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You may have followed my struggle in November during NaNoWritMo to catch up on the blog, including and especially the Author Spotlights. It was a struggle to create over thirty of them. So why do I do it?
Recommending Others.
This is part of the business.
In many industries, others in the business are competition. Publishing is much closer to farming than manufacturing in nature. The ground needs to be prepared and constantly taken care of to produce a product – in this case the audience needs “food” faster than a writer can prepare it by themselves. By recommending others, a writer keeps their audience in the reading mood and, at the same time, keeps themselves in the audience’s mind while waiting for the next “harvest” to come in.
Farmers who live near each other, or writers in the same genre or same convention circuit, trade ideas and techniques to produce the best product possible. They support each other, help each other to keep their environment healthy, and create a community.
Ways writers do this include providing blog tours, hosting writer groups, and talking other people’s books up during conventions. I personally do it through book reviews, author spotlights, other cool blog posts, attending a book club, and including a featured book on my video Editing Rants.
So if you decide to join this crazy industry, remember to talk up other authors and their books. It might be the connection you need with your audience.
WRITING EXERCISE: Do one thing to promote other people’s work today. Recommend a book on Facebook, talk up a book with a friend, write a book review, attend a book club, make a blog post, etc. Write in the comments below to give other people ideas. Include a link to what you did, if it is linkable.