We hear it all the time: support your local community and support small business. But what does that mean exactly?
When you intentionally decide to put your dollars into someone else’s business and receive the fruits of their labour, you are participating in an exchange of energy. Your energy created those dollars, their energy created the product or service, and you trade that equal value. In turn, the business owner is able to take that energy and re-apply it to their family, their wellbeing, or back into their business to help it grow even more. The great thing about supporting an entrepreneur is that you know exactly where your hard-earned energy is going, and to whom.
This same principal goes for authors and their books. An author is an entrepreneur, a small business, and a person who is working to perfect their craft. A writer’s goal is to captivate, educate, and entertain you. They work on their craft in the early hours before the sun rises and in the evening hours long after the moon has cast its light. There is a reason we say that we get lost in a book — we’ve been brought into an entire world that would not otherwise exist without the author’s willingness to create it for us.
Purchasing a book is not about buying into the latest trend or following the crowd. It’s about inviting the author into your life and having a conversation. Whether the aim of that conversation is to entertain or educate you, at the end of the day, the author is rooting for you, their reader. Purchasing a book gives us an intimate peek inside the imaginative mind of someone who is putting themselves out there creatively, vulnerably, and permanently in ink.
When you hold a book, remember the long hours, remember the red pen marks, and remember the edits upon edits. By the time this book reaches you, it’s been through design edits, marketing meetings, colour choices, photo shoots, and social media plans. This item contains hours, days, weeks, months, and even years of energy that has been poured into it. When you buy a book, you are engaging in an exchange of energy and welcoming an inspired action into your home.
Supporting an author IS supporting a small business and an entrepreneur who appreciates your encouragement to keep going.
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Written by Kiki Carr, Blog Curator Lead Author and Upcoming Author at Golden Brick Road Publishing House
