Participating in an Author Audience Swap Collaboration

When authors research other authors in their genre, plan accordingly, and communicate well, they can maximize this opportunity

The idea of newsletter swaps has been a more common target audience-building practice for authors in the past few years.

The reason is that if done well, they have proven to be very effective at building awareness of your books to your target audience and growing that audience for yourself. And if an author chooses a good author match for their brand, their chances of success increase.

Seems like a win-win, right?

However, there is a catch. Not many authors have gotten their newsletters up and running yet due to many reasons (funds, resources, time).

So, if you don’t yet have a newsletter, or if you know a good author that you could swap with who doesn’t have a newsletter — then how can you make this happen?

This is where an author-audience swap collaboration comes into play.

A little backstory

I’m a multi-genre author who is still trying to expand the audience for each of my books.

I have a newsletter, and I have social media platform accounts across the board. However, my largest following is on X with 36.1k. Up until now, I hadn’t found a good person to swap newsletters with because my newsletters teach my subscribers about writing/ publishing/ audience building in addition to my book updates.

And then the idea hit me.

So many people are focused on follow counts on social media…maybe that was what I needed to be using.

With this idea in mind, I posted this:

https://x.com/klhicks912/status/1848803081942929910

And quite quickly, I received two responses. One from a young adult fantasy author, and one from a children’s picture book author. I hadn’t even asked about children’s books, so it worked out in my favor since I have 3 of my own.

Thankfully, we devised a plan fairly quickly.

Here is what it looked like:

• We would send eBook copies of our books to one another via email. Read each other’s work, and then leave a review on Goodreads.

• We would also send each other interview questions to answer.

• We would decide on a date to post our reviews and interviews across our author platforms.

Now, for the young adult author, we have decided on a time in December because the books we need to read are lengthier. However, for the children’s book author, we decided to have everything done by Tuesday, October 29th.

So, how did it go, I’m guessing you’re wondering.

Well, we did these things before posting across our platforms:

• Shared blog posts before posting so they could be proofread

• Shared what platforms we would be sharing to

• Shared ideas on types of posts that would work

What did we do on the proposed date?

• Kept in contact via email, sharing links to where we were posting

• Checking how things were going

• Sharing ideas

Here is where I shared the interview and book reviews:

• I made a pin on Pinterest

• Instagram via a story and a post

• TikTok video with images and quotes from the interview

• X, by sharing the questions and answers in images throughout a thread

• Facebook, to my own page, and to a New Authors group I host that has 7.5k members

• To my website blog and my Medium blog

• Shared to my newsletter subscribers (this will happen on Friday)

What are my takeaways from the experience?

• I had some authors tell me that their audience was too small to offer me anything. But in reality, no matter how small the audience, they are always going to have someone I don’t reach. So this is just as much an opportunity for me as it is for them

• Planning these things with the other person involved is the key to success

• Making sure you provide as much information in terms of links to your platform pieces, cover images, and more to other people makes the process go more smoothly

• Ensuring you do everything you can on your end to help the other person

If you find an author that you think this method will work well with, I would say to go for it.

The best things that authors can do are:

• Continuing to think outside the box

• Working together to help one another

• Striving to continue to learn and grow