How Authors Find an Audience

Audience

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Authors don’t need a finished manuscript – they need an audience first!  Alone in 2015,
more than 500,000 new English-language books have been published.
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If you are an author with a 90,000 word manuscript ready to roll – just hold your horses – see how much work you have to do to find just ten people who are willing to buy your book.
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Make Sure Your Book Has Readers Before You Publish.
If you can’t build a small audience, how can you expect to build a large audience?  In order to survive the crowded space, some publishers are enhancing their efforts to help with their books’ discovery.  Quality content has always been the top priority of successful publishers.  However, with growing sales through online retailers, a book’s discoverability has become nearly as important.

Work hard to make sure your story and the writing is the best it can be, let several beta readers go through the manuscript, have it professionally edited.  Create an outstanding cover image.  And in the meantime: put your novel on hold and focus on short stories,  blog articles or even a short free e-book as a teaser and network on social media.

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Promote Your Future Book Through Short Stories.
Savvy authors are building excitement and attract readers to their upcoming books.
Short stories or prequels can be the backstories for the longer book to come or standalone narratives that add to a reader’s knowledge of the characters or scene.
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Create Buzz and Momentum.
Have fun to create several backstories for the longer book to come.  Don’t see prequels as a marketing gig, they are valuable parts of your author platform and brand.  Don’t forget: Promotion of your book must start long before you finish your manuscript if you don’t want to lose sales and success!

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Competition is Growing by the Day…
Do what you as a writer likes most: WRITE!  Not only 90.000-word-manuscripts, but also short stories and blog articles.
Without even the bare minimum of an audience (or even good friends) your book won’t get picked up, and certainly won’t sell.

It’s not only “writers write” but also “author audiences”.  Wise words:  “If you want book sales, buy books.  If you want book reviews, write reviews for all of the books you read.  If you want people to like your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter, like your readers’ and friends’ Facebook pages and follow them on Twitter.”

Sean Blanda:  “Call it the ‘anti-marketing’ plan: by building genuine connections with readers we can dramatically improve the chances of success.”
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