6 Ways To Support Writers Without Spending A Dime

Readers and writers have a symbiotic relationship; one can't exist without the other. The absolute best way to support the writers you love is to buy their books. But that's not feasible for everyone, all of the time. There are plenty of great ways to support the writers you love without breaking the bank.

Use your library. Yes, authors benefit from libraries, too. Libraries know what titles by which authors are circulating widely, and will often buy more copies if the hold list is deep. If your local library doesn't have an author you love, ask if you can make a purchase suggestion. Most libraries are happy to make acquisitions based on patron needs, and even if they don't have funds to buy a new copy, they may be part of a consortium that will find a copy for you, and deliver it to your local branch. This helps writers by showing a demand for their books. And I imagine we're all pretty familiar with the theory of supply and demand.

Put Our Books Face Out on the Shelves. Any shelves - library or bookstore. How many times have you been browsing a shelf and your eyes have skipped right over a spine? A lot, I'm guessing. If you see a book you love, put the cover art face out so that it can shine. Think of it as a book recommendation to a stranger.

Follow Us. Love or hate social media, it can be the coin of the realm. A big following doesn't equal success, but it is a small indication to the writer that they are doing something right, and somebody cares enough about their book to see what else they have to say. Sure, it's a bit of an ego stroke, but if we're having a bad writing day and log on to Twitter to see ten new followers... no lie, it helps.

Tell Us Our Impact. I occasionally get fan email that opens something like this: "I don't know if you even read your own emails, but..." Yes, I read my own emails. I'm not nearly a big enough deal to not read my own email. I also answer them, which sometimes surprises readers. I appreciate each one of those emails. The bad writing day I mentioned before? A few of those have been assuaged by a message telling me what one of my books has meant to the reader.

Tell Someone Else About Us. Word of mouth is still the most effective marketing there is, and money can't buy it. If you love a book, tell your friends. Tell your friend's cousin. Tell anyone you know who loves to read. Those little ripples can turn into waves that sustain an author's career. It doesn't mean that we're all going to be New York Times bestsellers, but it does mean that our backlist might stay in print a little while longer because a new reader just discovered an author that flew under their radar up until now.

Write reviews. Did you love one of my books, but not the next one? (If so, you're not alone in that). Either way, I want you to write a review. Reviews - good or bad - on shopping sites like B&N or Amazon show the site that people are reading the book... which means they are buying and interacting with it and it is therefore worthy of promotion. Amazon needs to see a minimum of 50 reviews on a book before it will begin suggesting it to readers in the "Customers Also Bought..." section.

Note: There is some debate among writers as to whether or not this is true, but Amazon is notoriously tight-lipped on their alogrithms. Regardless, think of your reaction when you see a book with 13 reviews versus one with 256... you automatically know that the latter is doing better.

Kirby Michael Wright On Creative Non-Fiction

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today's guest for the WHAT is Kirby Michael Wright, who was born and raised in Honolulu and spent summers with his part-Hawaiian grandma on Moloka'i. He attended Punahou School on Oahu, where he once arm-wrestled Barrack Obama for a cigarette. He received his BA in English Literature from the University of California, San Diego. Anne Rice accepted him into the Creative Writing Program at San Francisco State University, where he was the first student in the history of the school to sweep the poetry awards. Wright received the 2018 Redwood Empire Mensa Award for Creative Nonfiction. His stories and stand-alone chapters have been published in over 200 literary journals and magazines worldwide.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

I must admit most of my characters have been based on my immediate family. Now that I’m concentrating on Creative Nonfiction, I keep the names the same—that allows me to really dig into their personalities. Why? Because, to me, real names mean it’s no longer fiction and helps me mine the real stuff. I’m into exploring interior worlds to find out what makes my family tick. Perhaps, through this process, I’m trying to figure myself out as well.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I don’t have to invent much since I’m writing about what really happened. Sometimes I feel like a court reporter as the memories of family pop into my head. One on the techniques that really works for me is creating dialogue blocks between two or more characters and allowing them the freedom to ramble on. From there I edit out the weaker lines and mix in narration, gesture, etc. Dialogue is such a great place to start for writers because it helps you focus on the nuances of character by the way they deliver lines. I’ve been writing lots of pidgin English lately, the creole-type language spoken by locals in Hawaii. What’s interesting about that is different variations of pidgin English are spoken depending on which island you’re on.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

This may sound crazy, but I write the ending first. That way I have the Destination Shore in mind before I drop the oars in the water in Chapter One. I allow the chapters to unfold and almost never change plot points. In THE QUEEN OF MOLOKA’I, I did rearrange chapters to kill the slower pace of the rural setting. This was done through Julia’s flashback to her brief affair with the Englishman at the Moana Hotel in Waikiki. I love mixing rural with city, and that setting conflict helps me enter the mindset of my grandmother when she was a wild teen running the streets of Honolulu.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

Julia Wright, my grandm,a was a firecracker so there’s no lack of material. My 300-page book covers only four years of her life! I do have to exercise my memory to remember the stories she told me about her life when I spent summers with her on her Moloka’i horse ranch. I’ve experimented with third person and first in various stories and both seem to work. However, when I write about Julia before I was born, that’s when I keep it third person.

