Hello and welcome to From Heart to Shelf: MiniMusings of an Indie Author. I am so excited that you have found me somehow on the internet and have stumbled upon this episode. I hope you’ll enjoy what I have to share and I hope that you’ll stick around.
Introduction
So, these are episodes that have a different theme for each month and four to five episodes during the month on that theme or topic. The first one is available publicly on my YouTube channel, and the other three or four—depending on how the month falls out—are only available in an unlisted playlist for my newsletter subscribers. So, if this episode piques your interest, I hope that you will subscribe to my YouTube channel and also subscribe to my weekly newsletter. You can find the link for that in the notes below.
This month’s topic is “The Heart Behind Reader Experiences.” If you’ve followed me for a while or if you stumble upon my website or something like that, you might see something about reader experiences. So, what in the world are those? Why do I have them? What is my heart behind them?
My four-part series on this topic is going to cover “Bringing Authors and Readers Together,” “Bringing the Joy of Reading to All,” “Combating Loneliness: One Story at a Time” and “Offering Unity to Like-minded Literary Folks.” Today I’m going to talk to you guys about my heart for “Bringing Authors and Readers Together.”
Backstory
Let me kind of take you back in time. In 2016 was not my first start at going into publishing books, but it was the start that has led us to where we are today. It was the time in my life where it really did make sense for me to pursue this crazy dream of mine. And what I found as I started writing stories—as I started thinking about publishing—as I started getting closer and closer to having completed and finished stories to share, I found myself craving readers for my stories.
I love the stories that I write, the characters that I write. They are so real to me and the stories that surround them are so real to me, and I love them so much that I just want to share with as many readers as I can. The readers who would love these same sorts of stories. And like many authors, I write the types of stories that I want to read. So, I just found myself craving readers.
As an indie author, especially, I think there is a challenge to finding those right readers. It’s really hard to not only find them, but find ways to truly and deeply connect with them. As I ventured more into this journey, as I started publishing books, as I started getting more and more into the literary and publishing community, I started realizing that I wasn’t alone in finding this as a challenge. So, I come at this from both the reader standpoint and the author standpoint. Of course, as do all authors because hopefully we all were readers first.
As I think through how I would like to interact with authors as a reader, that kind of helps me think through some things that I would love to have authors that I enjoy reading their stories, ways that I would love to connect with them. And so, I’ve tried to bring some of those into my own ecosystem.
In the process, I’ve been able to bring some of my author friends in, which is just an absolute delight. Most of the authors … I think really—now that I think about it—I think all the authors I have featured in some way or another in my author chats or in my summer reading or things like that have all been women. And that’s important to me because as a woman, I think that it is so special when women encourage and uplift other women.
And so that is part of my heart for bringing readers and authors together is to really focus in on women authors and mostly women readers.
Even though I do have some men who have thoroughly enjoyed my books, and I love having men as my readers, I think most of my readers have been women; and they really do identify even though my debut novel has a male main character. I think that my female readers have really fallen in love with Jack and his character and the women surrounding him. I diverted just a little bit off the topic thinking about my sweet character, Jack.
But, for the authors that I’ve brought in, like I said, all of them have been women and many of them have been indie authors. I am specifically drawn to fellow indie authors. This is the path that I chose. Maybe I’ll talk about that at some other point. And I love this path. I truly do. For me, it is the right option and is the best option. I don’t see myself going a different route. Who knows? Things can always change. But because I love the indie route so much, because this is such a part of who I am and how my stories go out into the world, I tend to seek out fellow indie authors. So finding ways to bring readers and authors together has always been a foundational part of who I am as an author and what I want to do with my online platform.
It All Began with a Book Club
It all began back in 2017. So 2016 was when I really went full-on pushing toward becoming a published author, finally realizing that lifelong dream. And in 2017, I launched my first book club, my first virtual book club. So, it began with a different name, but now it is LAM Book Club. And LAM stands for Logos and Mythos. That is the name of my publishing company. And it is kind of a … again, this is probably a topic that I need to cover is why Logos and Mythos? There is a story behind that.
But that is what I call my book club, LAM Book Club, and I use that in front of some of my other reader experiences, which you’ll see in a moment. So, we started in 2017, and it’s really grown and evolved over time to where it is today.
In 2018, I believe, is when I actually switched from only having posts on my Facebook page where we would just kind of weekly I would put up a little post and check in and see what everybody’s reading and share book recommendations that way. So, in 2018, I started with videos and I believe I began with Facebook lives. I think that was toward the beginning of of that being a thing. And so that’s how we started.
Now fast-forward to today, we meet monthly on Zoom, and so we get to truly interact with one another. The members of my book club have become very close. And what makes us unique is we have no set book. Now, not to say that we never will choose to read the same book together, but what I love so much about this is 1. It’s virtual. So, we can join from wherever we are. And second, because we don’t have a set book, we get to just come in and share what we’re reading. And that to me is so beautiful.
So, this is an example of a reader experience where I’m bringing readers together to just love how amazing the written word is together and share that joy, and it’s just … we have so much fun each month. We truly do and it’s just a beautiful community that has grown over these years.
Then Came Summer Reading
Then in 2018, I started the LAM Summer Reading Challenge. So next year, if you’re watching this when I put this out in 2026, so 2027 will be my 10th summer to have this. And I cannot believe that it has been that long. Honestly, it has, like the book club, it has grown and evolved over these 10 years. Again, I started it with just posts on my Facebook page and now it has grown to something so much bigger.
