Michael Evans argues authors should build communities around reader interests, not just their own books. Aaron Kong grew a LitRPG Facebook group to 25,000 members by owning the genre space rather than promoting his work.
Alaron Kong
25,000 members
And this is where an author starts to not explicitly for their books, but for an overall genre or for an overall space of readership. Really what CUNY is, in short, is owning a space in readers minds. And if you don't have any readers or a small amount of readers, a CUNY about your books is going to own the space of your books and readers mind. But there's not going to be a huge market for that because you don't have many readers yet. And then you get into that same problem where it's how do I convince people to join this cuny? I guess I have to convince them to buy my books first. And then you're not thinking from a reader's first lens, but a story first lens. And then you end up stuck and discouraged. But if we think from a reader's first lens, we approach community completely differently. And Alaron Kong is the best example in this. He started the LITRPG community on Facebook and has 25,000 members, and through that he's really been able to brand himself as the godfather of American LitRPG.
