Author Collaborations to get more eyes on books

3 min readJul 29, 2021

My fellow author, Sanjiva, had a bit of a chuckle and said that we five, were the “Famous Five“, the five authors who responded to my invite to collaborate in a shared promotion on St James Day, 25th July.

This post is a sort of behind the scenes of an author life, how do we promote our books and how and why. It’s a mystery why out of a membership of 800+ Camino authors, only a few responded at all. And only five joined in on the promotion to share our books for free or at a discount. Those great camino authors are in the previous post — go check them out here.

We had a wide selection, despite the small number, from travelogues, inspirational. transformational and historical fiction, there was something for everyone, or almost everyone. I could only download one book, because I had already bought the others.

So why only Five

Some authors could not join as they were traditionally published, and not allowed to by the publishers — a valid reason for you to check out why you need to join the disruptive publishing revolution

Some authors said they never do free or discounts. That’s a personal choice, but one that is mystifying to me. As part of the Camino community, giving and sharing is integral to how we live.

Others just did not respond at all — I suspect they did not see my post at all, because they don’t take part in the community unless they want to sell a book — or announce a publication. The community is called “Camino Authors”, the aim is to help each other and promote each other’s books, not buy or make sales. I can understand the blurriness, as authors we are good at writing, and less good at the subtleties of marketing. Especially marketing a book, which needs a different type of marketing, a more gentle approach that doesnt continuosly scream buy me.