Why other authors are not your competitors

You can learn from them

You probably know this: When you look at the Amazon charts, you notice that other books rank much better than yours. Or you look at a Facebook group full of medium writers, and they all seem to have earned more than you in the last month.

You are frustrated and wonder why this is so. You don't write any worse than the others. You know this because you've read their work.

How nice it would be if they all disappeared overnight. Then the readers would find you much easier, and you would finally get your fair share.

Instead of getting sick with envy and anger, you could learn from the other authors. Look at what they write about and how they write.

Follow their activities and find out where they advertise and how they reach their readers.

What market do they serve? In which genre do they have their great success?

If you seriously pursue these questions, it will quickly change the way you look at your supposed competitors.

You don't have to admire them immediately, but if you find out what they do to be so successful, you should at least be grateful to them.

Don't wish that the others would do everything differently, but ask yourself what you can do differently. No one but yourself is responsible for your success. The good news is that you can then also make sure that this changes.

This attitude frees you from the victim mentality and makes you the master of your destiny.

You can cooperate with them

Instead of being jealous of other authors' large mailing lists, you can use this marketing power for yourself. If you often do others a favor by sharing their books or articles, they may be willing to help you, too.

Your mailing list may be smaller than that of one of your competitors, but pretty sure you have other subscribers than they do. Offer to promote your books to each other in your newsletters. Both sides benefit from this.

Another way to collaborate is to publish together. Publish an anthology with another author from your genre. You contribute a story and the other one too. Now you have a common book, which you are both interested in marketing. Of course, this is also possible with more than two authors.

Decide in writing beforehand whose account you will use to publish the book and how you will divide the royalties.

Unique charm has an idea that I just discovered. Several thriller writers have joined forces and produced a joint series. Everyone contributes a book to the series, which is written under a common theme.

This allows many books to be published in much shorter intervals than if each author worked on his or her own. Again, everyone has the same interest in making sure that each book sells well because one book increases the visibility of all the other books in the series.

I'm sure you can think of other ways to cooperate with other authors. They will be happy if you come to them with such an idea.

They can't take away your audience

Hardly any book reaches all potential readers. Most readers will never know that your book even exists. Even the authors, who sell over a thousand books a day, by no means reach all potential readers.

I have fans who have never heard of some of the most successful self-publishers, and conversely, only a fraction of their readers know me.

So it makes no sense to assume that authors are taking readers away from each other. The opposite is the case.

Whenever a reader has finished reading a book that he or she likes, they will want to read the next book that gives them just as much pleasure.

If there is no new book by their favorite author at the moment, the readers will go to the shop to look for other titles and authors that suit their taste.

This is then the chance for all other authors from this genre because the algorithms, for example, at Amazon, do nothing else but show customers more products, like what they have already bought.

That way, one purchase leads to the next. A platform that does not offer an almost inexhaustible selection will attract fewer buyers because they prefer shops where there is more than in other shops.

The curse of the many books, from which many authors suffer so much, is actually a blessing. The customers, in our case the readers, are so numerous in a shop only because there are not only our books there. Nobody is looking specifically for our new book, because nobody knows that it exists.

But when millions of readers search for new stories every day in a shop like Amazon, the probability that they will find ours is much higher than if we sold it on our own website.

Conclusion

Whether you see other authors as competitors or allies is your decision. But I think I could show that it makes more sense for everyone if you see the existence of other authors as an opportunity and not as a threat.

I am grateful for every single colleague who provides our readers with exciting stories because only many good books keep the readers' interest alive in the long run.