Wednesday, October 28, 2020

 Five Quick Ways to Support Your Favorite Authors! And a Reward for Doing So!



by Dorothy Wiley 

Storyteller of Love and Heroes on the American Frontier 

There are numerous ways you can show your support for your favorite authors and in today’s highly competitive publishing environment, your help means a great deal to each of us. Each of these suggestions are safe and helpful to authors and with all the terrible piracy of books going on, I wanted to share some of the websites that are the most beneficial to us. Of course, buying an author's books is the most obvious way to help (we all like to eat and pay bills), but there are other important ways as well. These suggestions may seem like a lot, but it only takes a few seconds or minutes to complete each one.

1) First, and foremost, rate and write a review of the author's book(s) for the book’s page on Amazon.  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  This helps the author, by helping to increase the book's ranking, and it helps readers find good books. Your review doesn’t have to be long—a couple of sentences is sufficient. While you’re there, read some of the reviews for the book, and just beneath each review, click on “Yes” if the review was helpful to you. You can find the book's Amazon page by entering either the title or author's name in the search box. 

Also, follow the author on Amazon. Just click "Follow" under their photo on their Author Page. For example, here's my Author Page



2) Join BookBub.com a free service that helps millions of readers discover books they'll love while providing publishers and authors with a way to drive sales and find new fans. 


Follow your favorite authors there and you will be notified of their new releases and discounted or free books. I hope you'll follow me on BookBub I'll have a major giveaway through BookBub on Nov. 6! You can also write reviews for your favorite books. 

3) Join Goodreads a great site for book lovers, more than 1 million now, and it’s free!

Once you find your author, you can write reviews of their books. (Tip: you can copy your Amazon review and paste it on the book's Goodreads page.)  There's lots of good information on Goodreads and some authors, like me, have a blog there as well. 

4) If the author has a YouTube Channel, first, “subscribe” to their channel (it’s free). The Subscribe button is right under their name. That way you’ll know when they upload new book trailers. Second, view their trailers on YouTube and give them a thumbs up.

5) Follow the author on your favorite social media, like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  You can like, but more importantly, SHARE the author’s posts. The SHARE arrow lets you share the author’s posts with others and increases its visibility. On Twitter, the most important thing you can do is tap the RETWEET button. On Facebook, many authors have both a personal page and an author page. Mine are Dorothy M. Wiley and Dorothy Wiley Author. On my personal page, I'll share family and political posts but on my author page, it is strictly book stuff. 

If you've done any of these for any of the authors you follow in this group, I know they are grateful!!! So, as a thank you, here's one of my favorite Fall recipes. It smells great while cooking and makes a quick and easy breakfast in the Fall. 


PUMPKIN BREAD BY AUTHOR DOROTHY WILEY

Makes two loaves. Warm oven to 325 degrees. 

1 cube butter softened
1/2 cup light tasting olive oil
3 eggs
1 small 15 oz. can pumpkin
2 1/2 cups sugar (I use 1 cup sugar and 1 1/2 cup Stevia powder in the bag)
3  1/2 cups flour (I use 2 white and 1 whole wheat)
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. cloves
1/2 or 1 cup chocolate chips or nuts

Mix shortening, eggs, and pumpkin. In a separate bowl combine dry ingredients, and then add to pumpkin mixture and blend well. Add chocolate chips or nuts. (Can also be added to just one loaf, leaving one loaf plain.) Pour into two cooking spray coated loaf pans and bake for one hour. Let cool and then turn the pan over. It will drop out into your hand. Enjoy!






3 comments:

Julie Lence said...

All Great ways of helping out an author. Thank you, Dorothy!

Becky bowen said...

I do all of this

Elizabeth Clements said...

Great tips, Dorothy, to help an author. I'm an author as well as a reader and try to help any way I can by posting and sharing. I go by the old saying, you rub my back and I'll rub yours.