THE NEW TREND – AUTHORPRENUER

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Books they say are a man’s best and lifelong friend. They have made you laugh, cry, fall in love and sometimes also made you bite your nails, but come to think of it who actually does it. You must have guessed it by now. It’s the Author and his thinking that produces innumerable stories on innumerable themes, be it fiction, nonfiction, thrillers, romance. Well...the list is endless. But what happens once the novel finishes and is ready to hit the market? The author suddenly apart from writing dons another hat, that of an entrepreneur and the new name coined for that is Authorprenuer!

We are all living in a social media world where everything is at your fingertips. One app can change the whole world and your outlook towards life. Gone are those days, when the author would just finish a book and after publishing it would be out for sale. There would be no marketing for it and just through the word of mouth or newspaper reviews the book would sell. But now the scenario has totally changed, and our Authors are no less than ‘celebrities’ and entrepreneurs in their own way.

Much before an author starts writing a book, the title and a brief about the book is splashed all over his Facebook page or on his Instagram account with a little peek of the book cover too. Time to time as the book progresses, so does the followers on Facebook and Instagram who get a little sighting of the book thus promoting interest. The real skill of an ‘Authorprenuer’ comes when the book is ready for release. Now is the time for the author to show his marketing skills so that more and more get intrigued in buying the book. So, what do we have then, a number of book launches followed by wine and cheese, book reading sessions by roping in a few celebrities and a tour all over India promoting the book through contests and gift hampers?

All this trend and many more things can be seen in successful novelist Sudeep Nagarkar’s latest book launch campaign. An engineer and MBA by profession he has just completed his 8th book “All rights reserved for you.” This book is a true story of his long distance relationship with Jasmine, his wife whom he got married this November. His connect with the youth is immense which can be gathered from his 4.67 Lakh followers in Facebook, 75.2k followers in Instagram & 22k followers on Twitter. Young readers connect with his stories which focus primarily on youth and their friendships, love, loss, betrayal, misfortunes, resilience and triumphs. In fact he makes it a point to interact with his audience through his social media account through a countdown to his book launch, having interactive book launch sessions to giving away personally signed copies on pre-order bookings. To make it more interactive, he even posted pictures of people who bought his book and even thanked them! Selfies with fans, contest questions, photos of book launches are all splattered on his Facebook page, and he makes it a point to answer mostly everything which the readers ask him. His current book has become a bestseller within 20 days of the release in all major bookshops & online portals like Amazon & Flipkart. The book is getting rave reviews on Amazon with 180+ 5 star reviews out of 200.

In all this process, the author who in the earlier days, was like a recluse, has now become a marketing professional and promotion of his book has become one of the mandatory things of his book writing. Nowadays if you don’t promote your book aggressively with unique concepts, it would come and go without people getting a hint of it. And if the book is promoted well enough, you can see the author’s name on the silver screen as the book gets converted into a movie.

With time, the author has become an entrepreneur, so is it time for the entrepreneur to become an author!