Put That Dog Down! You Want Raving fans, Not Rabid Ones!

Creating a community is similar to creating a hippie commune. You gather a bunch of like minded people together, give them a task to keep them occupied, ration the weed, and appoint yourself mayor to ‘supervise’. Hmmm, no that’s not quite right. Let’s try again. Creating a community is like being the dictator of a faceless reader army. You train them to eat, drink, read and crap exactly as their told and then whip them into such frenzy they rip the other authors’ poorly entertained armies apart! Nope, that’s not it either. Sigh.

Finding the right way to truly connect with a community is hard, yet there are little touches you can add to engage your readers giving them a sense of place and a feeling they are part of something greater then themselves. A community doesn’t evolve by handing your novel over and taking a lazy back seat, nor does it evolve by you donning a Hitler moustache and trying to dictate how your work should influence a readers thinking. Though contradictory in some regards, reading provides a social opportunity for discussion of literature. Smart writers help cultivate that discussion.

Fantastic sites such as Copia exist where people can discuss the books they are reading with their friends. It’s kind of like a book club mashed with Facebook with a little bit of e-book store added into the mix. This is a site that is barely a year old but has so much potential for creating a community. Readers can add notes to the margins of books, highlight text, and discuss their favourite aspects of the e-book with other readers in the community. Similar to Facebook, you can start your own groups, whether they are for book clubs, fans of a particular genre or around the books of a particular author… such as yourself perhaps? Are you starting to see the potential? This is the future of the book club. You can search for people who read in the niche markets that you are aiming for. From there you can recommend your book to them, invite them to join your groups or ‘follow’ them. You can answer the questions readers add in the margins of the book and fans can discuss your work with other fans. You can point your readers to these Copia groups so they can become part of your wider community without you having to deal with the reality of setting up your own forums or discussion boards. Guiding readers gently to these experiences gives you another link to their life, and the more links you have the more likely they are to keep coming back to you.

Some authors have already grasped this concept of community and merged it with fan fiction. The basic premise is that the author starts a large discussion board with various character scenarios based within their world, and let their readers imagination take its course. As part of the conditions for readers to participate, they allow the author to use elements of their fan fiction in the author’s actual novels (for free and no monetary reimbursement) however the reader’s name will be acknowledged in the book dedication. So not only does this create a community around your work allowing the readers to step into your story and create, but it also adds an element of excitement for the reader. Not only is their idea deemed worthy by the author but they are also elevated above other readers for their effort AND they have their name in print.

Cory Doctorow is one fantastic example of how to make writing a more interactive experience. If a reader finds a typo in one of his books, on the next print run he fixes the typo and puts a footnote on that page in the next edition thanking the reader for spotting it. Not only does this acknowledge the reader and give them the excitement of appearing in the next edition of their favoured author’s novel, but it improves the quality of the e-book and makes each print run unique. An author should take every opportunity to make their book as unique as possible.

Not only is it your job as an author to engage, but it is also to facilitate an environment where your book takes on a life of its own. It's time to loosen that death grip you have your reader in, seriously, it makes you look desperate. The more creative you are with your experience, the greater the buzz that will surround your work. Don't go too over board though, you want raving fans, not rabid ones.

TOMORROW: The Media Machine: Creative ways to interact with your audience, how to go further with your words.

SUCCESS?? Have you started to apply the tips in this blog yet? If you have had success, I would love to hear about it! Please feel free to tell us in the comments section below.