If you love an author who is alive and writing, here’s what you can do to help them continue being authors so you can read more of their books in the years to come.

2. Buy some of their stuff. Even if they give a lot of things away for free, even if you found a free download or borrowed books or were loaned some, buy something, when you can. Without book sales an author is not viable. If you really love an author, buy their work.
   
3. Tell other people why you love this author. Encourage them to buy books (see above) maybe buy your friends books – it’s a great solution to birthdays and other gift-orientated festivals, they don’t die like flowers.
   
4. Write reviews. On goodreads, on your social media page, on your blog, on amazon and other book selling places. Write reviews, because if no one is talking about a book, it’s not going to sell and if it doesn’t sell the author may be too depressed to even try writing another one, and then you don’t get to read anything else.
   
5. Tell the author you liked their book. If they’re alive, the odds are they have a social media presence and if you hunt them down and message them, the odds are you will make their day. A lot of work goes into a book, it’s a huge relief and a massive boost to find out that someone read and liked it. This also increases the chances of them writing more books.
   
6. Tell event organisers that you love the author. If you go to events, if there are events near you that you would go to if only someone booked your favourite author, tell that event. It can make all the difference. Make sure the author is in your country, first.
   
7. If you see someone talking about getting pirate copies of a book, challenge them. Piracy is theft, and most authors cannot afford this sort of theft. It is always worth pointing this out, and it does help.
   
8. Do encourage people to borrow books from libraries. Libraries are good for authors and most authors are pro-libraries.
   
9. Buy direct from the author. If you can’t do that, buy from their publisher, or from a local store. If you buy from a big online site, the amount that makes it back to the author is actually quite small, they get better returns if you buy the book by other means, and this helps them write more books.
   
10. If you are going to buy from a big online store, order ahead of release date. If the book has sales when it comes out, it will be more visible, and this will help other people find it, and this helps the author.
    
11. Don’t troll their opponents, don’t bully those who disagree with them – I know it’s tempting if someone fails to love the person you love, but on the whole it doesn’t work. Just have a moment of smug superiority, and move on. Any time an author has to spend online dealing with an internet bun fight is time they aren’t spending writing the next book.

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