Today, I thought we’d talk about following an author – specifically following me, or my alter-ego Claire Delacroix – because things are changing. This once was a pretty easy task, but now there are options popping up like proverbial mushrooms. It seems every portal wants to host a paid subscription for me. Reviewing the options today is a good exercise for me, and may be informative for you. Every option has its benefits and its shortfalls.
I suppose the first big question is what you want to know from an author whose books you like. The simplest bit of information is learning when that author has a new book coming out, either in pre-order or available for sale. If you’re interested in a peek behind the scenes, extra content or more details, the retailers won’t offer that insight. Let’s take a closer look.
If you Amazon is your portal of choice, you can follow the author there. I’m not entirely certain that they send new release alerts for every new book – or when they send them – but that’s certainly an option. If you routinely visit their store, I suspect the algorithm will show you new and upcoming books from authors whose books you’ve bought before. I’ve noticed that it also prompts me to continue any series I’ve started.
You can also follow authors at BookBub. They will send a new release notification- provided their conditions are met. They did not send one for Kiss of Enchantment, though we had a long discussion about that. 😦 They also don’t send notifications for new boxed sets of existing work (like Dragons First) or new releases that are short (like Christmas at Tullymullagh). They’ll also notify you if the authors you follow have any books offered at a discount in a BookBub featured deal. Finally, they will let you know if the author posts any reviews of other books at BookBub.
You can follow authors at Books2Read. I assume this means you’ll get notifications of new releases from B2R but have never done that myself.
Oh! I need to update Claire’s latest release there. 🙂
You can follow authors at GoodReads. Presumably, this is much like BookBub and you’ll be notified when the author publishes a new book or participates in the GR community – by posting a review, for example. You have to be logged in (which means having a GR account) to see the follow button. The other good thing about GR is that my blog posts are on an RSS feed there – that means they appear on my respective profiles. Amazon used to do this but stopped.
You can also follow authors at Facebook, of course. (And other social media – formerly Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, among others but I’m not active on any other platforms.) Some authors are very active on FB, while I’m not particularly so. My blog posts are also automatically posted to my pages there, and when I get ambitious 🙂 I schedule posts about sales and new releases on my pages. The algo is very complicated there, so you may or may not be shown new posts on the pages of authors you follow. Your interaction (liking, commenting) will determine what you see in your feed, plus a lot of other variables. It’s not the most reliable way of ensuring you get information, but it can be fun.
Follow Deborah Cooke’s page at Facebook
Follow Claire Delacroix’s page at Facebook
I also have a private Facebook group called Knights, Dragons & Heroes where I organize review copies and chat a bit about what’s happening behind the scenes. There are questions at the door when you ask to join – if you don’t answer them, you won’t be allowed in. It’s that simple.
You can also subscribe to the blogs on my websites. Once upon a time, this meant that you would receive an email whenever a new blog post was posted and that was the sum of it. I’m seeing options here now that make me wonder whether subscribers are also receiving notifications of new pages being published, or even of pages being updated. Every book has a page on my websites, and every series has a page listing the books in order and linking to the individual books. Part of my publishing process is adding a new book for that page and new series pages as necessary, plus updating those pages.
There are also new options here at WordPress to limit visibility of posts to subscribers of the blog, or to paid subscribers. I don’t have a paid option on either of my blogs, but it’s interesting to see that pop up. For a long time, there’s been an option to password-protect a post, but these choices are new. It looks like I could make a post visible to subscribers only, but without a password. For the moment, my posts are public and free.
If you scroll down to the footer on either website, there are widgets. There are two options from WordPress – to follow or to subscribe by email. There’s a difference because the displayed totals are different. I think the Follow option with over 3000 people is a legacy feature. (WP has been my host for a long time.) I can’t see any of that on the back end. It might include people who have followed comments or replies, or people who are following from within their WP accounts. (?) The list I can see is the 700+ one of subscribers, so that’s the active list.
These urls will take you to the home page of each site – scroll on down to find that widget in the footer. Choose the Follow by Email option.
Perhaps the most reliable way of ensuring you get all of an author’s news has been to sign up for his or her email newsletter. This is getting complicated now, too – servers are making changes to the deliverability of email newsletters in an effort to cut back on spam. I’ve done all the things, but we’ll see what happens when this change goes into effect. (It begins February 1 and will be full implemented by April.) Subscribing to author newsletters is great, but for authors you really want to follow, I’d suggest you add a second option.
My newsletters focus on new releases and sales, but I divide them by sub-genre. You can subscribe to all of them or just one. They go out once a month on a scheduled date, but there are short alerts for important events like a new book on sale. They’re all send from my domain email (deborah@deborahcooke.com) so you’ll want to whitelist that address (i.e. add it to your email address book) when you subscribe.
Claire Delacroix’s Knights & Rogues
(the first Wednesday of the month)
Deborah Cooke’s Dragons & Angels
(the second Wednesday of the month)
Deborah Cooke’s Heroes & Happy Endings
(the third Wednesday of the month)
Note to self – it’s time to update the welcome automations. I usually do that each January.
Recently, I started to explore some portals designed for subscriptions. They offer both free and paid options. I’m not really sure of the future with any of them but am exploring. You can get a monthly update from me at Substack or Patreon for both of my author brands. I just opened the Ko-fi account and will probably do the same thing there – it already has a ‘buy me a coffee’ option, which I think is cute. Ream offers free and paid subscriptions and is more geared to serialized fiction.
You can follow me at Kickstarter and be notified whenever I launch a new campaign. You’ll also be notified when I back someone else’s campaign. Within Kickstarter itself, you can follow a campaign to be notified when it launches or reminded before it ends. If you back a campaign you will get campaign updates when they’re posted. You can also look at the publically posted updates on any campaign.
My YouTube channel is thus far only for videos of new print editions, but you can follow that, too.
The final place (at least that I can think of today) that you can follow me is at my new online store, Deborah Cooke’s Books. The store has a blog and you can subscribe to updates. There’s a field in the footer, much like the one here on the website, where you enter your email to subscribe.
So many options. So many places. And I’ve probably forgotten a few!
Why does it matter? As mentioned above, newsletter delivery may be affected in the next few months as these new systems settle into place. I’d make sure that I followed any author somewhere other than his or her newsletter, just in case.
I also think that we’re on a path for authors to take more ownership of their connections to their readers and build closer connections that the authors themselves control. Finally, many authors will be redirecting their website urls to their online stores in the next few years. They may be making content available exclusively to newsletter subscribers, subscribers at portals like Patreon or in their online store. Amazon, BookBub and Books2Read will be out of the loop on those kind of releases.
So, if I really wanted to know what an author was up to, I would follow his or her online store, follow his or her blog, and subscribe to his or her newsletters – and maybe follow in one other place, just to make sure. 🙂
Deborah Cooke & Her Books 