New Author Treasure | How To Find (Great) Indie Books

So, you’ve read a short story out of an anthology that you really liked!

Or someone recommended an author to you, a possibly misspelled name you sounded out on the back of a gas receipt you scrounged out of your pop-up arm rest and more carved the letters in with its strange paper that doesn’t take ink well (or the pen isn’t working since the coating—of chip and make-up dust, glitter if you have kids, unidentifiable oil smears if you do any of your own car maintenance—on the pen itself that made you hesitate to touch it let alone pop-it loose from whatever schmutz had it stuck to the bottom edge of the secret arm rest compartment—that everyone knows about. Shhhhhh….).

(…Uh, that totally never happens to me… My car is pristine at all times…)

(…)

(…)

(OK yeah, that happens to me about once a year.)

(Possibly even this week.)

(Sigh.)

Now what?

(Not about the pen and the car. About the author you are looking for.)

(I had forgotten too and had to read back to where I left off.)

Now what do you do with this bit of information? This potential New Favorite Author?

Do you buy everything that author ever wrote?

Start reading their blogs?

Join their newsletter?

All of their newsletters?

Follow all their social medias?

Buy plane tickets to travel out of state to see them speak?

Find out where they live and leave presents on their doorstep?

Have their face tattooed on your—

OK, whoa there, Turbo!

I am going to respectfully pause you right there.

Because reading one short story by an author does not mean you are now story-soul brothers bound in the forever lands of Favorite Fiction Friends.

Nope, you need to do a little more recon.

What?

Yes!

But why? I read one of their stories and I liked it.

A lot!!

So much so I want to marry it!

(I am not making fun, I have read something and had those strong of feelings of super reader infatuation.)

(It’s a thing.)

So it is love at first reading.

Congrats!

But let’s hold off on the reader-author wedding bells for just a second and go slow.

Instead of dropping a serious treasure chest of dough down for the special edition, limited run, signed version of their largest 20+ book series, I am going to go out on a limb and say—

Try the first book in a series.

What?!?

That’s no fun! you may say.

But I have an even better answer, and many authors are starting to do this. It is the best next step in any reader/author budding relationship that I recommend to anyone who has just discovered a potentially Next Favorite Author.

And that is…

Yep!

Yes!

Wahoo!

And a good piratey “Arrrrrrr!!!!!”

Author Starter Bundles are a great way to get to know an author and alllll of their writing and figure out your best book/series matches to you.

An author may write across many genres with different kinds of storytelling styles, and types of characters. Some you may like and some not.

I have many favorite authors that I love 85% of their series, but one or two isn’t my cup of tea.

Horror is super not my (personal and go for it if you love it!!!) mug of reading rum. So no matter how much I love an author, my eyes will not be scanning the seven (seas) pages of any self-proclaimed horror story.

So what I love that authors are doing are putting together a bundle of ebooks they sell as a group, usually at a largely discounted price, that includes the first book in all of their series. Across all genres. Because most of us read across genre.

I may not like horror, but I do like rather contrary genres from sweet romance to gritty detective crime, moseying cowboy westerns to sword-wielding, rump-bopping (gentler phrasing for ass-kicking) high fantasy adventures.

Oh, and spy stuff and Cold War stuff and alternate history stuff and space opera stuff and, and, and…

My point—I always have one, even when I ramble to the ridiculous, though hopefully entertaining, extreme—is that putting a bundle of first books together of all of an author’s series provides you, the reader, a wonderful opportunity to plunder their words and seek out the hidden treasures between their pages.

If an author hasn’t done an actual bundle for you, then they often have the first of their series on sale. Again, an easy gateway of them saying “Please, sample. See if we are a good reader-writer match.”

So collect a couple of firsts, read those. If you get to the end of the first book in the series and you want to keep turning pages, then good lord it’s a match made in reader heaven!!

Your Next Favorite Author has been found.

Feel free to run down that path of delighted fandom.

(Thoooooough, try to get another favorite author in the wings to help you avoid approaching stalker level.)

(You don’t want to walk the plank!)

A New Favorite Book.

It is in your hands.

But is it just a new favorite book? Isn’t, can’t it be, uh….more?

Yes!

There is so much more than just the book itself when you find a New Favorite Book.

Let’s set sail for that new and magical harbor next week.

Have a spectacular week, my mateys!!