Community Engagement: How to Find Your Readers
It’s hard to even begin this post, knowing how important and dense this subject is. This will be one of many, many posts dedicated to community/reader engagement, but we have to start somewhere so let’s start with the basics: in the last post you learned why this is so important (TLDR: publishers don’t really know how to do this so if you want your book to sell, you have to figure this out) and in this post I’ll give you a framework and some ideas for thinking about how you might do this.
If you are self-publishing, this is superbly important since you won’t have the brand name of a publisher behind you and you will likely not have in-store distribution.
If you are working with an indie or smaller publisher, this is quite important because they’re competing with the big guys for shelf space in stores. If you can amass a good number of presales through your own community, you’ll be given more attention from the retailers.
If you’re with a Big 5 publisher, this is very important because they put out thousands of titles each quarter and they don’t have the resources to give attention to each book. Furthermore, they may get you in a store but if your book doesn’t actually sell, the retailers will return the books and you’re right back where you started.
Let’s start by looking at an example of a highly anticipated non-fiction book from a celebrity, published by one of the most esteemed publishers in the industry. (This person will remain anonymous for the sake of discretion.) This celebrity has over 5M followers across his social platforms, he’s the star of a beloved TV show, and he’s well-respected for his writing. His book was acquired by one of the most prestigious and well-known publishers in the US and is distributed by one of the biggest distributers in the world. Barnes and Noble ordered 720 copies of it for launch. 720. That’s it.
Meanwhile, there are authors like Hugh Howey. He self-published his sci-fi book series, Silo, and it went on to become an international bestseller in over 40 countries and Apple TV+ just released a TV adaptation of it. When he started he didn’t have a platform—he had been working as a yacht captain and writing books in his free time. His community grew because he engaged with and cared about every single one of his readers.
So on to the “how”. Let’s start with authors who are writing a book now but haven’t launched it yet.
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