How to help the reader community (because readers could use some help, too)

People say reading is a lonely hobby (and in a certain way, they’re right). However, to have a good and healthy reading experience most times you need something more than just sitting in your favorite corner with a book and dive into the story. Readers should support other readers, and I’m really grateful to be in an amazing community of readers and bookish content creators that don’t let me down when I need their help.

Perhaps you haven’t thought about this, or you have but without considering that you can do a contribution to the reader community. That’s what this post is for! Keep reading to find out how you can do a good deed for the reading community, so we can build a wonderful community together.

1. List trigger warnings when talking about a book.

When I started blogging, I didn’t consider putting trigger warnings on top of my reviews, but after some months I started doing it almost in every one of my reviews (self-reminder I need to go back to my old reviews and add trigger warnings to them). Trigger warnings are extremely important, and to have them available online might make a big, positive difference on someone’s reading experience when reading a book.

You might say… but I’m not a book blogger! How do I let readers know about the trigger warnings of certain book? Well, there’s an extremely helpful website called Book Trigger Warnings that’s something like a wiki page that compiles trigger warnings from many books, and you can do your contributions there! When you’re reading a book, try writing down all the trigger warnings you can find in it, and then go to the page and add your contribution. The reader community will be grateful.

2. Boost helpful posts and videos

You read a blog post on 100 lgbtq+ upcoming books and loved it? You saw a booktube video that was especially good or helpful in your opinion? The best you can do to give back to the creators of that content is boosting on social media. Whether is Instagram, Twitter or Facebook, and whether your following base is big or small, they’re going to be very grateful for it. And not only them! If you have bookish mutuals on social media, I can assure you they’ll want to know about that content too.

So don’t enjoy all that content quietly. Let the world know you liked it! It might be helpful for someone who follows you, too.

3. Whether you’re a book blogger or not… post reviews!

This might be obvious, but blogs aren’t the only sites where you can post reviews. Goodreads and retail sites are ideal for doing so, too. Many readers use to Goodreads to track the books they read, and I don’t know about you, but I can’t help to take a look to the reviews of the book while I’m adding it to one of my shelves. So yes, they’re important and they’re going to be read by other potential readers of the book!

Alternatively, if you’ve bought the book from, for example, Barnes & Noble, once you’ve finished the book it’s a good idea to go to their website and leave a review. This doesn’t only help readers by encouraging them to buy the book if it’s something they think they like (or preventing them of doing so, if the review isn’t positive), but also the authors! As long as you’re respectful, reviews are definitely of great help.

It’s not mandatory to do an extensive review, so you don’t have to worry about “not knowing how to do it”, but just point out what you liked and disliked from the book, and whether it met your expectations or not.

4. Share book deals on social media

Most of the time when scrolling down on Twitter, I’ve found threads of books on sale (sometimes, the ebooks are available for just 0.99!), and I think that’s so thoughtful from the people who take the time to tweet it. Many readers are high school and college students, some are unemployed, and some simply don’t have a big budget to spend on books, so sharing these kind of deals on Twitter is not only a way to support the author and probably help them get their books on the hands of more readers, but you’re also helping fellow readers save some coins, too.

5. Buy from affiliate links

Many content creators have affiliate links you can buy books from. They always have a disclaimer on their pages that they’re using affiliate links, and you may find the links in question on their reviews or wrap up posts.

Rather than going directly to the retailer’s site to buy a book, why don’t you take the time to find an affiliate link and use it? It doesn’t involve any extra cost! By doing so, you’re helping a reader gain a small percentage from the sale, and I know many readers that depend on affiliate links to buy their own books. So please, consider buying from affiliate links.

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That’s all for this post! There’s definitely many other ways to help the community, but I don’t want this post to last forever, lol. What are your thoughts? Are you helping the community in any of these ways? Let’s talk in the comments!