Authors everywhere want fans to love and purchase their books. We spend every day marketing our books to readers and potential readers, but sometimes we forget we need to market ourselves to our readers as well.
Fans want to get to know the person behind the pen. When fans feel like they have a personal connection to you as an author, they are more likely to be invested in you and, subsequently, your books. In return, you’ll be able to create a loyal following that buys every release and promotes your books.
So how do you build a personal connection with your fans?
You must romance them, and the best way to do that is to be honest.
Even though we all want to keep a certain level of privacy in our lives, we should allow our fans to get a little insight into who we are without sharing too much. Think of it like a first date, but with your readers. They want to get to know you better. Do you have pets? Do you go for walks in the morning or evening? Do you have a hobby outside of writing? Are you willing to share a picture of your writing workspace? How about a video of yourself while you write?
Sharing snapshots from your personal life is an easy way to create a personal connection with readers. You may worry that your life is boring and your readers won’t be interested in it, but even things that are mundane for authors, like writing or editing, could be interesting for your readers. You could even share a funny typo that totally changed a sentence’s meaning. Readers will laugh alongside you.
If you have a hobby you like to talk about, you can ask your fans about their hobbies and to share pictures of their hobbies with you. The same works for pets. People love to share pictures of their pets, and if you ask them to share a recent picture of their pets, many of them will do so. This gets them to interact with you, and they’ll continue to do so as they see more posts from you.
If you aren’t comfortable sharing pictures of yourself often, of course, you don’t have to. As you build up confidence in sharing pictures of other things in your world, you’ll eventually find you’re willing to share pictures of yourself and what you are doing. You’ll be surprised how many comments you’ll get on your pictures from your fans. And if pictures really aren’t your thing, you could write about things going on in your daily life instead.
As you develop a closer relationship with your readers over time, you will be surprised by how many fans will send you random notes of encouragement, small gifts when you’ve been sick, or just something out of the blue to brighten your day.
Take a chance and share something about your personal life with your readers, and see how they react! You may just find it gives you a little boost of dopamine and improves your day—and theirs.
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