CDM – Sell Your Books Not Your Soul (PART 2)

Last week, we addressed the many challenges facing writers in our new age of broken barriers and floods of books and how far we all go with our self-promotion. Some of us decide this new age of social promotion is not for us, while others embrace it.

 

For anyone who sniffs at the suggestion that real relationships can be formed from online ones, I suggest you join us at the Dublin Writers Conference, an annual event born out of social media.    

 

The challenge for author collaborators, as they embrace all this, is to ensure their work is of high quality and well presented online. Increasingly they will have to. Market forces determined by reader preferences for quality in presentation and editing will force authors to adopt a ‘quality first’ model or drop out of the race. The authors who have addressed these issues will get shared more, and sell more, compounding their success.

 

The question is, how does this all work in practice? Here is a shortlist of the practical ways you can take advantage of CDM, the counter-intuitive way to increase your book sales:

 

1. On Facebook and Twitter and whatever other social platforms you are on, share the posts of authors whose books you enjoy.   
2. Provide guest post opportunities for authors on your blog if you have one. This kills a few birds at the same time; the need to create new content, and the need to connect with other authors by helping them.
3. Join a free author team in your genre. One example is where BooksGoSocial will match you with other authors in your genre also interested in collaborating. We have over 1,000 authors from around the world collaborating and helping each other, for free. Sign up here.
4. By creating or using our email lists to send out information on the books we like and the authors we want to support.

 

Not every author can do these things, but for those who can, even in a small way, this will provide a fulfilling purpose to our engagements online, to ensure that we sell our books, not our souls, by placing helping other authors at the core of our online activities.

 

The real first step however is to consider our attitudes: Do we see collaboration as a good thing? And are we willing to take action if we do?

 

The authors you help are not determined by anyone but you. You can find some by searching for the #BGSAuthors hashtag or simply by joining a local writing group or attending a writer’s event in your area, or further afield.

 

Whatever you do, remember, by collaborating you are part of a movement to make these new technology tools work for our purposes, so that we all gain, and new voices can be heard, previously unheard stories, not the same old ones, can find readers too.

 

Please comment with your opinion or share this post and your thoughts with others using the #BGSauthors tag.  This is a discussion that needs your input, your collaboration.