O.C. Writers

By Kristy Tate // 

What happens after your reader reaches The End? Hopefully, you’ve not only written a compelling and satisfying story, but you’ve whet their appetites for everything you’ve ever penned. Your book captured their attention for hundreds of pages, so now what? How do you keep your reader engaged?

Here are some things you can consider adding after The End.

Cliff-hanger epilogues: A lot of readers will claim to hate them, but writers and marketers will tell you when it comes to selling the next book in a series, they work.

The first chapter of a similar book: This may be the next book in your series, another of your books you feel your ideal reader will enjoy, or another author’s first chapter. Be sure and include a buy link.

Research: Because I love history and weird bits of trivia, I love it when the author includes snippets of her research that didn’t make it into the book.

Beyond-the-book insights in an author’s note: In fiction, we’re limited to our character’s point of view. In my book The Oblivious Billionaire, my hero is found unconscious on a hiking trail. No one knows what happened to him. Since he now has amnesia, he’s especially clueless (oblivious—hence the title). I got the idea from my sister’s experience. Years ago, in rural Washington, a flying predator (think eagle, owl, hawk, etc.) dropped a dead rabbit through the windshield of my sister’s VW bug. It fell with such force the windshield shattered. In my head, that’s how I imagined my hero’s plight. There wasn’t any way to put that in the story without slipping into the rabbit’s or the bird’s point of view, and since it’s not a Watership Down sort of book, I saved it for my author’s note.

A call for reviews: Garnering reviews is tricky. I love that Amazon immediately does this, but for my books on other platforms, I have something like this: I hope you enjoyed (my novel). If so, please tell other readers why you liked this book by recommending and reviewing it on your favorite online book store and social media.

A list of your other books: To be perfectly honest, I used to do this, and then I got lazy. (New goal, create a list of all my books and tack them on the back of all my books.) Ideally, this list should include not only the title and a log line, but also a buy link. If you upload directly onto Amazon, the buy link is a no-brainer, but you can’t provide an Amazon link for the books sold on other retailers. (They hate that.) Because I use Draft2Digital to publish on other platforms, I use the Books2Read link Draft2Digital provides.

What does your back matter look like? If you have effective calls to action at the end of your books, please share. (But keep your pants on.)

 

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KRISTY TATE is the Social Media Director for O.C. Writers and a USA Today bestselling author. To date, her newsletter subscriber list is edging toward 15,000. www.KristyTate.com.