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7 free and easy ways to support your favorite authors

I’ve been a devoted reader for decades, but this week I’m experiencing the other side of the reading life for the first time. My first book Reading People: How Seeing the World Through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything came out on September 19, and it has been an interesting journey.

Since 2011, I’ve been enthusiastically sharing my favorite books with you here on Modern Mrs Darcy. Can you try and imagine how just plain weird it is to now be sharing my own? Praising other people’s work is easy—I’ve been doing it for what is now awfully close to four decades. Talking about my own? It’s weird, y’all.

You have not been weird, thank goodness. You’ve been AMAZING at helping me get the word out about Reading People. Thank you for that, it means the world to me. (It makes a huge difference for my book!) And you’ve asked (thank you!) what you can do to effectively spread the word.

7 free and easy ways to support your favorite authors

So today I’m sharing 7 free and easy tips I’ve picked up along the way to support my favorite authors. Some of these I’ve been doing for years, but it’s only recently that I’ve discovered how effective others are. I’m sharing them all today. (If you have additions to this list, PLEASE share them in comments—readers want to know these things!)

Put them into practice for Reading People (my eternal gratitude to those who choose to do so) and for any author whose work you love. You know what really sells books? An enthusiastic vote of confidence from a fellow reader. Thank you for that vote of confidence.

Of course, buying the book is also a huge help in spreading the word, especially if that purchase comes shortly after launch (meaning in the first week or two). Those early sales set the tone for the year to come: retailers rely on early numbers to decide how many copies to order, how much shelf space to allot, and how much to feature the book on their site or in their store. If you want to support a favorite author, an early purchase helps a lot.

7 free and easy ways to support your favorite authors

Buy Reading People anywhere new books are sold. Order online or walk into your favorite local shop; if they don’t have it they’ll be able to order it. (In fact, the very act of placing an order with a local retailer helps spread the word about the book—they might not know the book existed before you asked for it! I have so loved hearing how many of you have ordered from your local indie.) Reading People is available as a paperbook, ebook, or audiobook (and I narrate the audiobook myself!).

Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

Reading People: How Seeing the World through the Lens of Personality Changes Everything

Author:

We are collectively obsessed with the idea of defining and knowing ourselves and our unique place in the world. For readers who long to dig deeper into what makes them uniquely them (and why that matters), Reading People explains the life-changing insights that can be gained from the most popular personality frameworks, such as Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, Enneagram, and others and shares specific, practical real-life applications across all facets of life, including love and marriage, productivity, parenting, the workplace, and spiritual life. Understanding personality can revolutionize the way we live, love, work, and pray.

More info →

Below are some easy and free things you can do to help spread the word about Reading People, and about any book you love, or any author you want to support.

1. Read their work. This one gets underestimated, I think, because what practical good does simply reading a book do the author? (My answer: A TON.) Reading is the biggest gift a reader can give a writer. We’re thankful you cared enough to spend time and energy with our words, whether you bought that book at the bookstore, or borrowed it from the library, or won it in a Goodreads giveaway, or read a free review copy. We don’t care. We’re just happy you read it.

2. Check the book out of the library. Here at Modern Mrs Darcy, we are a community of avid readers. We read way more books than the average human. Way more. A surprising percentage of us read more than 200 books a year, and who can afford to buy 200 books a year? This is why avid readers tend to be heavy library users.

So .. ask your library to buy a copy, and then check it out.

Another fun library angle: if you steward a Little Free Library, or have one in your neighborhood, pop a copy of a favorite book like Reading People in there for a lucky neighbor to find. Face it out. And then by all means, take a photo and share it on social media because those tiny libraries are the cutest.

3. Share on social media. It matters, because your personal recommendations matter to the readers you know. Even in-the-know bookstore owners get their book recommendations from Instagram. Your photo, blurb, or tweet doesn’t have to be long or carefully crafted. Hey, look what I’m reading right now! or I can’t wait to start reading this next! are surprisingly effective. FEEL FREE to borrow my photos of Reading People (like the ones in this post) to share on YOUR accounts. It’s my pleasure to share them with you.

