A great author friend of mine asked this question (yes, in ALL CAPS, but minus the “oh William” part) in a comment to my last blog. Well, it was more like a comment to a comment to a comment, but it struck a major chord with me. I live in a small corner of the city of Denver, which is a small splotch in the bigger state of Colorado, which is an even (comparatively) smaller fraction of the lower 48 states of the U.S.A. Then, of course, you throw in Canada, Mexico, start crossing oceans and borders and, well, shoot, there is an entire world out there!
Yet as I drive down the streets of Parker, Colorado, population 45,000, I see hundreds—nay, thousands—of potential readers. The supermarket is crawling with consumers, as is Target, and Best Buy, and Starbucks, and the OTHER Starbucks, and the OTHER Starbucks. I rarely see the same person twice.
Here.
In Parker, Colorado, population 45,000.
Thousands of potential readers, right here in my own backyard.
A pinpoint in a world of over seven BILLION people.
Now I realize that at least a billion or two live in places where they hardly consider reading a fiction book a priority, much less have access to them. Heck, let’s say SIX BILLION could not care less about reading anything.
That would still leave a BILLION PEOPLE.
Now I see why my author friend was typing all in caps. WHERE ARE ALL THE F*CKING READERS?
Sorry. Got excited there for a moment and let an F-Bomb drop. In Hollywood that’d still get me an R-rating, I’m pretty sure…but back to the point:
Where are they and how do we get to them? If you’re an author and you’re not asking that question, you ought to be.
There are literally tens of millions of readers surfing Amazon alone every year, spending BILLIONS. There are projections Amazon will gross 100 billion dollars in 2015. Yeah, they sell a lot more than books, but again, even if a fraction of that is books, WHERE ARE THE READERS?
Where do we connect with them? How do we find them? How do we get some light in this freaking jungle to help show the way out?
Seems they named their company for the Indies. Amazon. The jungle.
You’ll never find your way out, Indie author.
{cue evil Vincent Price Laugh}
Yes, I’m having fun playing with the reality of it all, but make no mistake—it IS reality. There are times now when I wake up thinking about Amazon allowing me to upload as many of my books as I want, free of charge, them putting up a nice Author Page, listing me out there in the “world”—and then I do see the old horror master himself—or at least his ghost—orchestrating the Indie Terror Hour: let’s see who we can snare this time!
They’ll never find their way out of that page we give them, but every sale will give us a little bit AND if they ever do manage to climb, crawl, beg, steal, or luck their way to the Big Leagues, we’ll still make a small fortune off them (even after they get a fat publishing deal—where else is Penguin going to sell all those books?)!
I’m not saying we’ve been duped. What other choice is there? Amazon is like the benevolent king who, as long as we shut our mouths, gives us a bowl of gruel each morning and doesn’t chop our head off and put it on a pike.
What we need is a good William Wallace to sack a few Amazon jungle huts for us. Heck, I’d jump on board. Of course we all know how that turned out for him—although Scotland did finally win her freedom, right? I guess one of us Indies needs to step up and get ourselves drawn and quartered for the greater good. Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t be blogging about this at all. What if King Amazon of the Longshanks hears?
Then again, in the movie the king sent Sophie Marceau to soften old Wallace. Or harden him, depending on how you look at it.
Seem to have meandered again. I think it’s my mood. I’m a little past “fed up” on what poet Jo VonBargen would probably call the Kiddo Mood Meter. But it’s Friday, and that used to actually mean something when I was slaving away in the gulag.
Now it just means another couple of book sales and a small bowl of fucking gruel.
FREEEEEEDOOOOOOOOM!
They serve gruel in here? Well!! How the hell do you rate? I’ve been worrying that cockroach in the corner all day. And that’s exactly what he yelled when last I left him. Freeeeeeedoooooommmmm!!
The readers, kiddo, are reading what their friends and Oprah have told them is the next best thing. Only writers are reading our tweets, then retweeting to other writers, ad infinitum, but not many stop to buy or read. A few, bless ’em. It’s those few who give us hope enough to keep chasing our tails.
I ate the last cockroach with the balls to come ’round me and I’ll eat the next one, too (so tell your little friend). If you put a piece of paper on the door of your house that read “Come in to find the best book you’ve ever written” and you actually had the best book ever written, would you expect anyone that was not your UPS driver to discover it? That’s all our page is on Amazon. One page out there in a billion and no reason for anyone to find it. And yes, our tweets are just white noise bouncing between writers. So while yes, I agree some readers (many) are reading what Oprah tells them to read, I still claim we’re in the jungle and it doesn’t matter anyway because maybe if we came OUT of the dark, Oprah would tell people to read OUR books! Grrr.
{looking around for more cockroaches for tomorrow’s gruel}
It was my fault wasn’t it.
🙂
I’ve come to realize that readers are an elusive beastie that hide in the same jungle we all occupy. They’re bloody hard to peg and are akin to a salt water crocodile under the surface just waiting to pop their head up and take a bite. And, as Steve Irwin used to show us, they’re bloody hard to wrangle. Ironically, he got knifed in the heart by a sting ray.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere…
*walks off mumbling incoherently to himself*
Well, personally, I have discovered many of my newest author friends on Goodreads and Shelfari — and yeah, I know GR is a teeming maze of dangerousness lately, but there are ways to avoid the noids on there.
