Top 5 Ways Readers Can Appreciate Authors- AWESOME AUGUST WEEK 4

Hello there and welcome to the final post for Awesome August! I will have the entire month's wrap up written for next week, so stay tuned for that. 

This week I wanted to talk about authors, because they're the real reason we have all of these amazing stories, and they deserve to be appreciated for it. "Brittany, how do we appreciate authors?" you may ask... Well who better to tell you how to appreciate authors than actual authors themselves? So this week I sent out a message to several authors that follow me on Twitter asking how we readers can appreciate authors. I read all of their replies, and I've compiled them into a list of The Top 5 Ways Readers Can Appreciate Authors. Throughout I'll include little direct quotes from the authors themselves, but otherwise the words are all my own. Enjoy!

1. The first and most obvious way, to support authors is to buy their books! Go out to your nearest bookstore and buy yourself a copy of their book. Buy one for your friend, your parent, your sibling, your
teacher. Just BUY the book. Not only are you supporting them monetarily, you’re also promoting their book in your own way. You will draw attention to it while you’re in the store, and also when you leave the store. If people see you reading it in public, and they’re readers like yourself, they’ll ask you about it, and perhaps even go buy it themselves.

2. Write reviews. Ever author I communicated with said that writing reviews is a major way to support the author and to get word about their book out there. I agree 100%. When I go to
 check out a new book on Goodreads or any other website, I will scroll through the non-spoiler reviews for some time and see what other people, like myself, thought of the book. Chances are, if a lot of teenagers or readers like myself, enjoyed the book and praise it, I will read it. If you have a book blog, or BookTube channel, (ahem…) write a review on there and share it with your friends. If people are interested, they’ll read the book too, and the author has gained several new readers from one point of contact. Another very important place to leave reviews, so I discovered, is Amazon. Apparently, they’re hard to get, and authors really appreciate them. Along with that, like the author’ author page on Amazon. It shows that they have supporters that like their work, and encourages others to read  it. Finally, if you write a review, share it everywhere you can. People use all sorts of different bookish social media to pick out books, and even if you simply link your blog post on all of them, with a quick snippet, it will help out the authors (and even yourself!).

3. This is one that I thought of on my own, and also was mentioned on another blog post that I read. Go to the library, and check out the book from there. If you’re not in a place financially where you can afford to buy every single book that you read, (because I am most certainly NOT) borrow it from your local library! This will draw lots of attention to the book. Attention from other people who will see you in the library, the librarians when they check it out, the pages when they have to re-shelve it. Also, if you go to the library and they do not have the book that you want to read, ASK the librarians about it. Put in a request to have that book purchased for the library. It’s drawing all kinds of attention to the book. Another way is to borrow books from your friends, and also lend out your books. This will get others talking about the books as well.

4. This was entirely an author’s idea, and it’s one that I’ve never thought of before: join the authors mailing list.I’ve never really considered that as being beneficial before; however, it makes lots of sense.

5. The fifth and final way that you can support authors is in a more of a moral support kind of way. Talk to them! Find them on social media and send them a message talking to them about their work. We all love to talk about books, and who better to talk about them with than the authors themselves? Authors want to talk to their readers. They love to hear about from their readers, and it provides great feedback. Like anybody who puts their work out there in the world (including myself) hearing feedback from real people who’ve read/watched their work is really constructive and lets them see that what they worked for was worth it.

So there is my list of The Top 5 Ways Readers Can Appreciate Authors. I would like to say a huge thank you to all of the authors that I mentioned above: Alex London, Aderyn Wood, Meg Collett, Cindy Dees, and Denise Drespling for helping me out and answering my question. If you click on their name, it'll take you to their twitter page where you can ALSO thank them for being so awesome. I also read a couple of blog posts that helped me write this.. this one and this one 

Please take this advice and go forth and support your favourite authors. It'll encourage them to keep doing what they're doing: being awesome.

Read/Write On,
B