The writing ecosystem holds all aspects of the care and feeding of writing, and each writer or stakeholder of writing has a role or roles. Some mentor up-and-coming writers. Others make sure they dedicate clear time to putting words on the page or hosting book clubs. Still others represent authors and negotiate book deals. And on.
Let’s look at three easy economic ways to support the writing ecosystem.
Click to check out Indiebound’s take on economic aspects of supporting a healthy writing ecosystem.
- Link better. When you get excited about a book, perhaps wanting to support an author’s sales through a pre-order push, link to sites that strengthen the writing ecosystem, not reduce it. To find URLs to copy-paste for your social media, visit a publisher’s official website listing, bookshop.org, libro.fm, or indiebound.org.
- Change vendors. Are you ever in charge of ordering a stack of books for the office? Or perhaps creating a listing for a book club? Or setting up a book table at a conference? Find a local bookstore at https://www.indiebound.org/indie-store-finder or https://www.bookweb.org/member_directory/search/ABAmember. Ask if a vendor has a bulk discount for purchasing. See if they set up accounts to invoice your organization for purchases.
- Erase that terrible smile. Most smiles are great. The smile that a nonprofit may have on its website that encourages shopping at a large online retailer, the one that continually tries to homogenize and reduce the writing ecosystem? Not so wonderful. Through the program, a nonprofit is eligible to make money on certain items — at a rate of 50 cents per $100. This means you are encouraging local residents to move $100 out of your local community so you might make 50 cents. (Even worse, the way smile language is written may lead some nonprofits to mistakenly think the potential earning rate is 5%. It’s not. It’s .5%.)
Read more about the writing ecosystem here.
The use of some links on this site may result in a small monetary benefit to the referrer. Featured photo of books by Abhi Sharma, 2006 (CC BY 2.0).
Todd Wellman 