Rural Route 2 News, monthly e-mail newsletter from ruralroute2.com, recently completed its first full year of publication.The newsletter, which officially began as a monthly publication in January 2004, is written and published by LeAnn R. Ralph, author of books, "Christmas in Dairyland (True Stories from a Wisconsin Farm)" (trade paperback; August 2003) -- "Give Me a Home Where Dairy Cows Roam" (trade paperback; October 2004) -- "Preserve Your Family History (A Step-by-Step Guide for Interviewing Family Members and Writing Oral Histories)" (e-book; April 2004).
Each newsletter contains a story related to some aspect of author's childhood growing up on a small family farm or author's experience of living in a rural area today. The newsletter also includes several recipes each month, as well as notes about author's experiences over past month, suggestions to check out certain blog entries for other good stories, opportunities for "sneak previews" of Ralph's next book project, and occasionally, opportunities to sign up to win free copies of Ralph's books.
"It's tremendous fun to write newsletter," Ralph said. "Before I started sending out a monthly publication in January of 2004, I sent out stories from time to time for at least a year before that."
According to conventional Internet marketing wisdom, newsletters should be published daily or weekly. Ralph decided to publish her newsletter monthly.
"I get so much junk e-mail myself that it's difficult to find things I want to read among trash that comes in," she said. "I'm thinking other people probably have enough clutter in their in-boxes too."