For your work to be read, you need to build communities of fans. The holy trinity of community—the three elements you need to build community are content, service, and visibility:
- Because content is king, you need to keep producing work of different lengths and in different media. You have more ways to serve your readers than ever: more media and devices for reaching them faster, less expensively, more easily, and in more places than ever.
- Making a book succeed requires a holy trinity of acts by your readers:
–They have to buy your book.
–They have to finish it; 57% of books aren’t finished.
–They must like it enough to use word of mouth and word of mouse to tell their communities they must read it.
- Readers have to find your work. Timing, the President descending from his helicopter with your book, and other forms of luck can make a book take off, but there are two basic ways books succeed:
–Magic: the simpler, faster way is word of mouth and mouse. Fans online and off enable a book to go viral, a rare phenomenon.
–Communication: consumers have to hear about a new product seven to ten times to convince them to buy it. Communication is queen. The faster you want to build your readership, the more effectively and frequently you have to use all of the ways you can to serve your readers so they remain engaged members of your community of fans.
Becoming a successful author usually takes more than one book. Agent Don Maass, author of Writing the Breakout Novel, believes it takes five books for authors to build an audience. Make creating fans for life your mission. They’re waiting for you, and they want to help you succeed. Why not let them? The aces are the writers who create content and communicate about it best. Finding them is easy: look at any bestseller list. Starting dealing yourself a winning hand now.
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Do one thing every day to make the world better. –John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hitman
The 10th San Francisco Writers Conference / A Celebration of Craft, Commerce & Community / February 14-17, 2013 / www.sfwriters.org / sfwriterscon@aol.com /
Keynoters: Bella Andre, Anne Perry, and R. L. Stine
http://sfwriters.info/blog /@SFWC/ www.facebook.com/SanFranciscoWritersConference
San Francisco Writers University / Where Writers Meet and You Learn
Laurie McLean, Dean/free classes/www.sfwritersu.com/sfwritersu@gmail.com/@SFWritersU
415-673-0939 / 1029 Jones Street / San Francisco, 94109
The 5th San Francisco Writing for Change Conference / Changing the World One Book at a Time
September 2013 / Unitarian Universalist Center / Geary and Franklin
www.sfwritingforchange.org / sfwriterscon@aol.com
Michael Larsen is a literary agent and consultant to nonfiction writers. He and his partner Elizabeth Pomada are co-directors of the San Francisco Writers Conference and the San Francisco Writing for Change Conference.
