5 Ways to Support Your Favorite Authors

Photo credit: Mark J P on Flickr

Not too long ago, I wrote a post on how (not) to be an awesome fan, in which I detailed ways to make your favorite authors extraordinarily (un)happy people.

Today I'd like to take the opposite approach and talk about some real ways to support your favorite authors, and become the kind of fan that every author wants and appreciates.

So without further ado, here are five ways to support your favorite authors and be a great fan.

1. Write honest reviews. This doesn’t necessarily mean good reviews, although it can. Honest reviews, the ones where you share the good and bad and what you really thought about the book (without rudeness, that is) are the best kind—readers believe them because you’re not just raving madly about their awesomeness (not that there’s anything wrong with that), and writers more times than not appreciate your honesty.  


2. Let them know you enjoyed their book. Twitter is perfect for this, because it allows you to directly contact authors and let them know that they’re appreciated with just a couple keystrokes. Naturally, this doesn’t mean you should spam them (please don’t spam anyone), but a quick note saying that you really enjoyed their book may be just what they needed to hear that day. 


3. Spread the word. Did you like the book? Then tell people about it! Word of mouth is one of the best marketing tools out there, and what’s fantastic is that it works exponentially—you may tell one person about it, who may then go on to tell two others, and each of them may go on to tell a few more. Before you know it, your favorite author has a dozen new fans just because you told one person how much you enjoyed their book. 


4. Buy their books. I know it’s not always possible to buy every book from every one of your favorite authors, and that’s ok (as long as you’re getting it from legal means, that is). But every book you buy, whether e-book or print, is a monetary vote of support for the author, and for traditionally published authors, sales play an important role in determining the future of their contracts.


5. Give their books as gifts. Obviously this only works if the recipient of the gift is a cool person who loves books, but this is a great way to not only make a reader you care about happy, but to possibly give your favorite author a new fan. And that’s a win-win all around. 

Have you done any of these to help support your favorite authors? What other suggestions would you add to the list? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

Do you support your favorite authors? Here are five easy ways to do so. (Click to tweet) 

Do you want to show your favorite authors how much you appreciate them? Try some of these easy steps. (Click to tweet)

Making the Connection: Author-Reader

Photo credit: New Media MK on Flickr

So you’ve gone through your manuscript and you’re sure your characters are making the connection. They’re alive—smart, funny, stupid at times (and they’re NOT any of these). They make you laugh, cry, and scream in frustration. Good. You’re halfway there.

Now you need to make another connection—one that many writers (as many of us are introverts) struggle with.

The Author-Reader connection.

I don’t need to tell you how the world has changed in the last ten years alone. You already know that there used to be a time when authors wrote books and chose whether or not to connect with their readers after publication. If they did, they’d go on book tours and sit through hours of book signings and the especially nice ones would conduct interviews and host book readings.

I’ve touched on this before. Now I’m really going to dive into it.

Things are different, my friends. Long gone are the days when the Author-Reader connection didn’t begin until you had a book on the shelves. Now it doesn’t matter. Thanks to social media, you can begin to build relationships with your future potential readers now. It doesn’t matter if you have a published book or an agent. Hell, it doesn’t even matter if you’ve finished writing your first novel. When it comes to forging that connection, you can’t start too soon.

It took me a while to grasp that. I read this post by Nathan Bransford and protested the notion for months. But who would want to follow me? I thought. I don’t even have an agent looking at my work. I’ve never been published.

Who the hell would read a blog post written by me?

Well, as it turns out, at least 68 of you. Plus many more Twitter followers than I ever thought I’d have.

Things are different now, fair readers. I have at least one book in my TBR pile that I discovered not because of raving reviews, but because I thought the author was an awesome person. I should read her book, I thought, not because of a stunning blurb or a gorgeous cover, but because I liked her as a person. The fact that it did have an amazing blurb was a bonus.

The time to make a connection with your readers is now. I don’t care what stage of writing you’re in. If your eventual goal is to be published and you aren’t reaching out to your potential future readers, you’re missing out.

Start now. Don’t wait.

Take it from someone who was, at first, too scared to jump in. People will be interested to hear what you have to say, I promise. Go out there, just be you, and your personality will shine through. People will see it and they’ll gravitate towards you.

Then, before you know it, you’ll have a nice boost to your confidence as well as a circle of wonderful new friends.

What stage of writing are you in? Have you started forging your Author-Reader connection? If so, what reservations did you have before jumping in?