Audience Building Tip for Authors

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Hey, friends. Author Allison Spooner here, author of the Lost Girl and Neverland Story and two collections of flash fiction coming at you on a Monday with crazy hair and coffee with a author tip, a writing tip, general tip. Not about writing, it’s about building an audience. A tip on how to succeed as an author. Look, I’m not like, you know, breaking the bank with the money rolling in from my books, but I’ve been doing this for a while, and I have discovered some things that have helped me along the way.

So I wanted to share some of those things with you. And I thought of this the other day. It was at a networking event. It was just an event that my partner was going to that I tagged along with. An opportunity, came up to chat with a mutual friend of ours, a mutual contact who has a podcast, and get on the podcast for to talk about my upcoming book.

And the only way that I was able to say, oh, hey, you know what? I’m, I have this book coming up and it’s centered on addiction, and it’s coming out in national recovery month. So maybe I could come on during National Recovery Month and talk about this. The only reason I was able to do that is because I had already established a relationship with this person. And the only reason I’d established a relationship with this person was because I have been out in the community for many, many years, building relationships, talking to people, going to networking events, sharing what I’m working on.

So my tip for building an audience or just succeeding, I guess, as an author, because it’s more than the audience, is to get out in your community. Get out in your local community, not just your writing community. So writing community is super, super important, and I’ll probably do another video about that. But get out in your community. Go to events that look interesting, network within the creative community in your town, talk to people that have podcasts or who are doing exciting things.

I was a freelance writer for many, many years in my community. I wrote magazine articles, blogs for local publications, things like that. So I had the opportunity to go out and interview a lot of people, and it was part of that job to go out to networking events and things like that. So I met a lot of great people. And now that I know those people, when the time comes to be like, oh, hey, I know I need to get on some podcasts.

I know I have some print work that I’m going to need. I know a printer from those days. I know the people that I need to be in contact with, and I have an already established relationship with them. My editor is a referral through another writer friend of mine that I made going to writing workshops. Yes, writing community is super, super important.

That’s how I got the editor connection. But also going out and just being a part of your community, and then people are going to recognize you if you’re out and about doing these things. So find events that are interesting to you. Find creative events, book signings, art shows, open mics are great. And just talk to people you normally wouldn’t talk to.

I know this is a really, really hard thing for writers and creatives to do. We want to stay home in our own little bubble. But my biggest, I don’t know about my biggest, but one important piece of succeeding as an author and succeeding in what you do is just being connected to the right people, establishing those relationships. And I don’t mean that in like a self serving kind of way, like be connected to the right people, but I mean actually building them those relationships and staying in touch with people, posting about what you’re doing, because then those people will have seen it. This person was like, oh, my gosh.

Yeah, I see you’re writing stuff all the time. That’s awesome. Let’s talk about it. So just being out in the community, talking about what you’re doing and meeting new people and these connections and this network, it’s just going to be valuable to you at some point. And it’s just great to be a part of the community and have people out there that know and want to support what you’re doing.

So there you go. That’s my little piece of writing advice for you or audience building author advice this Monday morning,

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