre.

What do I talk about? Sometimes, it's the behind-the-scenes stuff like creating book covers (do you prefer this cover or this one?), cover reveals, a sample chapter from an upcoming series, freebie promotions, or the occasional reader question. I sometimes talk about where I've been, what I've been doing, or TV viewing. Readers are interested in what you do apart from writing. For example, for the past six years, my husband and I spent every winter on our small mining claim (gemstones), and I'd post pics of us down in the mine, or working on the washplant, or I'd showcase my writing space in our humble shack. That kind of thing.

Ideas for topics are endless, really, but I do keep in mind that readers are often busy people and many don't like reading long emails.

How has your email list grown over time, and has anything surprised you about how readers engage with your emails?

My email list numbers have gone up and down over time, and that has been governed by several things – how much promotion I'm doing, how drastically I decide to cull my lists, how regularly I have new releases, and, of course, by what else is happening in my life. There have been times when I've been writing feverishly and have suffered burnout for a while, so emailing readers hasn't been a priority. Naturally, readers move on. However, I have stalwarts that have been with me for decades across platforms!

I am currently in a 12-author promotion in which we each promote a different one of us to our list every month. Each author offers a free book, downloadable from BookFunnel, and I see a flurry of new signups each month from this cross-promotion. I've also used ads to drive people to a free book download, which further builds my list. BookFunnel offers regular promotions that any author can join.

Has anything surprised me about how readers engage? I don't know about "surprised", but I'm often reminded, in a good way, that readers are not just numbers, but people who have similar interests and challenges.

For example, when I announced to my list that I had been quiet for a couple of reasons - one, I had to finish a complicated crochet blanket, and two, I was up to my ears in writing a new cozy fantasy series. I included a photo of a mosaic crochet blanket I had made for my son, with "This is the kind of thing I've been working on", and mentioned that the new cozy fantasy series would have a craft group in it. I included the first chapter of Book 1 of the new series.

That prompted comments back from readers about that blanket, and crocheting, and how the new series looked good, and they couldn't wait to read the rest - and then when I asked for volunteers to be ARC readers for the new series, I found more lovely people.

Marg took a break from writing to work on other projects – including this mosaic crochet blanket.

What would you say to another indie author thinking about starting an email list?

Start before you think you're ready. A lot of authors tend to put off building an email list until they have more books, more followers, more time, but the list is what makes all of those other things easier. It's the one channel you own completely. Social media platforms change their algorithms, retailers change their rules, but your email list is yours.

And don't sweat it too much at the beginning. One welcome email and a reason for readers to sign up are enough to start. You can build the rest as you go. Even if you have only one book published, make sure you also write a book to give away (a reader magnet) in return for joining your reading list. It can be just a short story or a novella, but make sure it showcases your writing style to advantage and makes readers eager to read your other work.

Is there anything you wish you'd known earlier about email marketing, or anything you'd do differently?

It's something I've already said – be yourself. What's that old adage … something like: "People buy from people they know, like and trust"? If your emails are always too sales-y ("Buy my book!"; "Have you tried this one?"; "Try my whole series" etc), people won't be motivated to open them, and your open rate will crater. Mix up links to books for sale with other content that will interest your list.

I'd also tell my earlier self not to be afraid of emailing regularly. There's a common fear of being annoying, but readers who signed up want to hear from you if you are warm and engaging. Silence is actually more damaging than consistency (picture your list melting away like ice cream in the sun).

An example of Marg's newsletter where she shares a personal update with her list and announces a new cosy fantasy series, Fenwick Hollow.

What's next for your writing – any new books or series in the pipeline?

The most exciting thing on my horizon is the launch of a new cozy fantasy series – Fenwick Hollow, which I'm writing as Marg McAlister. I have three books written and edited of a planned five-book series, the first three covers done, and ARC readers waiting for Book 1. It's a slightly new direction for me, and I'm genuinely excited to see how readers respond. And apprehensive, because hey, I'm an author, and we bite our fingernails waiting to see the response to anything new.

Beyond that, there are more books in the pipeline across my other pen names. With over 60 books in, I'm still finding new stories to tell, which I think is the best possible sign. I keep telling myself it's time to retire, and then that niggling author voice says indignantly, "Oh no, you're not!", and before I know it, I'm furiously tapping out notes on another new idea…

Check out Marg McAlister's Vintage Trailer Mysteries and Australian Adventure Novels, or curl up with a Tess Brennan small-town romance.