How to help an author

By Bonnie Harris

I recently read a post by Laura Bingham. (For the life of me, I'm struggling to find the exact post, but here's a link to her blog!) She talked about someone begging for her next book and gave us what she was really thinking. Something along the lines of, 'If you really liked my book so much, you'd go and tell 25 friends about it,' and then went on to say that the next book we see from her won't be from the same series. That makes me sad and yet I see the truth to it.

As readers, we don't want to sift through the thousands of books to find the one good one. We ask people for recommendations. We read what's popular at the time. In short, we read what other people tell us to read (sort of). Some books and authors I have come to love, I would never have heard of if it wasn't for my membership in ANWA or other people suggesting them to me.

So how can we help these authors? Tell people about their books. Review their books on amazon, goodreads, facebook, blog, really anywhere to get the names out there. Marsha Ward recently had a support an ANWA sister week. I admit, I didn't get to it that week, but I saved all the links and will get to them.

In fact, I've been doing a Book Buzzin' Tuesday since the beginning of the year. I've now decided that there are enough books out there that I should have been doing a post every Tuesday. Since Marsha's email, I've been doing just that. Now, every Tuesday I'm posting about someone's book, whether it be about an upcoming release, one I've already read, or one I've just discovered. Hopefully it will help get the word out.

If you ever find yourself with nothing to read then, hop on over and there will be a ton of suggestions on my blog. Consider this an invitation to join me in my quest to get the word out about some amazing books!