Loving Your Indie Author Friends

Self-publishing a book is a crazy, wonderful experience. It really takes an army to prepare a book, and once the book is out, it takes another army. In the indie publishing world, there’s this idea that the best thing an author can do for his or her book is to write another one. For a while, there may not be a lot of marketing for the first book.

But as a family member or friend, you can definitely help your indie author friend. Today I want to discuss some of the ways you can help your author friends.

1. Read the book

This one is kind of an obvious one, but it’s so important. You can’t really help your author friends if you don’t read their book. Once you read their book, you can tell them whether you like it or not, but don’t be surprised if it catches them off guard – either way.

Especially for indie authors, who spend more days (at least in the beginning) not selling many books (if any), finding out someone read their book is a big thing. Finding out you like it? That’s a really big thing.

2. Review it

Reviews are an indie author’s best friend. The more reviews a book has on Amazon, the higher the algorithm will put the book. Reviews also encourage other people to buy the book and read it. Even though some indie authors won’t admit it, making money from our books is something we secretly love. It’s nice to be rewarded like that for our passions.

A book review doesn’t need to be super long. Even just a paragraph about the general plot and what you loved will work. Just make sure it’s honest and heartfelt. If you can, leave a review on Goodreads and where you bought the book (bought it on Kindle, leave a review on Amazon).

3. Share with your friends

If you truly love your friend’s book, share with your other friends. Share a link on Facebook, tell people about it. If you’re active on Goodreads, recommend it to other people. Spreading the news doesn’t take a lot, but you never know who will see your shares on books. It’s all about knowing people, and you may help your friend’s book end up in the hands of a reviewer. You never really know the impact of your reach, so use it to help a friend out.

Of course, these aren’t the end all be all ways to help support a friend who published a book. While I specifically mention indie authors (Because they do all of their own marketing), any author who published a book – whether traditional or indie, it can be simple to help them promote their book.

Most won’t ask you to help, but if you do, that’s just showing your love for your author friend.