Before I became an author I never knew the best way to support my favorite authors. The only way I could think of was to buy their book, but as someone who didn’t have a lot of money to be throwing around I couldn’t afford to buy their book. So what could I do? It wasn’t until I became an author myself that I was able to know what things I could have been doing all along. Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way.

1. Repost/like/comment: Social Media has become a massive part of our society, whether for good or ill. A lot of marketing as an author comes from those posts, but if no one sees them a person who would have loved to buy the book would never do it. Interacting with an author’s posts on social media helps the algorithm know that people want it to be seen and it will show up in more people’s feeds, therefore letting more people know about their amazing books!
2. Ask a library to buy it: Contrary to popular belief, authors do not hate libraries. We don’t think they steal out sales. First off, authors do get the sales from when a library purchases it. In fact, having a library stock the book makes the book more known. The more people who know about the author and learn about their work, the more people can see the book and decide they like them. And if you love a book that much, no matter if a library has it, wouldn’t you want to buy a copy for yourself?
3. Tell your friends: The more people who know about the books the better. The hardest part about being an indie author is being unknown. No matter how good a book is, if no one knows about it no one is going to read it.
4. Write a review: How often have you bought something without looking at the reviews? The same goes for books. If you have read the book write a review on Amazon or Goodreads. The more reviews an author has the more people can see if they want to read it. Even bad reviews with a comment on it can be good for the author. For instance, if a one-star review said that they hated it because it had too much romance in it, another person might pick it up for that very reason.
5. Post a picture: As previously stated Social Media is huge! Show your support by posting a picture of you with the book. Or you could even post about how excited you are about how the new book is coming out. The more people who know about the book the better!
6. Compliment them: As an indie author myself I know how easy it is to get discouraged. From bad sales, to people trolling reviews, to self-doubt that your work is even any good, there is a lot that an author has to deal with. Having a single compliment or even comment that all their hard work has touched someone can make a bad day of self-doubt become an amazing day.

Just having someone enjoy their work enough to want to support them is what makes authors continue to work as hard as we do. Thank you again for supporting us! It is what makes everything worth it at the end of the day!