I have a theory that smart authors do not need to do marketing because they start cults to do that for them. Not just one cult, many of them. As many as possible.

I recently made the case that authors should start movements. Because screw lists – build relationships.

This Author Theory takes those ideas and turns them up to eleven to see what would happen.

In other words, we need to start our own cults.

For it is cults that sell books, not adverts, lists, and social media hashtags.

What we writers need to do is become cult icons. But how?

Why authors need cults

This should be obvious. A cult following is literally what every author, filmmaker, and TV exec is looking for. Cult followings will run telethons and hold fundraisers rather than see their show die. Take, as an example, the loyalty that the very short-lived show Firefly has.

Cult level fans drive, fly, and stand in line for days and weeks just to see anyone even tangentially connected with the object of their affection.

An author who can tap into that is already set for success while the rest are left doing marketing.

Start your first cult (or not)

To run a cult, you need to have a collection of traits not especially familiar to authors. A charismatic personality, a predatory nature, and a willingness to bend the minds of those who would otherwise think thoughts that could disagree with you.

A cult is, therefore, far too much like hard work. You do not want to be the one to start or run one.

Instead, you want to inspire others to start them for you. One cult is a room full of deluded fanatics. Many cults are a fan following. To get from one to many, you want not a single dogma but a collection of things tribes of followers can latch onto as “their’s”. Things you have written.

How can I get others to start cults for me?

This is the fifty-five-billion-dollar question. How do we, as writers, inspire cult or cult-like followings?

I think this can be broken down into five rather messy and complex questions.

1. What does a cult look like?

Before I even attempted to answer this, I took a look at the features that make a great cult (following).

1. There are clear markers that define the in-group from everyone else.
2. There are tests that expose outsiders and fakes. These serve as a form of shibboleth.
3. Being on the inside satisfies some sort of need. Something to love, a place to belong, and/or something to stand for (or against).
4. There are on-going interactions between members. In fact, members seek each other out. Often looking for hidden clues that identify the group only to each other.
5. Members can only get validation as “being on the in” from other members but core members self-identify as such.
6. Being in the group becomes part of the self-identity of members.
7. Enduring relationships form between members which go far beyond any original reason for connecting.
8. Members feel a sense of responsibility for each other and their shared community.
9. When the above is true, the emergent groups can be largely self-policing. Unless your fandom supports a racist berk, no one wants to share the enjoyment of something with a bully.
10. The group creates guidelines, rules, or norms of behaviour. This can be both fandom self-expression and community regulation from the previous point.
11. They share secret terms, phrases, an in-jokes that seem nonsensical to outsiders. For example, “knowing where your towel is“, “live long, and prosper“, and “long may he reign” all identify you as a member of specific fandoms.
12. The group identifies with some wider but common purpose. For example, a specific ship that they support. For example, Twilight Saga’s Team Edward vs Team Jacob.
13. They may have or develop a clearly articulated purpose. Demand a specific ending for a character, see a series revived, or to share artwork – reasons are as varied as fans are.
14. The community has an eye-catching and often hugely symbolic logo, logos, flag, or colour set. For example, Harry Potter fans divide themselves into Hogwarts houses (that’s at least four cults right there).
15. There may be quite a lot of fan fiction. This is good but you should pretend it does not exist for silly legal reasons and a few sensible moral ones.

2. How do cults form?

Cults like this form around a kernel of some shared ideology, passion, or sense of identity. When we are talking about the cult-like following of fiction, it is that last one – a sense of identity that really makes the big bang.

Furthermore, when consumers buy that brand they are also making a big statement to the rest of the world about who they are, what tribe they belong to and what is fundamentally important to them.

Eleanor Goold, The Psychology of Cult Branding: How to convert your customers into your tribe

There are distinct steps that must take place for a cult to form.

1. First, create a separate reality. This can be a “truth” known only by the cult, or a shared cultural experience unique to insiders.
2. Narrow the focus: Maintain a narrow focus. For cult-like fandoms this focus is often a ship, support of a side or outcome, or identification with a faction from within the fictional universe.
3. Share stories: Within the narrow focus, the group must have enough material to generate its own mythology (fan-fiction, for example) or speculate on upcoming instalments.
4. Evangelism: Cults grow by recruiting. Fan cults recruit from the larger fandom or by converting friends by exposing them to the work in the hope that they will become fans.
5. Stay focused: Cults that lose focus dissolve. For fan situations that means feeding the cult with just enough to keep them active.
6. Fixate on the thing you desire. It does not matter how unlikely cultists never say die. They write fanfiction to fix the ending.

3. How can writers help cults to form?

While most fandom cults are accidental, there is nothing to say that we writers could not seed them deliberately. Some writers – like J. R. R. Tolkien invested so heavily in world-building that there was plenty left over for the fans to explore. In fact, any fandom with an active fan-fiction base has the same thing in common – the implication of a wider world the people long to explore.

Backstory alone is not enough, though. Your work must be like an onion – layer after layer. Within these layers need to be deeper lore, puzzles, codes, and foreshadowing so sublime most miss it. In other words, build it with mystery. Give the readers something to dig into.

You can also do a lot worse than leaving lessor plots unresolved. Life does not tie up everything in a neat little bow. Some stories just continue to go. Give your cults some space to grow.

Any writer working today who can’t answer the question, “What fandom am I writing for?” may as well pack up their pens and paper and settle into that call centre job.

Damien Walter, The Guardian, Fandom matters: writers must respect their followers or pay with their careers

4. What do writers need to do to make cults grow?

If you want to understand your fans then you must be one. You have to know deep passion yourself if you want to invent it. Care about your world or your readers will reject it. The passion you polish your prose with – that’s the same care they will love you with.

The worst thing you can do to a fan cult status is to keep speaking after the saga has finished. If you have something to say, put it in a story. Too much “word of god” just gets boring.

Feed your cults with new editions. New volumes for their consideration. Give them something to care about between instalments. Threads left unresolved with their one true pairing.

This bit is as easy as it looks. In short – just keep writing books.

5. How do we sustain our cults?

Take time to meet fans. Take time to return the love they show you. At the very least, act as if you care about your community. At the best – be the leader.

that means losing the attitude problem towards fan communities. Fangirls are not to be feared but to be courted and invited into your community. Passionate fans are the best evangelists for the cults you hope will form. Give them love not attitude.

Take as an example the Critter Community. That’s a group of fans of a weekly live cast Dungeons and Dragons game. The community turned a Kickstarter for a one-off animated special into an entire series through the power of love.

Matt Mercer and the Critical Role players are unashamedly welcoming of fans and loving to each other ad the community. The result is that like attracts like and the community is incredibly nurturing and enthusiastic.

Writers could learn a lot from that caring and inclusive attitude. I would go so far as it is vital if you want to create the sort of environment where fan-cults can form.

You do not need to write the best book. You need to write a book that people can love – because of or despite its flaws. That is the thing though. Perfection is not the name of this game. Passion is.

That is what this boils down to – two things we writers need to do. Give readers something to love and then respect that love and the people giving it. That’s the foundation of all communities at the end of the day.

#AuthorThory is a thought about being an author and/or selling books that has zero actual science behind it but sounds like it might just work. This is what happens when writers have too much time and drink way too much coffee to the point that they start doing thought experiments. Welcome to the cutting edge of abstract theories by authors.

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