FOR READERS
Today’s reader topic comes from QSFer Denise Deschene:
You know them, you love them! You pound the pre-order button, wish them a Happy Book Release Day on FB! You wake up and roll over to buy their books the moment they’re dropped and kid yourself that you’ll only read the first chapter then go to sleep and end up staying up all night wibbling over their creations~. You Love These Authors!!!
How do you support your favorite authors? Writing is not a six-figure income and with the power of social media, you are able to follow your author’s writing woes from day to day…We all want to give Authors what they deserve! Do you exclusively buy from Smashwords? Or do you look to find any swag and save up to buy all your favorite gear? Do you reject the eBook and go for full print novels?
What would you tell the rest of your fellow readers to do for your favorite authors if you had the chance?
Writers: This is a reader chat – you are welcome to join it, but please do not reference your own works directly. Thanks!
I have a few must-buy authors on my list. I subscribe to their Amazon author pages so that when they release a new book, I get a notice. There is also Author Alarms, which sends out one and only one email when a book is out. You can put any author’s name in the form. If they aren’t already listed, they will be. Go to http://authoralarms.com to sign up or to add your own name. And of course, there’s the tried and true newsletter!
I do all those things you listed in the first paragraph. Then when I’ve bought an ebook… if I love it… I buy a print copy. Or if there is a print copy at a great price and the ebook isn’t out, I’ll order the print copy.
My only regret is that there aren’t any to be found in Half Price Bookstores or at Barnes and Noble. Some day…
Unfortunately, my appetite for books FAR exceeds my book budget, so I tend to suggest titles at my local libraries (I am fortunate that I have 3 different systems I can harvest from!), I sign up for newsletters and forward them to folks who love that particular genre, I attend online chats with avid readers and we exchange the titles of stories we are particularly enjoying (I am not on FB so I am limited in the ones I attend) and I host folks on my blog if they are interested. If there’s a sale, I sometimes post it at a site I participate in…but unfortunately, I often run out of time. I’m a reviewer, so I am fortunate in having more books to read and review than I have time to do, but I try to review as many as I can, because authors are so desperate for reviews. I think if more people are willing to write a line or two about why they really liked a book, it helps attract attention.