How to collaborate with indie authors
Growing a following is one of the toughest tasks independent authors face.
It begins with making a home in the form of a website that introduces the author and highlights their published books. To encourage readers to visit their website, they use one of the last pages in their books to thank the reader and invite them to stop by their website and subscribe to their newsletter or blog. In this way they slowly grow a targeted following of ideal readers, and plump up their subscribers list.
But there’s a way you can speed the process. It’s called collaboration. Author collaboration, to be precise. It’s not magic, and there’s nothing complicated about it. It begins simply by reaching out.
Who should I ask? When seeking authors to collaborate with, look to genre to find those you can work with in equally beneficial ways. What could be better than banding together with writers who have a group of followers that read in your genre and therefore may be interested in your book as well?
You might find these authors via social media or you may meet them at in-person events. Look for authors who are not only in your genre but also at about the same place (or further along) than you are in their self-publishing journey.
Collaboration may be as simple as finding one other author to introduce to your subscribers list and asking them to do the same for you. These are what we call “high-quality leads.”
2. A collaborative book giveaway. If you want to take it a step further, you might organize a book giveaway with one or more authors. You can have it on Instagram or use a website, like King Sumo (https://kingsumo.com). For the prize, you can decide to give away one autographed book (or more) each.
Again, all of you will advertise the giveaway to your followers, in that way making the exposure beneficial to all of you. In order to be entered into the giveaway, the entrees must sign up for each of your mailing lists or follow each of you on social media. Just be sure to spell out the rules.
You also could pay to join a genre-based giveaway hosted by a company like Crave Books (https://cravebooks.com/giveaway/group), which conducts e-book giveaways that include a Kindle Fire for a prize. The idea is to have those who enter subscribe to your mailing list. They can always unsubscribe if they don’t want to stay on the list.
3. A group book sale. You might get a bunch of authors together and have a sale like the one I’m involved in this week for Black Friday weekend. Zoe Routh, who wrote The Olympus Project, a fantastic book about a team of specialists prepping to colonize the moon, rounded up five other science fiction authors to participate in a 99-cent sale (mentioned in my newsletter, above). We’re all posting about it this week, and we’ll also do promotional emails. With six of us advertising, we’ll get a lot more sci-fi reader attention than we might conducting a sale on our own.
4. A book-signing based on genre. If you want to do an in-person event, you’ll need some authors who are physically close enough to agree on a venue.
If you don’t know other authors, you might go to an independent bookstore owner and ask them if they’d be interested in hosting a genre author night. They may be able to put you in contact with a small group of authors they know locally. Make sure everyone advertises to their friends, family, and acquaintances so you collectively draw a decent crowd. Then set up your table and wait for the readers to come.
There’s an abundance of opportunity for exposure to new readers when you collaborate with fellow authors. The value is that everyone involved appeals to the same genre. So keep your eyes open for those writers who might want to collaborate. Collaboration may just be the key to a fast-growing following.
Kim Catanzarite is the author of the award-winning sci-fi thriller series The Jovian Universe. She is a freelance writer and editor for publishers and independent authors, and she teaches copyediting for Writer’s Digest University. Her Self-Publishing 101 blog discusses the ins and outs of indie life as well as all things writing craft (www.authorkimcatanzarite.com/blog). She lives on the east coast USA with her husband and daughter.
