What To Do to Help Your Author Friend Sell Books

Eileen Flanagan, author of The Wisdom to Know the Difference (Tarcher, 2009), wrote a terrific piece in the Mpls. Star Tribune recently, called “Spread the love for your author friend” – about how to really help an author whose work you love. http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/53857827.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU

Her advice:

1) Buy your friend’s book. In other words, don’t borrow or get one free! Help the author by spending money so he/she can get a royalty as well as sales recorded, and to let booksellers know people want this book. And, she reminds us, ask your local librarian to order a copy.
2) Don’t wait until Christmas or Hanukkah. The book won’t stay on the bookstore shelf is no one buys it now. Booksellers typically keep a book on the shelf no longer than 6-8 weeks. If it isn’t moving, it is returned and that’s the end of the story…..so BUY IT NOW.
3) Where should you buy it? Amazon versus brick-and-mortar store….Flanagan correctly points out that your author friend is helped more by a purchase from a chain bookstore than from Amazon, if it is bought right when the book comes out. If it’s well after the fact, then support your local independent bookstore by buying it there. Amazon is important as well, but it is not as helpful to the author as plan A or B above.
4) Write a review on Amazon for the book, or Goodreads.com. Mention it on Facebook and Twitter, and recommend it to your reading group. All excellent suggestions and reminder.
5) If you are a fan of a different sort of book than what your author friend wrote, in stead of writing a review write something like “I’m so proud of you for following your passion” etc.
6) If your friend is a good speaker, recommend him or her to your church, synagogue, school, etc.
7) Put a link to your friend’s website on your website or blog, using your friend’s key words to help her audience find her.
8) If your friend could legitimately be a reference on some Wikipedia page, add her as one, since a person can’t recommend him or herself without a conflict of interest.
9) Don’t ask your friend if she has thought of trying to get on Oprah.
10) If you pray, go ahead.

Thank you, Eileen Flanagan! This is so helpful.

An author friend of mine, Carrie Link, also hosts author launch parties and book readings in her home, complete with delicious food. This has been a help to the author and to Carrie, who has widened her community of writers and helped her make fabulous publishing contacts.

Be creative, but think about it. When you love an author or a book, speak up, any way you can--there is not an author alive who does not need this.

Laurie

www.authorbiz.com
Photo credit: (c)2009 Clipart

OPENING THE VEIN

"But words are things, and a small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think." Lord Byron


OPEN A VEIN should be tacked up in front of every author writing a creative narrative book. It's a reminder to:

• get out of your head
• talk to us on the page as if we're in front of you
• get to the heart of your material and subject
• move us with your words, just as it moves you
• show us your true self, your real mind, your genuine heart
• be honest
• don't hold back
• bleed on the page if you have to

You have the opportunity for your book to make a difference in people's lives, to change the way we look at the world, to open up new doors for us, to inspire and enrich us. Don't take half-measures. Don't stop short. Invest yourself fully on the page, so this book can be everything its original inspiration held.

What usually stops a writer from doing this? First, there is the FEAR of what friends, family and colleagues will think. There is an INSECURITY about revealing one's true self for the world to see and judge. The writer may also have a privacy issue; once you put something into the book and "out there" there is no taking it back. You make yourself a "public person." And innocently enough, it is often a matter of the writer getting tangled up in the concepts and all the technical requirements--distancing the writer from the very passions that started him or her writing to begin with.

No matter the reasons a writer holds back, the result is that readers don't latch on; it becomes another "forgettable" book. The author did not speak to them. It was words on a page, all perfectly logical and let's hope intelligent, but lacking the passion, ideas, heartbeat, or fire that grabs us and won't let go. Smart books written with a "gloved hand" are hard to latch onto.

Open up and let go. Let the fire in your belly out. Let the ideas out. Tell us what you really have to say, and stand by it. Put yourself out there to be heard.

Laurie

www.authorbiz.com
Photo credit: Clipart