Too broke to buy books all the books you want from all the authors you love? Steven Zimmer has a post up on his blog about 7 (count 'em!) no cost ways to support your favorite authors. I highly recommend it.
And WHY should you do these 7 things you wonder? Shouldn't those artsy writery people support themselves? Well...yes. But...(you knew there was a but in there, didn't you?) We writers should work our butts off to produce work and to find suitable venues and means to put it out there. But publishing is still a game of word of mouth and numbers. One 'OMG! You have to read this' from a fellow reader whose tastes I trust is worth far more to me than an NPR book review. I can count on one hand the number of times I've bought a book based on an expert's opinion that the book was good. And some of those ended up being wasted money. But my shelves are full of authors I heard about through word of mouth, fell in love with and then went out and bought more of. Word of mouth is still the best way for us readers to find authors we might never otherwise have read. And that is delightful for us.
And this is where the numbers come into it. Publishers want sales. Of course they do. And if you can't buy the book yourself, you can up the chances of generating sales from others. If your favorite author has a small, select coterie of devoted fans that author may not get another contract, no matter how much you and your three best friends love her work. And that would make you sad, right? Because there would be no next Book from Author I Can't Get Enough Of.
So use those social media my friends. Tell us what you love to read.