4. Talk about the books you love. Social media is great, but word of mouth is even better. Readers love to hear what other readers are reading right now or thinking about reading next. I’m not alone when I say a personal recommendation from someone I know is my very favorite way to find out about new-to-me titles.

5. Post a review or rating. This is so important—more important than I wished it was! File under “sad but true”: I can’t tell you how many readers have casually mentioned that they’ll never read a book with less than a hundred Amazon reviews, or less than a four-star rating. Writing a review, or rating the book on a site likes Goodreads tells other readers that this book is worth reading, and that means the world to an author like me. Even marking a book as “want to read” makes a big difference in that book’s visibility to other readers.

Your review doesn’t have to be long, or detailed, or time-consuming to be a big deal to the author. I made you some links to make it even easier.

Review on Amazon

Review on Barnes and Noble

Review or add to shelf on Goodreads

6. Follow the authors you love. Follow them on social media: they might not care about their numbers, but their publisher certainly does (and is probably on their case about “building their platform”). Check them out on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook (those links are to my accounts). Click “like” and/or leave a comment so the algorithms don’t hide their posts from their readers.

7 free and easy ways to support your favorite authors

If they have a newsletter, subscribe to it! (Here’s mine, that I send out monthly-ish.) Hot tip: you can often hit “reply” to those newsletters and tell your favorite authors anything at all, and your email will land in their inbox or their assistant’s inbox. If you want to send kind words or ask a question, this is a good way to do it.

Subscribe to Anne’s newsletter

7. Read their books with your book club. Having a group of readers get together to talk about your work? Readers, this is an author’s pipe dream. It’s a huge compliment, and it also does wonders for spreading the word about their book. If you ask nicely, many authors will even pop on the phone or Skype to chat about their work with your book club. This is such a cool experience, and if you’re the one responsible for bringing an author to your event, your fellow readers will think you’re a rock star.

Want me to come chat with your book club about Reading People? Let’s talk.

Readers, what’s your favorite way to support the authors you love? What would you add to this list? 

7 free and easy ways to support your favorite authors

14 comments

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    • Me, too, Hannah! Especially since my book just came out two weeks ago. I surveyed a large reader group today about what makes them buy books. The two most popular answers? Recommendations and cover. Which told me, yes my marketing is important, but what’s most important is getting others excited about sharing my story.

  1. Julia says:

    Anne,
    This prompted me to check the library system here in San Antonio. Apparently, they ordered 4 copies and there are already 10 holds on them! Way to go!! I’m excited to read this myself. Makes me wish I had a presence on social media. I will have to re-engage with my FB account to share about your book (and A Gentleman in Moscow which I just finished and LOVED. A recommendation from your site!) 200 books a year? I was feeling proud of my 50 so far this year :/

  2. Allison says:

    Congratulations on your new book! I like that you included the importance of just talking about your favorite books to people in person. Word of mouth is so powerful!

  3. PJ says:

    I read Reading People Saturday morning and really enjoyed it! I wasn’t expecting to laugh aloud, but I could so relate to some of Anne’s experiences! There was lots of good information and helpful perspectives. I’ve written my review for Amazon, but I wanted to just say thank you to Anne on her site for a helpful compilation of information and a lovely presentation of how it works in the real world of family and friends. Also love the cover! Well done and many thanks!!

  4. Katie says:

    The Tulsa County library has thirteen copies of Reading People–with 39 holds on them! For the record, that’s very similar to Jen Hatmaker’s new book (37 holds on 18 copies), and she’s been publishing a year or two longer than you have. 😉 Congratulations, Anne!

    (And I’m Hold #39, even though a friend gifted me a preorder copy, since you said that’s a helpful thing to do.)

  5. Further to borrowing books from the library: in countries with Lending Rights (Australia for me, but also Canada, and a few others), authors actually get paid royalties by the government when their books are accessed through library services. So, even though the book is “free” for you, the author still gets paid (AND the library’s funding is less likely to get cut, because the government can see that the community is accessing and using the service). I heard a bookseller give a talk recently, and she said she’ll often borrow her authors’ back-list books from the library, even though she’s got copies at home, to help them earn a few dollars 😉 So easy to do!

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