Used to be on Amazon you could connect to people through their profiles and even send emails back and forth — it’s how I got John Ringo’s private email *muahahaha* — but they disconnected all that. There are also kazillions of reader/reviewer sites out there, with whom you can connect, offer guest blogging, offer book giveaways — just find some with plenty of followers, of course. I can’t be the only reader following this blog, of course, but maybe some others are more hesitant to speak up. I’m not known for staying quiet, much to my own detriment often, whereas other readers are probably keeping their noses in their books and staying out of the fray.
I would suggest if you hit Goodreads that you connect to the following forums: Creative Reviews (the best bunch of people on GR) and ebook giveaways. Creative Reviews has a specific section for authors who are seeking reviews — it’s nice if you offer a copy of your book, but it’s not required — as well as a section with members (like me) who offer various options to help you, such as editors, illustrators, formatters, etc., and other sections. I’ve been too busy to set nose in there lately, but they really helped me get kickstarted when I first joined up there.
Also, Amazon is not the only game in town. Smashwords, anyone? Yeah, their search function sort of sucks ass, but I really prefer getting my books there if I can. OnlyIndies, also, although they’re really new, so time will tell how they do.
Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas that will help!
The readers are out there, enough of them to make us all quite comfortable with book sales. The secret is how do we find them and, more importantly, make it possible for them find us?
I’m constantly asking myself this question, so it’s nice to see I’m not alone. Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads have been great resources for connecting with other authors, but I’m still trying to figure out how to reach a reader base.
*Reader* I’m here.. lol
Seriously, I read and recommend anything I like. I have a small gang of friends that I give recommendations to, and they spread the word. Most of the books I love have been from Indie Authors. In fact, most of them I discovered were from Amazon recommendations.
I recently started a blog for all of the awesome books I’ve read, and hold giveaway’s. The giveaway’s are graciously provided by the Author. For me, I love interacting with authors, knowing they are real, and that my opinion matters.
So in my opinion the answer is bloggers, they help spread the word. But do the research, make sure they read your genre. Read some of their previous reviews. Provide them with a copy of your book and offer more if they like the book.
In regards to social networking, interact over social networking sites, don’t just push books. I unfollow a lot of Authors that do nothing but push books. Have giveaways, play games, live a little, especially if you are a YA Author. Your audience is a child, don’t be boring… Maybe send copies of your books to public school libraries.
Hey Ashley, I’d be interested in doing a giveaway with you.
If you can contact me via my website, shall we set something up?
Dean.
It’s a good point. Very few Twitter profiles list ‘reader,’ although some do. I’m not sure you can search that way, you might get one name at a time. I might look up the Goodreads review group, though I don’t much like uploading books on GR, as I’ve never had a single sale there.
In all honesty, this is why I’m still choosing to try traditional publishing over self-publishing, at least at first. Yes, traditionally-published authors are having to do more and more of their own publicity. But I’m a bookstore browser myself, and the way that I buy books definitely affects the way I imagine my own book being perceived – rightly or wrongly. I need the physical bookshelf in front of me, the ability to handle a book, read the blurb, open at random, ask the bookseller or librarian if it’s any good, see it on a friend’s shelf, on the train, whatever. As a reader, not a writer, I can’t use the internet as a place to browse and peruse; it’s just not how my lust for books works. I buy books on impulse because I want this book right here in my hands. I’ll remember recommendations when I go to the bookstore, but until I can actually touch the book, I won’t buy it, unless I am absolutely certain I want it and my local spots don’t have a copy.
No book ad or review will get me to click through unless it’s a review by someone I know personally and whose taste I can vouch for, and even then I need to actually have the book in my hands to decide. (The ads don’t work because I hate ads and do my very best to refuse to be swayed by them. I’m a hippie.) The internet is just so far apart from the way I interact with books – and then, of course, I also don’t have an ereader. I know I’m certainly not the only kind of reader out there, and there are millions who behave in completely different ways. But my love of the old-fashioned paper book, and the intrinsic connection for me between choosing a book and holding it in my hands, is the reason I’m not reading indie authors. It’s not the fault of the indie authors. I just have a different relationship to the book-as-object.
Loved this blog post! 😉 I ask this question everyday: “Where are all the READERS?” I found that even with a major motion picture trilogy in the works (heading into production this fall/winter) with a production co. that is Oscar nominated & 2 times Golden Globe winners, I generate very little interest from readers. In fact, my biggest challenge I face now are all those who tell me they’ll just wait for the first movie to be released! Thank you for sharing!
Thanks for this article, rsguthrie! Since publishing my first novel, I’ve been obsessed with getting at least 1 million eyeballs on it. The best way I’ve found is to spend time optimizing your Amazon page and building the spiderweb on social media, blogs, review sites, etc back to your website and Amazon page. Then you have to get the heck off social media and interact with people in the real world. Go visit indie book stores and libraries. Make friends with the owners and the librarians. They are the sommeliers of the literary world and a strong connection with each of them is worth thousands of people in terms of influence.
I also wanted to thank Katy for the goodreads group recommendation, somehow that one escaped my notice!