What EVERY writer MUST tell EVERY Fan
This blog post is for readers, not writers. But it’s one EVERY writer will love. It’s the post every writer wants to write and certainly needs to write … but usually doesn’t. I suspect my writer friends will post links to it on their blogs—so their readers get to hear it, but they don’t have to say it.
Why all the angst? One word: awkward. It’s awkward to explain to your Loyal Fans that your ability to continue in the art and craft of writing is more completely in their hands than they realize. Unless they are willing to partner with you, the books with stories that keep them up nights and with characters they remember forever won’t be written. Without the intentional support of Loyal Fans, Favorite Author could end up writing television commercials or obituaries for a living.
Along in here somewhere, the wonderful Loyal Fans reading these words are beginning to protest. But we do support the writers we love. We buy their books! We read their books! We love their books!
And writer or not, I find it hard to adequately express how much that means to me and to every writer I know. When you buy our books and tell us you liked them, it is glorious on steroids. And if you never did another thing but buy, read and like our books, we would remain forever grateful to you for it.
But it’s a hard truth that in today’s publishing world, Favorite Author needs more than that from his fans to survive.
What you as a reader might not know is that unless a writer’s name happens to be Stephen King or Danielle Steele or Karen Kingsbury, he or she is literally drowning in a sea of other writers’ books. In past decades, big publishing houses like Penguin-Putnam, Random House, Simon & Schuster and smaller houses like my publisher, Bay Forest Books decided how many books were published and the number was self-limiting. A book had to be good enough to make it down the gauntlet of agents, editors and marketing experts.
That day is gone.
With the advent of e-publishing, anyone on planet earth who can string a subject and predicate together can publish a book. Anyone! There’s great debate over the quality of e-published books (I’ve found indie authors who are fabulous!) but it doesn’t really matter whether the books are good or bad because it’s the sheer number of them that’s the issue—for indie authors and the traditionally published as well. And it’s staggering!
In 2006, the year my first book was published by Penguin Putnam, there were about 380,000 books published in the U.S. In 2012, there were 15,000,000.
FIFTEEN MILLION! In that massive, overwhelming sea of choices, potential readers get hopelessly lost and writers slowly sink below the horizon and are never heard from again. There was a time when the greatest challenge a writer faced was writing a book good enough to be published. Now, our greatest challenge is merely getting noticed!
The only hope we have in that effort is our fans. If—and ONLY if—a writer’s work is good enough to have developed a loyal following, the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a train. You see, one thing in publishing HASN’T changed. The Number One reason a reader buys a book is the same now as it was 25 years ago. Readers buy books—whether traditionally published or an e-book—because someone they know recommended it. Word-of-mouth advertising—the keys to the kingdom. The math is simple. A reader tells two others about a wonderful book he just read. Those two readers tell two more… and two more … and eventually the royalty check is enough to survive on while you write the next book.
This is where it gets really awkward. Loyal Fan is now saying, “but I do recommend Favorite Author’s books to my friends.” And I have to explain tactfully that this conversation over coffee—“Hand me the sugar, would you, Thelma. Hey, I read Favorite Author’s new book the other day, really liked it. Billy, you stop that! Do you hear me? You hit your sister one more time and I’m going to screw your head off your shoulders like the lid off a pickle jar!”—will NOT get the job done.
Every writer needs readers who make the book of yours they just read the reason for a conversation with a friend—with lots of friends. Who annoy the librarian until she puts the book on the shelf. Who write a review on Amazon of every book of yours they read. Who tell their Sunday School class about it and the guys on their bowling team, their hair dresser and barber and personal trainer. Becoming a reader who’s willing to partner with your very own Favorite Author to make a book and the author successful doesn’t cost much in terms of time or effort for the reader but for an author it can make the difference between writing that next book and going into real estate.
I know writers who have teams of Loyal Fans who do just that—and much more. And those teams get the inside story on upcoming books, get to name characters and read sample chapters, win autographed copies and a Skype with the author. I’m planning to launch a team of my own soon. (Maybe call it 9e’s Nutcases?) But every reader who loves a book needs to understand that in the World of Publishing in 2013, their support—in big and little ways—is the only thing that allows a writer to produce the entertainment they enjoy. Those of us who don’t get that kind of support will sink in the jam-packed waters of publishing-dom. And our readers will be the only ones who notice that their Favorite Author is gone.
