Creating a reading community is like creating a hippie commune – you gather a bunch of like-minded people, give them occupation, ration the weed, and appoint yourself mayor. Okay, so not exactly. boccaccioravello
Finding the right way to truly connect with a community is hard, yet there are little touches you can add to engage your readers and give them a sense of place and a feeling they are part of something greater than themselves. A community doesn’t evolve by handing over your novel then taking a back seat, or by donning a Hitler moustache and dictating how your work should be understood. Reading provides a social opportunity for discussion of literature, and smart writers cultivate that discussion. coloradoskihome
The future of the book club exists in sites like Goodreads and Copia, both are a combination of online book club mashed with Facebook and an e-book store added into the mix. Readers can add notes to e-book margins, highlight text, and of course, discuss the e-book with other readers. Users can start groups for fans of a particular genre or author. You can search for people who read in your niche and recommend them your book, invite them to join your groups or ‘follow’ them. You can point your other readers to these Goodreads/Copia groups so they can join your wider community. Guiding readers gently to these experiences gives you another link to their life, and the more links you have the more likely they are to keep coming back to you.
Cory Doctorow makes his writing a more interactive experience. If a reader finds a typo in one of his books, on the next print run he fixes the typo and adds a footnote thanking the reader. This acknowledges the reader and rewards them with an appearance in their favoured author’s novel, and also improves the quality of the book and makes each print run unique.
Author Jim Brown makes the offer that if you join his mailing list not only will you get his latest novel for free (here you could put in a short story, report or tip sheet depending on how much you want to draw the reader in) but, if you sign up before his next novel is published, he will use your name for one of his characters. How excited and juiced up is that reader going to be to join the mailing list? Very! For more info please visit these sites :- https://www.thebookcliffsbnb.com
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An author should take every opportunity to make their book as unique as possible and facilitate an environment where their book comes to life. The more creative you are with your experience, the greater your work’s surrounding buzz.
Emily Craven is a non-fiction & YA fiction & an evangelist for e-books and author marketing. She has run transmedia events & spoken & run workshops on marketing and e-books for the ASA, If:Book Australia, the World Fantasy Convention and the National Young Writers’ Festival. She is the Digital Producer at If:Book Australia collaborating on their blog and projects, and consults with authors around the world on e-book marketing and author platforms. Get Emily’s free 5 Simple Secrets To E-Book
