Begin Self Publishing Podcast: The Benefits of Community

Author Timothy Michael Lewis of Stoneham Press host of Begin Self Publishing Podcast interviewed Catherine Carrigan of www.whatissocialmediatoday.com about the benefits of community for authors and how it can help a starting author have success with marketing their book.

Timothy Michael Lewis, author and host of Begin Self Publishing Podcast

You can listen to the podcast directly or download for listening at a later date by clicking on the links above.

“The act of writing in itself you do all by your lonesome,” Catherine Carrigan observed. “So there are four great benefits that I see for having a community as a writer and as an author and this has helped sustain me as I have just published my seventh book.

“The first one that I would like to talk about is co-creation.

“So one of my best friends here in Atlanta is a fellow bestselling author. Amazon number one bestselling author Maxine Taylor. Maxine has got seven Amazon more bestsellers. I only have four Amazon number one says bestsellers out of my seven books.

“And I joke with her you know hey you’re the one to beat. And she just says Hey honey I’m just a little bit older than you. So periodically what we do is we have our own little mini mastermind group and we get together for lunch.

“Now this happened pretty organically as friendships usually do. We got together for lunch. She was a great example for me early on about how to be a generous author because one of her first lunches she handed over the contact information for her Twitter guru, her editor and her amazing Amazon marketing lady.”

“The third C in this cooperation is cross blogging.” Catherine Carrigan observed. “Now I regularly individually encourage other author friends of mine to cross blog with me so I will publish one of your blogs for every blog of mine that you publish.

“When I do that I put in a picture of your book or your books plural links to your website and your bio’s and the benefits of cross blogging are legion. My fans learn about your books your business your world view and your fans discover about my books my business as a medical intuitive healer and absorb my opinions.

“So this is spreading our ideas and our books around the Internet. And this is the epitome of a win-win. And nobody spends a dime on advertising.”