Texas Authors, Inc Interview
With the rise of the internet & the age of social media, small & independent creators who have a passion for what they do have had an unprecedented rise in popularity as their ability to spread the word about their work has exponentially increased. Unfortunately, one of the innate qualities of most creatives is that the sales & marketing mindset doesn't come to them naturally. Over the course of this year, we have had the great pleasure to speak with several independent authors about their books & the specific struggles that they encounter while trying to get their creative works in to the hands of readers. Each one has had a different method that they use to market themselves & their books & each one has had to deal with the challenges that this brings.
Luckily for them & the others like them, there is an organization that exists specifically to help authors overcome those exact problems! Texas Authors, Inc, formally the Texas Association of Authors, is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to support independent authors through education & marketing assistance in order to help them get their books in front of more people through more avenues of distribution. Founded in 2011 by B. Alan Bourgeois, Texas Authors, Inc has already helped hundreds of authors learn how to properly market their work. Being an established publisher & author himself, Alan recognized the disadvantage that independent authors are at compared to their counterparts with one of the big publishing houses, which does all of the heavy lifting for their authors.
Among these resources that Alan & his organization provides, the most popular is the annual authors' marketing event that he holds over the course of a single weekend in July where the attendees will learn everything they need to know about how to market & sell their work through both traditional avenues of marketing, as well as social media. This is one of the most intense & comprehensive marketing lessons for authors today, so it is easy to see why it has continued to gather so much appeal among the literary community.
They also have two other resources that benefit both authors & readers alike: the DEAR Texas Radio show & their online bookstore. The online bookstore is one of the locations where the works of their members can be found & purchased by anyone in & outside of the organization. The DEAR Texas Radio show, however, is a twice weekly radio show that gives authors a platform to talk about their stories & build up anticipation for new readers who haven't yet discovered their work. While self marketing is always the end goal, there is still something so unique about an author sitting down with someone else to talk about their stories. It gives the authors a chance to relax & be very candid about what makes their work special in a way that can't quite be captured alone. If you happen to miss the live broadcast, don't worry. The recording of the show is posted to soundcloud & iTunes as a podcast, too.
Whether you are an independent author looking to figure out how to get your stories out there for people to finally read or you are an avid reader that likes to support good stories, Texas Authors, Inc. is an organization very worthy of your attention.