Your Book Is on the Shelf. Now What?

First, welcome. Your book is on the shelf and officially part of the Motivated Savages Indie Author Bookstore, and I hope you’ve already taken a minute to go find it on the shelf. There’s something pretty cool about seeing your cover sitting there among all those other books! But now what?

That’s a question I’ve thought about a lot as this bookstore has grown. Getting your book listed is completely free, and it always will be, but I don’t want putting your book on the shelf to be the end of our interaction. There is so much more sitting right in front of us if we actually use this place.

Before I get into any of that, though, there’s something you should probably know about me. I’m an indie author too.

My book, Shadows on the Road, is sitting on these shelves right alongside yours. I know what it’s like to write a book, publish it, and then realize that somehow you’re also supposed to figure out how to get people to notice it. Constantly talking about your own work can feel weird, and it’s easy to look around at other authors and wonder if we’re all competing for the attention of the same readers.

I don’t think we are.

In fact, one of the biggest ideas behind this bookstore is community over competition, and that’s not something I put on the website because it sounds nice. Think about how people actually read. We don’t read one book and then we’re done. We finish it and start looking for the next one, whether that’s from a favorite author, a recommendation from a friend, a cover that catches our eye, or even a genre we never expected to love.

Readers read a lot of books. Another author finding a reader doesn’t mean you’ve lost one.

That’s such a simple thing, but I think we forget it when we’re trying to sell our own. The more of us giving people reasons to read indie books, the more people we can bring into this world together.

That’s where I want you to start thinking differently about your place here.

Go Find Your Book

Take a minute and look at your page the way someone discovering you for the first time might:

• Read your book description.
• Click the purchase link and make sure it goes where you expect.
• Check your About the Author section.
• Follow your website and social links.
• Make sure everything is still current.

And then remember that this isn’t just a page that exists because your book is listed. It’s a page you can actually use.

You don’t always have to send someone directly to Amazon or wherever your book is sold and hope they buy it on the spot. You now have another place where you can send someone who wants to learn more. Share your individual Motivated Savages page when it makes sense. Put it somewhere people can find it. If someone asks about your book, send them over.

They might click something else while they’re here, and that’s kind of the point. Someone else’s reader might do exactly the same thing and eventually find you.

Your Shelf Is Full of Your People

Once you’ve looked at your own page, go back to your genre shelf and do something that might feel a little counterintuitive. Stop looking at your own book and look at everybody else’s.

If you’re on the Horror shelf, you’re surrounded by people who write horror. If you’re on Romance, you’re looking at romance authors. Mystery, fantasy, science fiction, children’s books, memoir, poetry, whatever your shelf happens to be, those aren’t just a bunch of books that happen to be categorized next to yours.

Those aren’t just the other books on your shelf. Those are your genre people.

Someone on that shelf might become:

• an author you love to read
• someone whose readers would also love your work
• a friend
• a collaborator
• someone doing something you’ve never thought of

So click their covers too.

One of the reasons I include an About the Author section and author links on the individual book pages is because I don’t want the book to exist separately from the human being who created it. Those links are obviously there for readers who want to know more, but authors can use them too.

Go find each other.

And honestly, you already have the easiest conversation starter in the world. You don’t have to come up with some awkward networking message or figure out how to explain why you’re reaching out.

You’re shelf neighbors.

If you find someone you want to connect with, go follow them and say hi. Tell them where you found them. Something as simple as “Hey, shelf neighbor! I found you on the Motivated Savages Horror shelf with me” immediately gives you something in common.

Actually, I kind of love the idea of “Hey, Shelf Neighbor” becoming our little unofficial code around here. If somebody says it to you, you’ll know they’ve been wandering the shelves. 😂

But the point isn’t to collect connections for the sake of collecting them. I’m definitely not talking about following twenty people and immediately messaging them to ask if they’ll promote your book. Please don’t do that.

I’m talking about actual human connection. Follow the authors whose work genuinely interests you. Tell someone when something they’ve written resonates with you, leave a review when you’ve read and enjoyed their book, or share something you think your own readers would love. Support doesn’t have to be complicated to matter.

And don’t be afraid to see where those relationships go. Maybe you end up talking books, or you share each other’s work someday. Maybe you collaborate on something neither of you has thought of yet or nothing comes of it beyond finding another person whose posts you enjoy seeing.

That’s okay too. Not every connection needs an outcome to be worth making.

