I am delighted to welcome crime fiction author Mark Edwards to the blog today!
Mark has written a guest post all about the relationship an author has with their readers - would love to know your thoughts about this.
I
Want You to Shout it from the Highest Mountain Top…
a guest post by author Mark Edwards
Recently, this meme sprung up on the web
and was shared and commented on by numerous writers.
Entitled ‘The Care and Feeding of an Author
on Amazon’ it asks readers who have enjoyed a book to share it on social
networks, write a review and like it on Amazon. The idea is that by doing this
you help to keep authors whose work you have enjoyed ‘fed’ so they will and can
write more books for you to enjoy.
This made me think about my own
relationship with my readers and what we writers expect from the people who
enjoy our books, and vice versa. Of course, ‘expect’ is a strong word. It’s
more what we would like to happen. Or rather, seeing as we writers are a needy
bunch who crave praise like vampires crave blood, it’s what we would love to
happen.
Until recently, readers had little access
to the writers whose books they read, and little opportunity to share their
opinion of their books. Cast your minds back to the mid-nineties, before Amazon
was founded, long before Facebook and Twitter existed. Back then, a book would
be published, the writer might go on a tour of bookshops and festivals, and
very keen fans might write letters using these antiquated tools called paper
and pens. Apart from encounters at signings and the occasional receipt of a
letter, the only feedback writers received was from professional critics and
their mums.
Then, as now, the most powerful marketing
tool was word of mouth. Back then, it was really was passed from mouth to ear.
Most of the books I read in my teens had been recommended to me by friends or
family, or because I’d read about them in a magazine or paper. You recommended
a book to one person at a time rather than tweeting about it to your thousand
followers.
When I walked into a bookshop to browse the
shelves, I had to trust the blurbs on the back of books. I had no way of
knowing what the masses thought about this book in the way I do now, when I can
skim the reviews on Amazon or Goodreads, or Google bloggers’ reviews.
The internet changed everything for books
and writers. Now, we writers are available 24 hours a day for readers to chat
to. Most of us have websites, Facebook accounts, Twitter, Goodreads… We are
easy to reach and communicate with. I personally respond to every reader who
contacts me or tweets about one of my books, usually within hours or
minutes. On the Louise Voss and Mark
Edwards Facebook page, I chat with readers every day. For me, it’s a hugely
enjoyable part of being a writer.
Then there is that double-edged sword: the
Amazon/Goodreads review. Now anyone can express their opinion – it’s like
walking into that old-fashioned bookshop and finding thirty people standing by
each book telling you what they thought about it. For writers, this is scary.
When you notice that your review count has changed, you scroll nervously down
the page, eyes half-averted, to see whether it’s a five-star winner or a
one-star stinker, ecstasy or agony following.
Apart from the effect of all this on
writers’ egos, and how much easier it is to contact authors, social media and
reviews have a strong practical effect – and can make the difference between
whether or not a book is a hit. There are so many books published every week, both
traditionally and self-published, that getting noticed is a huge challenge. Most
books vanish without trace, including many great books, because most readers
don’t know they exist. It is not true that cream always rises. Yes, a book
needs to be good – to connect with a lot of people – in order to break out, but
the hard part is letting people know it exists.
This is why Sherry Snider, the creator of
‘The Care and Feeding of an Author…’, put together that graphic. Because she
understands, as an author herself, how much we writers need our ‘fans’. If you
don’t have a huge marketing budget, you are completely reliant on people
spreading the word for you. So every good review, every tweet, every Facebook
share, every face-to-face recommendation – they all make a difference.
In America, some writers have street teams
– groups of fans who they ‘employ’ to spread the word about their books. They
send the members of their teams free books, bookmarks, name characters after
them in books, send them vouchers and so on, in return for favours, which could
involve telling everyone they know about their books and asking their local
bookshop to stock them.
Hugh Howey, author of Wool, has said that a large part of his success was being nice to
his readers. He says writers should not concentrate on trying to get new
readers but on nurturing those you have. This is a simple rule of business –
your best customers are your existing ones, and it’s interesting to see a
writer talking about his fans in such a way.
So what do you think? If you are on this
blog, you must be a book reader. You must have favourite authors. Do you think
that it’s fair for authors to expect so much? Do you resent being asked to
share and help. Do you do it anyway? Or has this article made you think that
you should do more to spread the word about authors you love? I’d love to hear
what you think.
Many thanks to Mark for this very topical post. Please do share your views in the comments.
Mark
Edwards’ most recent book is The Magpies, a psychological thriller about
neighbours from hell, which is currently in the Amazon top twenty. If you have
read it and liked it, please tell all your friends! Mark has also written three novels with fellow writer Louise Voss.
