As authors sometimes our goals are on a straight line:

Worldwide fame and notoriety. A lot of money.

As much as we would love to explode right to the top it doesn’t work that way. In order to be a national bestselling author you have to go through two preceding steps:

Being a local and regional author first.

Somewhere along the way the word local has become a dirty word. No one wants that word attached to their artistry. The thing about being local is every author has a starting point and that’s not a negative thing.

The trajectory of an author would be local ➡️ regional ➡️ national. Once every level is saturated you can go to the next one. None of the levels after local can be attained before you master the local scene.

Even as we navigate through this horrible pandemic check in on your local indie bookseller and library. You can still take out books and e-books from your local library. You can still order online from your local bookstore.

Build a rapport with your community booksellers and readers. You should know their names and they should know yours. The further along you get in your journey the more people you met. The goal is to convert those people into supporters. Give them incentives to continue their support and let them know what they mean to your journey.

Those supporters will make up your distribution network. That distribution network will carry your future titles to success. All because you went from local, regional, to national.

– Marc Avery