Gilbert Gottfried’s Death Can Teach You About Keeping in Touch with Readers

There’s a maxim from Baptist preacher Charles H. Spurgeon that states, “Begin as you mean to go on.”

I’ve also heard this expressed as, “Dress for your next job.”

For indie authors, I think this can mean, “Act as if you already succeeded.”

Which is true. If you’re self-publishing your work, you have succeeded. Now you need to make the incremental improvements that make it noticeable to others.

Let me give you an example. After the flap with Amazon over “The Complete, Annotated Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” I learned from their public domain page that they want your book description to be formatted in a way that makes it easy for one of their employees to see that your work is unique enough to stay on the site.

I didn’t pay attention to that, and I think that’s why Amazon banned “Ackroyd” and the print version of “The Complete, Annotated Murder on the Links”. They could have looked inside the book and seen all the work I put into it.

Or, I could have told them up front.

I’m trying to make amends. I rewrote the book description to “Links” and submitted it for the ebook version (which Amazon still sells; see how inconsistent they apply their policy?).

Risky business

It’s a risk. Their algorithm could flag the book. They could ban it. Then, I’ll send them another email, pointing out that I followed their policy (which I didn’t do last time, because I didn’t), and resubmit a photo of the copyright certificate from the U.S. Copyright Office proving that “The Complete, Annotated Murder on the Links” is copyrighted.

And whatever employee who gets this appeal could very well ban it. They could even, if they’re in a bad mood, take down the account, like last time (and reversed it a few hours later).

So my choices are not optimal no matter what I do: fix the problem and risk being banned, or hide and risk being banned.

Which would make me feel bad, because I didn’t nothing to stop it. Whereas, by being proactive, by “begin as I mean to go on,” I can at least say, “I tried. I didn’t fail. Amazon KDP failed to follow their own stated policy.”

The result will be the same, but how I feel about it won’t.

What does this have to do with ‘keeping in touch with readers’?

Right. Moving from “making incremental improvements” to “keep in touch with readers.”

Let’s talk about Gilbert Gottfried, who died unexpectedly last week.

This was a gut punch, because he didn’t tell anyone he had been sick for apparently quite some time. Muscular dystrophy is a degenerative disease, which is one reason — it turns out — why he had been staying at home and doing his podcast and not touring comedy clubs and making TV appearances.

I loved his “Amazing, Colossal” podcast, and he will be sorely missed by his fans. I wish I could tell his family and his podcast co-host Frank Santopadre how much I’ll miss Gilbert.

When I visited the podcast’s website, I see they had anticipated this response.

“Thank you. You loved Gilbert. We did too. We need to take time off, mourn, and figure out what we’re going to do next.”

This is how to stay in touch with your fans.

But he’s famous! I’m not

Remember, “begin as you mean to go on”?

First, you don’t know if you have fans. Even if you have one, and it’s your mother, you should keep her up to date about your plans.

I can think of many authors who don’t. There’s the best-selling urban fantasy author who started a second series with a new character and world. Teresa loved those books so much she tracked when they were published and bought them. But the author never said when the next one would come out, and didn’t tell her fans that she wasn’t writing any more of them.

Then there’s the indie author whose two superhero novels did fantastic business. He ended the second one on a major cliffhanger. But for some reason, he didn’t publish the third. He dropped (I think) one blogposts telling fans it would be delayed.

He published the third book recently, after five years of silence. I learned about it only by visiting his Amazon page on an impulse.

Even though Teresa loved the first two books, she hasn’t bought the third. Mostly because of the upheavals in our lives recently, but also the desire to know what happened next has faded.

Thus the lesson: Stay in touch with your fans. I don’t mean confess everything that’s going on in your life (unless you’re one of those confessional authors).

Just a note, if only to say, “Hang on! My next story’s coming!”

Oh, and tell them to sign up to your mailing list so they can buy it.