I’m a small indie author. Very small, actually. And yet, I regularly get people offering me their services as beta readers, cover designers, book marketers, editors, and everything else an author might need.

There’s just one problem: almost nobody approaches me with a good reason to work with them.

So, after receiving hundreds of these messages, I thought I’d explain how you can actually get hired by me — and many other authors.

Are You Part of My Community?

You might be an amazing cover designer. You might be the best beta reader in the world. You might be a brilliant book marketer who can sell ten times more books than I currently sell.

I don’t know. And that’s the problem.

If you simply send me an email telling me how great you are, you’re not going to get very far. Everyone does that. Everyone promises excellent service. Everyone claims to be different. Everyone tells me they can help me sell more books.

So why should I believe you? More importantly, why should I choose you over the next person who sends me exactly the same message?

I’m not necessarily looking for the person who could theoretically do the job best. I’m looking for someone I know, someone I trust, and someone who has already shown me that they can deliver good results.

If someone from my community does a job 80% as well as a complete stranger who might theoretically do it 100% better, I will choose the person I know. And not only because I know the person, but also because I care about my community.

How to Make Me Care About You

Especially when it comes to things like beta reading, I already have plenty of options. There are lots of people in my community who are willing to read my books, give me feedback, and help me improve them.

And if they are professional beta readers, I want those people to succeed, too.

If you regularly read my books, follow what I’m doing, participate in the community, leave a review, or otherwise support my work, you stop being a random person on the internet. I start recognizing you. I start knowing who you are. And eventually, I start caring about whether you succeed. If you’re part of my community, I want to help you just as much as you help me.

So if you want to work with me, start there: Follow me. Read my books. Join my mailing list. Leave a review if you genuinely enjoyed one of my books on Amazon, social media, and your website. Reply to my tweets. Retweet. Comment on my author videos on YouTube.

Doing that costs you nothing but a couple of minutes, but it can establish a relationship that lasts forever.

If You Are a Book Marketer, Prove It

This is where things get particularly heated. I receive plenty of messages from book marketers telling me that they can dramatically increase my sales.

Okay. Prove it.

I’m not asking you to work for me for free. I’m just asking you to demonstrate that your service actually produces the result you claim it produces.

If you tell me that you can sell books, then show me what you can do. Come to me with a concrete proposal. Tell me what you would do, what you expect it to achieve, what budget you need, how we would measure the result, and what your service would cost. Give me a clearly defined trial.

If you can demonstrate that your marketing generates significantly more profit than it costs me, why would I not hire you? That’s the easiest sale in the world.

Imagine you tell me: “I can spend $500 on this campaign and generate $2,000 in additional profit.” If you can actually demonstrate that, I’m not going to argue with you about whether your service is too expensive. I’m simply going to ask you where to send my money.

Because I don’t care whether I pay you $100, $500, $1,000, or $10,000 if you can make me more income than your service costs. That’s the entire equation.

And this applies to almost every service you could offer me:

• If you’re a cover designer, show me what you can do.
• If you’re an editor, show me what you can do.
• If you’re a marketer, show me what you can do.
• If you’re a social media manager, show me what you can do.

You don’t have to convince me with a paragraph telling me how talented you are. Instead, demonstrate it.

To Conclude

If you want me to pay you, there are two things you should understand.

First: become part of my community.

I work with someone I know, trust, and genuinely want to see succeed because they are part of my community. If you’re a total stranger, change that before you send me your sales pitch.

Second: prove that you can deliver.

I’m not asking you to work for free. I’m asking you to give me enough evidence that paying you makes sense. If you can demonstrate that your work creates more value for me than it costs me, then you don’t need to convince me to hire you. I will be trying to convince you to keep working with me.

And I’m sure that I’m not the only author thinking this way.

Some people have already contacted me about contributing to short story compilations. Generally, I’m interested. However, most proposals have been missing basic information, making communication inefficient and ultimately causing them to fall apart. Whenever that happens, the constant back-and-forth ends up being a total waste of time.

So, I thought it would be useful to put together a general guide for anyone who wants to ask me to contribute to a compilation, website, or other project.

Again, if you want me to write for you, I’m interested. But please cover the following basics when you contact me.

What You Need to Tell Me in Your First Message

Give me the basics right away. Simply asking whether I would like to write a short story for you only works if you also tell me what your project actually is:

• What is the short story for? A compilation? Website? YouTube channel? Competition?
• Genre: Sci-fi? Thriller? Philosophical? Something else?
• Word count: Is there a minimum or maximum?
• Format: Digital publication? Physical copies? Video narration?
• Involvement: Who else is involved in the project?
• Publishing: How will the final project be published and marketed? How large is the projected audience?

Please include this basic information directly in your first message.

It’s a Good Idea to Be Familiar With What I Do Before Asking Me to Contribute

I would consider my primary target demographic to be Western men. Outside this demographic, my stories might not be well received. If you want me to write for you, you should be somewhat familiar with my work and make sure that my style fits the target audience of your project.

I’m happy to write stories and have them published for new audiences. But if that audience is teenage girls who like romance novels about vampires, or middle-aged women who enjoy feminist literature, I’m definitely not the right author for you.

Money. Money. Money.

If the project is right, I’m in without asking for a single dollar. I write for fun and out of passion. My general goal is to find an audience. If I ever find one, money will follow anyway. So there is no need to negotiate a price per word or a fixed rate per story.

I’ll do it for free.

However, my “payment” should be the exposure I can get through your project. If the project doesn’t offer me any exposure, I can simply publish a short story on my own website without you. So please make sure to show me how your project can help get my story in front of an audience—preferably a big one.

Creative Vision

Another reason for me to participate in your project would be an interesting creative vision. If exposure to a large audience isn’t on the table, simply make your case for the project.

What makes it unique? Why is it so important that the project comes to fruition? And why is my participation so valuable to it?

While you’re explaining why you need me to be part of it, flattering me certainly helps…

Where to Send Your Message and How to Send It

Use my contact form here: Contact

Make sure to add “Writing Project Proposal” to the subject line so that your message doesn’t get buried under the mass of spam I already receive.

It’s also okay to send me a short comment or DM on X, but sending over the details I’m asking for via the contact option is preferable.

Please don’t include links to sign-up forms in your message—for forums, platforms, mailing lists, or anything else. I will not sign up for anything just to have a conversation about how I can help you with my writing. If your message requires me to sign up for something before I can even find out what you want from me, your email will be ignored.

Lots of Spam on the Internet

I’m a small creator on YouTube and an even smaller creator on my website. Yet I already get a ridiculous amount of spam sent my way – it’s hard to imagine how much spam big authors receive.

The problem with spam is that genuine messages sometimes get buried under all the junk. Please follow the instructions in this little guide to make sure your authentic message doesn’t get buried among the hundreds or thousands of spam messages I receive every month.

Thanks.