I always get fresh ideas whenever I go overseas to lecture. But what comes out of that is usually poetry and flash (micro fiction). I wrote an entire book of verse in three weeks during my recent sojourn to Helsinki, the Finnish Archipelago, and Stockholm. In Stockholm, I stayed near the secret recording studio of ABBA.

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

I have several projects on the backburner at any given time, but must focus on a single project to cross the finish line. Otherwise, I’d spend my days spinning in circles. When the other projects try seducing me to start them, I have to ignore their wanton wails. “In due time,” I tell them, “you’re time will come.”

I have lots of cats (check my Instagram) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I’m with you! I have three cats and all of them are Senior Citizens. It’s reassuring to have company when I’m writing, especially since they’re fairly quiet. My cats calm me down too when I’m feeling stressed, that is, when they’re not whining for snacks or regular meals. Hurray for felines!

Victoria Lee On Moving Forward After Your Debut

Welcome to the SNOB (Second Novel Ominipresent Blues). Whether you’re under contract or trying to snag another deal, you’re a professional now, with the pressures of a published novelist compounded with the still-present nagging self-doubt of the noobie.

Today's guest for the SNOB is Victoria Lee author of The Fever King. She’s been a state finalist competitive pianist, a hitchhiker, a pizza connoisseur, an EMT, an expat in China and Sweden, and a science doctoral student.

Is it hard to leave behind the first novel and focus on the second?

I’m working on drafting two different books right now: one is a contracted sequel to my debut, The Fever King. The other is an unrelated fantasy novel that I started writing while I was on submission with The Fever King. And for both books, I’d say yes—it’s been really hard to move on from my first book to focus on writing new material, but for very different reasons.

With the sequel, there’s a fear that it won’t be as good as the first book. I wrote The Fever King in just two months, but then I spent over two years revising. I don’t have nearly that much time on my deadline for book 2! I’m worried that whatever readers love about the first book won’t come through in the sequel, and people will end up disappointed. And…on a more recent timescale, that the same might happen with my editor. So there’s a lot of self-imposed pressure on the sequel for it to feel like a good follow-up to the first book, to tie up all the loose threads and feel like the natural and inevitable conclusion to the story.

With the new book, the pressures are very different.

At what point do you start diverting your energies from promoting your debut and writing / polishing / editing your second?

There’s a big chunk of time between sending off your edits and needing to begin promotion. Usually promotion shouldn’t start in earnest until six months before your publication date—and really, more like three. I tried to use that chunk of time to get a large amount done on The Fever King’s contracted sequel. But…promoting your debut is fun. At least, I think so. I constantly had to distract myself from planning promo and focus instead on actually writing the second book! I also had the pressure of a new grad school semester beginning, and studying for my Ph.D. comprehensive exams, so I was pretty motivated to get as much done on the sequel as possible before I got too sucked into grad school again. It’s still a process, though. One thing I find helpful is scheduling out time during my day for both tasks. I’ll block a few hours for preparing promo materials, then another few hours for writing book 2, and so on.

Your first book landed an agent and an editor, and hopefully some fans. Who are you writing the second one for? Them, or yourself?

As I’m writing the sequel, I’m thinking of my potential readers. And of myself. I have a definite vision of the “ideal reader” in my head—the kind of reader I think will most like my books, who my books will speak to. And that ideal reader is a whole lot like my own younger self. I want to write the book that will satisfy young, creative, slightly-pessimistic yet idealistic queer Jewish teens hoping to see themselves represented in SFF. I want to write a conclusion to this series that will make any reader who fell in love with the first book feel like the second book didn’t let them down. But for myself—I want to spend more time with these characters. And in a lot of ways, I feel like I have to do the characters justice, too. I’ve fallen in love with them. It’s hopeless.

Is there a new balance of time management to address once you’re a professional author?

Oh, definitely. Not just between promoting your debut and working on a sequel, but planning the book that comes after that. And the one after that. I have way too many ideas I want to write, and it can get frustrating to know I have to wait to get to them. …Especially now that I know how much editing effort is involved in polishing a book for publication.

I was already pretty good at time management; it was a skill I learned in grad school. I just had to apply it to a new domain, too. I’m actually one of those weird people who functions more efficiently when super busy? I like to have as little free time as possible. Free time breeds procrastination, for me. But if I know that this is the only hour today I’ll be able to work on my book, then dammit, I’m gonna get so much done on that book in an hour.

What did you do differently the second time around, with the perspective of a published author?

I outlined more.

I wrote my debut as a “connect-the-dots” writer—I had a few major milestones I needed to hit, but then I just kind of discovery-wrote between them. Now, I have more than just a few milestones planned out. I still discovery write, sort of, but the way it works now is that I’ll religiously plan in detail every next 10,000 words. What comes after those 10k is still undecided until after I reach the next milestone, but I’ve learned that I definitely need to at least plan 10k in advance to avoid rambling on for pages with character introspection that—while fascinating to me—proooobably doesn’t propel the story forward.

I also cut myself a lot more slack in drafting.  I’ve learned this book will likely go through ten drafts and at least two rewrites before it’s published, so, no need to obsess over line-level prose. I’m just trying to get the story down. The nuts and bolts, even—right now my draft pacing is all off. It’s way too fast. But I’ll get the story skeleton on paper, and I can expand it later, once I’ve established what bits of the character arcs and subplots are really integral to the story and need to be fleshed out.