On the importance of Community

Your neighbors aren't your friends.

I suppose that's not entirely true for everyone, but it is certainly more true than it was thirty years ago.

Block parties, barbecues, getting yelled at by the neighbor for playing in the street and playing bridge was once the norm.

The people of your neighborhood were your community. You looked after each other, you cared about each other and you were friends.

Our society has become more isolated and introverted and this is no longer the case.

Except on the internet.

Community thrives on the internet. Sure, it's not the same as the face-to-face interaction that we once had with our own neighbors, but it's something.

Look around the vast internet and you will find all sorts of communities. Some good, some bad.

Independent writers have a fairly strong community presence.

The question is: what kind of community are we going to be?

Liking Facebook pages and buying each other's books is helpful, but it doesn't reach our ultimate goal.

If all we do is buy each other's books then we are essentially trading the same money back and forth to each other.

Now I'm not saying that it isn't a good idea to support your fellow indie writers, far from it, what I'm saying is that we need to find a way to promote each other as much as we support each other.

We all have a certain fanbase and that fanbase consists of readers. And that's what we all need more of, readers. People who buy our books not because we will buy theirs, but people who only expect to be entertained for their money.

If videos of cops beating up citizens and people dumping ice on their heads can reach millions of people in several countries then there is no reason why word of our books can't reach the same number of people.

You see, the people on Facebook and Youtube are a community even if they don't realize it. They are in a community with every other person on Facebook even if they've never met them.

What binds them all together is their willingness to share things will a mass amount of people and spread it to all corners of the globe.

It's an internet daisy-chain that never ends.

This is what indie authors need to be doing. Promoting each other.

We are not in competition with one another, people read all types of books in this day and age.

We can all talk a big game and we can all promise to take action, but it's easier to think about doing something than it is to actually do it.

What we need to do is start introducing our readers to our fellow indie authors.

If this revolution is going to reach full steam it will require us to move it along.

There is no publishing company to help, there is no publicist.

There is only us. Helping each other and ourselves in the process.

So what kind of community are we going to be?