We have basically eight weeks of just undivided reading time. We have challenge categories—reading categories for people to choose from—and to read books um that fit within those categories. We have readers who read everything from non-fiction to fiction, across genres, and I try to make all the categories as broad as possible.
I started out with eight reading categories for the challenge, and I found out that I have some voracious readers and eight was nowhere near enough. I think this summer I had a total of 88 challenge categories. And, I mean, I don’t know I might need more. Who knows? Some of these readers just read constantly, and I love it.
I love seeing what they come up with—what books they pair with which categories. Often they’ll comment on one another’s posts about what they’re reading, like, “Oh, that sounds really good.” Or, “Hey, I already read that. I really enjoyed it.”
Or I’ll also see sometimes where more than one person is reading the same book or chose the same book sometimes for a different category. But it’s really cool to see that connection as well. And what I added within the last few years—well, I guess I started it fairly early on, maybe in like the second or third year—is I started bringing in other authors. And so this is where these authors come in.
We have an author chat during their featured week. We feature one of their books in particular. And people—the readers—have points that accumulate just by participating in commenting on posts and such throughout the week and also attending these author chats. And whoever has the most points in that author’s week wins an autographed copy of their book.
So it’s a fun way for me to highlight and feature different authors. I also bring back authors from previous summers as part of my Authors of the Round Table. Occasionally throughout the year I also have chats with some of these amazing authors and more. But it’s just a way to give fellow authors opportunities to be seen, to meet readers who are going to love their kinds of books.
When I choose authors, I choose authors who write great books, of course, who write the types of books that my followers tend to like, because, you know, what would be the point if I brought in an author and none of my followers like that type of book? That wouldn’t be very good for them. So, for the most part, and thankfully I have a very diverse following, because my readers are similar to me, in how I both read and write, which is widely across genres. It’s pretty easy to find authors who are going to find their readers in my community. So, it’s pretty cool.
And the thing about all of these is I offer these for free. Now, I’ve gone back and forth about this because it does take money to, you know, have the platform. It takes a lot of time. It does all these things, but because and I’ll get into that in another [episode] of why I like to keep it free, but that has always been something important to me to bring and share that joy of reading for free with other people who are probably in a similar situation to me, especially when I began this journey—where I really didn’t have the option to join an in-person book club. It just wasn’t … I didn’t have the time for that sort of thing. But I could sit in my living room and join in from wherever I happen to be and whatever I happen to be doing that week, right? And that’s something that I wanted to share with others as well.
My! How It’s Grown!
So other things that I do: In 2023, I started the 12 Days of Reading, which follows the 12 days of Christmas. So those 12 days between Christmas and King’s Day, I just have little special challenges and fun things that have to do with reading. We get together and chat sometimes. Sometimes I have little sessions or workshops or things that I share. It just depends on the year, honestly.
But for the most part, it’s pretty low-key, and it’s just a fun little thing to enjoy those few days where most of us have some time off and just come together over the joy of reading.
And then in 2024, I added to that with my 12 Months of Reading. And this honestly was just a very natural progression to add for both the book club and this 12 Days of Reading and, honestly, the reading challenge as well.
I just have a different category for every month of the year, and I offer calendars for anyone who finishes all 12 categories. I’ll send them a free calendar for the next year so that it has the challenge categories for that year and some fun little dates that have something to do with books and reading for each month. That’s just something fun that I do.
Odds and Ends
And then I mentioned earlier the Authors of the Round Table chats that I do sometimes throughout the year. I also have book club kits and I offer visits with book clubs either virtually or maybe in person if they’re near me. I love book clubs so much. That is something that I would love, love, love to do more of.
But every time I’ve had the opportunity to be with a book club who has read my book, it is just been a true joy. It really has been, because I have discussion questions and sometimes I get to hear them talk about these discussion questions and share their thoughts and share their reactions to different characters or different parts of the book or what they wish I had done differently. That’s always a fun one.
The Why
Really the heart behind this truly is to have free experiences that can bring both readers and authors together to help my fellow authors, to give them recordings that they can use and link on their websites, to introduce them to new readers, to introduce those readers to their fabulous books … just to bring everyone together and my heart is to do this for free.
I’m actually thinking next year—so in 2027—I’m thinking I’m going to add on an option that’s just an if somebody ever wants to, you know how you see at the bottom, buy me a coffee, like $2 or $3, whatever—just to throw in there because what I would love to do—and you’re hearing this here first—is next year I want to actually have the paid version of Zoom because I would like for my book club and these author chats to be longer than 40 minutes because sometimes that just really, really, really is not enough, and we can really start talking and sharing and just having such a great time together. I want to be able to have more of that. So maybe by having that option where if someone wants to, they can buy me a coffee, maybe that will add up and at least cover that cost.
Like I said, my heart for these reader experiences really is to bring everyone together over this shared passion of stories and watching readers come and meet authors whose books they have loved and get to ask them questions about their writing process or about how the stories came to be—and then seeing these authors develop relationships with these readers who I know are going to become their, you know, best readers, their huge followers—their super fans, if you will—is just a great thing to see.
Conclusion
So that is the heart behind reader experiences—bringing the authors and readers together. I hope that you will subscribe to my channel here and then also subscribe to my newsletter. You’ll find that link in the notes below and that way you’ll get to see the other three parts of this month’s series. See you next time and … Share the Read!
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