Fans Over Funnels

✏️ Community Led Growth for Authors ✏️

Often, those who play the long game are those who win the biggest in anything in life.

The same is true for publishing.

Instead of focusing on how to make your Amazon Sales Rank go up tomorrow, chasing another hit of dopamine that will fade even faster than the last, what if there were a way to build a marketing engine for your publishing business that is durable and compounds with time?

The answer is community.

But no, not in the way you think.

What 99% of Authors Get Wrong About Community

We all want superfans.

But have you created the conditions for a reader journey where fandom, connection, and community can thrive?

Probably not.

If you are like almost every author I’ve ever talked to, you view community as the end of your “marketing funnel”.

Once someone reads your story, joins your newsletter, and gets a tattoo of their favorite character’s face on their right ass cheek, they are finally invited to join your Facebook Group or Discord (okay, maybe that last one is not a requirement… most of the time).

“My reader community is for MY readers.”

Sounds super logical, except if you are like most authors reading this, your reader Facebook Group is an utter wasteland. It’s the digital equivalent of a bar that shut down years ago, is rotting, and there’s one friendly drunk who keeps showing up, hoping that today will finally be the day he can make a new friend.

This sounds sad. Because it is.

And it’s not just “baby” authors who face this challenge. Countless authors who dominate the Amazon charts have next to no reader community.

The truth? You don’t need a reader community to be successful as an author.

But… if you reframe how you think about community… it can become your most powerful marketing weapon.

So what if your community wasn’t a place for your fans, but a place for NEW fans to discover your stories?

Welcome to the world of community-led growth.

There are no hacks here.

But once you understand the power, you will see just why I dedicated an entire superpower inside the 50 Author Marketing Superpowers Deck to Reader Community (which pssst… the latest shipment of physical decks just arrived. You can get yours here).

Why Community-Led Growth is So Powerful

Community is not about your stories.

It’s about owning a place in the minds of readers.

Community-Led Growth doesn’t happen overnight, it often takes 6-12 months. But once you put in the work, the trust you build with readers can continue growing with time.

This is because great communities have a network effect. If you are a community for people to get dark romance book recs, there’s a benefit to being the biggest and best space since more people to comment and share leads to more useful book recs

This is why communities can become so durable. Once people are interacting and you have a designing principle that keeps people coming back, a community can grow in perpetuity through word of mouth.

This is why viewing your community as top of funnel is so powerful – this is the core of Community-Led Growth. With the right design, a community can become the landing space for new readers, and slowly over time, they will build trust with you and your brand, leading to more sales and dedicated fans of your stories.

Unlock Community-Led Growth in 3 Steps

Step #1: Determine the designing principle of your community (or someone else’s).

A designing principle is what people come to the community to do.

What makes a great designing principle is:

• Something that is differentiated. Ideally, other communities don’t focus on this, or if they do, you have a unique angle that makes people more likely to engage in your community.

• It’s simple, and ideally, the community name itself highlights the designing principle. Ex: Post-apocalyptic fiction group

• It is related to your stories tangentially because it attracts readers who share a similar passion, interest, genre, etc.

• A lot of people are interested in the designing principle and talking about it regularly. A place to talk about and share bookish romance memes is potentially great. There may be less interest in a community whose goal is to combine romantasy and woodworking (I mean… this could work… but decidedly there may not be much overlap).

Examples of designing principles are:

• Talk about a specific author’s books (this is super limited in growth because there’s likely not a lot of people interested in this designing principle and even if there are, they may not be interested in regularly talking about it unless the story has a lot of lore, fan art/fan fiction surrounding it, etc.)

• Book recommendation groups for niche genres and tropes

• Groups focused on sharing memes, quotes, and more related to specific genres

• Groups that combine passion, hobby, or career with genre. For instance, police officers who read thrillers or people who love map-making and fantasy.

Step #2: Create the community and join existing ones!

First, you can still embark on a community-led growth strategy without running a community and simply interacting in other communities, but those who will see the most benefits from this strategy in the long run will be those who “own a space” such as by running a Facebook Group, Discord, etc.

The #1 way you can grow a community in its early days, without having an audience, is by interacting in other communities.

Your goal is not to shill your community to people in another group.

Instead, it’s to provide value to other communities by engaging in their designing principle. Become a trusted member, someone that people and even the admins look up to.

Then look to run an event, potentially a livestream or challenge, inside of the existing community that promotes your community. You will do this with the permission of the leaders of the group — after all, they know they can’t be the home for people to talk about everything, and you may be able to provide a lot of value to their members.

Is this a long game? Yes.

But in a couple of months, you can have your community promoted in several prominent communities that overlap with yours in a way that is authentic and seeds your first members.

Things are heating up now!

Step #3: Nurture Your Community Like a Garden

Now that you have your first members and design principle, you need to model the behavior you want your members to display.

This means:

• Making posts with you engaging in the designing principle (for example, maybe you have a community based around making culinary dishes inspired by fantasy novels… so you should make some cool dishes!)

• Rewarding others who engage in your designing principle by interacting with them (typically, this just means commenting on their posts and responding to questions)

• Host livestreams or other events that allow your early members to form deep bonds with each other. The #1 way to build a successful community is to have your members connect with each other.

In the beginning, it’s hard work, but over time, your members will begin to do the hard work of engaging, rewarding others, and making the community a lively space for you.

And that’s how you go from a seed of a community through the sapling stage to a thriving garden of awesomeness. Of course, like any garden, it will always need some tending. But it’s beautiful what nature can do all on its own when you create the right environment!

Some Examples of Great Bookish Communities

This list is non-exhaustive and just a sample of some great Facebook Groups for readers. Remember, communities are not about promoting a specific author’s books but instead creating a space for people to come together!

• Smuthood. 2000,000+ members with 2,000+ posts a month, growing at 600+ members a week.

• Romantasy Books. 26,000 members with 1,000+ posts a month and growing at 400+ members a week.

• Cozy Mystery Reads for All. 4,000+ members with 300 posts a month and growing at 60+ members a week.

• Books of Horror. 60,000+ members with 3,500+ posts a month and nearly 250 members joining each week.

• P.S. Look at this HUGE group from Simon and Schuster that is now pretty dead. Bigger is not always better! But honestly, I need to do a deeper dive to see what went wrong here.

As you can see, a durable community can lead to ongoing growth for years with tens of thousands of readers interacting each week.

That isn’t just a great way to grow your brand, it’s true power.

So now that you know the superpower of Community Led Growth, how will you use it? I’d love to hear your plans in a reply to this email or the comments on this post.

I’ll be back later this week with a new podcast for Beyond the Book.

Likewise, I’m putting the finishing touches on all of the digital bonuses for the Author Superpowers Bundle before jumping into AuthorIQ — an all-in-one home for you to track and optimize your book marketing (yes, decided to change the name from AuthorHub 😉).

Thank you for reading and for all of your support!

In the meantime, don’t forget…

Together we are boundless,

Michael Evans

The Author Sidekick

https://authorsidekick.com/