Community over competition only works if there’s actually a community involved.

Don’t Stay on Your Own Shelf

Your genre shelf is probably the most obvious place to start because you already have something in common with the people there, but don’t treat those categories like walls. I’m an author, but I’m also a reader. I don’t only read the exact genre I write, and I’m guessing you don’t either.

So go wander.

That’s one of the behaviors I hope we can build around this bookstore. I want readers to come looking for one book and end up clicking three more covers because something caught their attention. Maybe they came for mystery and wandered into memoir, or found an author story that led them to a book they never would have discovered otherwise.

And there’s no reason we can’t do the same thing as authors. Follow your curiosity. Click the cover that catches your attention, read an Author Spotlight that sounds interesting, or spend some time with a From the Author piece that makes you want to know more about the person who wrote it.

You don’t always have to show up here wearing your author hat. Come be a reader too.

Bring Your Readers With You

This is probably the part of the whole thing that excites me most.

When you share your individual book page, you’re bringing one of your readers into a bookstore where your work is already waiting for them. If they decide to look around while they’re here, you haven’t lost anything. They may find something else they want to read too.

Now imagine another author does the same thing, and then another. All of those people are coming through the same bookstore where your book is already sitting.

That’s why I don’t think community over competition is just a warm, fuzzy idea. There’s a very practical reason behind it.

Readers don’t read one book for life.

If you bring someone here because of your thriller and they discover a fantasy novel while they’re wandering, fantastic. Maybe that fantasy author brings someone here next week who eventually finds your thriller.

We don’t need to control exactly where everyone goes once they get here. We need to give more people reasons to walk through the door. That’s a very different mindset from every author standing in their own little corner of the internet yelling, “BUY MY BOOK!” into the void.

And frankly, it’s a lot more fun.

You Don’t Have to Wait for Me

I think this is worth saying because it’s easy to submit your book, get the acceptance email, see it on the shelf and then wait to see if Motivated Savages features it somewhere.

You don’t have to wait for me.

Yes, I’m going to keep finding ways to introduce people to the books and authors here. We have Author Spotlights, From the Author, Indie Book Discovery, Featured Authors and whatever else I dream up as this thing keeps growing.

But being on the shelf already gives you quite a bit to work with:

• Your own individual book page
• A genre shelf full of authors and books to discover
• Something specific to share with your readers
• A bookstore that keeps changing as new books arrive
• Opportunities to participate when they genuinely interest you

Use it.

And when something new is happening around here, participate when it actually makes sense for you. You don’t have to jump on everything. This isn’t homework. I’d much rather have people genuinely participate in the things that interest them than mechanically share everything because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do.

That’s not community either.

Not Everything Has to End in a Sale Today

Of course I want people to buy these books. That’s why every individual page ultimately points people toward the author’s chosen purchase destination. But I also think we can drive ourselves a little crazy when everything we do gets measured against whether somebody bought something immediately afterward.

Discovery doesn’t always happen that neatly. Someone might:

• recognize your cover the next time they see it
• follow you
• send your book to a friend
• save it for later
• read more about you
• see your name enough times that curiosity finally wins

That’s still discovery.

We’re building more ways for those moments to happen.

This Only Works If We Use It

I can build the bookstore. I can create the shelves, add the books, introduce authors, write features, bring readers in, and keep looking for new ways to help people discover indie work. But I can’t build the community part by myself.

The community part starts with all of us actually using the place. Find your shelf neighbors. Share a book that isn’t yours when you genuinely think it’s worth sharing. Bring your readers in and let them wander. Some of them are going to discover other authors along the way, and that’s a good thing. Because other authors are bringing people through the same doors, and some of those people are going to find you.

We don’t have to keep every reader to ourselves for this to work.

There are a lot of books here, and I hope there are eventually a whole lot more. There are also a lot of readers out there looking for their next one. We don’t need every reader to choose us every time. We need to keep giving them reasons to read indie, to discover someone new, and to come back looking for more.

Your book being on the shelf means you have a place here now. What you do with that place is entirely up to you. You can share your page and leave it at that, or you can look around, meet people, discover books, support good work, bring others through the door, and become part of what this place turns into.

I know which one sounds more fun to me.

I built the shelves. You brought one of the books that makes them worth visiting. The rest of this, we get to build together.

So, welcome to the bookstore.

And if you don’t know where to start, go find someone sitting next to you and say:

Hey, Shelf Neighbor.