When is the last time you told an author how much their book helped you in their career? Or an instructional video creator how much they changed your life?
Probably not as often as you’d like. Actually *I* could be better at it, truth be told, but at least I feel guilty about it when I don’t do it.
If you want people to appreciate and see the value of the Fan-To-Pro lifestyle and career, you need to tell people who helped you out. That includes authors of the career guides, instructional videos, and other information products that are helping you build your dream job and life.
Almost every author out there has a blog/book web page/something out there. It’s not hard to find them – in fact it may be hard to avoid them as authors want to be found. They’re not writing the Necronomicon, they’re writing and selling books and they want to be located.
So go out there and find the author whose book or video changed your career point of view or opened your eyes and let them know how good their creation was – and let them know you’re a professional geek.
Why do they need to hear this? Well first of all, trust me, any author wants good feedback, we can be kind of insecure. Also, it helps us become better authors by finding what you liked and didn’t.
But for we progeeks? We need to let authors know they help us, because they need to know about us and our demographic.
Unless said author is writing a book specifically targeting progeeks, they’re not going to necessarily think about us very much. They may not even know we exist. Their world may not include anime-fanartists turned UI designers or ambitious writers turned to tech communication.
When you let them know how great their books or classes or whatever was, you let them know about you. You let them know about people like you. They get a sudden jolt that gives them a bit bigger picture of reality.
That means they can better get their books, videos, or whatever out of people like you. That may mean supplemental material that helps out your fellow progeeks. That means they may make new and interesting creations targeting people like you They may blog about their thoughts on people like us. Making them aware helps them work with people like us – and helps them more.
You help them become aware, do more, and reach more, just by saying “I consider myself a professional geek, and you helped me reach this dream.”
Who knows you might make a new friend or find some new options yourself.
So when an author makes a difference in your career, reach out to them.
– Steven Savage