Auto-buy authors

I've seen several social media posts lately where readers share their auto-buy authors. These are authors whose books a reader would automatically buy just because they were written by the authors. 

I went through all of the books I rated on Goodreads to come up with my auto-buy authors. I was surprised that there are only three:

• Brandon Sanderson - For anyone who has been following me, this is a no-brainer. Not only will I buy any book he publishes, I will fund any crowdsourcing campaign he starts. :-) 
• Lisa Gardner - By now, I own and have read almost all of the books written by my favorite thriller author. She has a new book coming out in 2025. I don't know anything about it other than the title, but I'm buying it! 
• Laini Taylor - Unlike Brandon Sanderson and Lisa Gardner, Laini Taylor hasn't published as many books. Based on how much I loved the Daughter of Smoke & Bone series and the Strange the Dreamer duology, however, I'd buy whatever she publishes next.
  

Although the three authors above are my only "official" auto-buy authors, there are several others who nearly met the bar (in no particular order):

• Lee Child - I would auto-buy any book in the Jack Reacher series. The reason Lee Child the author isn't an auto-buy for me is that he has published books that don't feature Jack Reacher, and those books are not auto-buys.
• Suzanne Collins - The books in the Hunger Games series are auto-buys. (I would've bought Sunrise on the Reaping regardless of what reviewers said.) I enjoyed her Underland Chronicles as well, but I wouldn't classify them as auto-buys.
• Rainbow Rowell - Rainbow Rowell is 90% an auto-buy author for me. Before I read the first two Simon Snow books, she would've been an auto-buy, but I lost interest in that series and haven't read the third book yet.
• Ken Liu - I've only read his Dandelion Dynasty series and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. Based on those five books, Ken Liu could be an auto-buy, but the sample size is too small for me to say for sure.
• Taylor Jenkins Reid - This is another example where my sample size is too small. I've thoroughly enjoyed the five books I've read, but I'm not certain she is an auto-buy author. Nevertheless, I plan to buy Atmosphere when it's released.
  

 As an author, I can only aspire to be on some reader's auto-buy list. Who are your auto-buy authors?

 

Does fiction writing help with business writing?

 

I've been so busy with my day job for the past year that I haven't had time to work on my next novel. But that doesn't mean I'm not writing. I churn out thousands of words a day, whether it's business documents, emails, or chat messages with coworkers. Do I think my experience in writing fiction have helped with the writing I do at work? Absolutely!

Whether you're writing a story or a business memo, the ability to communicate is vital. Just as a story won't be as enjoyable if the author can't express what is happening to the characters, work goes more smoothly if coworkers can communicate their ideas to one another. As someone who works in software engineering, we often need to share engineering design ideas and be able to understand designs proposed by other engineers. I have seen miscommunication result in building the wrong software or building it incorrectly. While I can't claim that my ideas are all good, I can tell that I get them across in a less confusing manner than many of my colleagues, and I attribute that to the years I've spent writing stories.

Three ways that writing fiction have helped me in my business writing:

1. The mechanics of writing, such as spelling, syntax, and grammar - Even in this age of spell check, I come across too much business writing riddled with misspellings and sentences that don't make sense. It's hard to get your ideas across if people can't understand your sentences.
   
2. Saying what you want to convey - It doesn't matter how smart you are if your email or memo doesn't convey what you intend or if your engineering design document doesn't describe how you think the software should be implemented. Thanks to my fiction writing, with its need to tell my stories without confusing readers, I believe I have a good grasp of this.
3. Not saying more than what you want to convey - Just as importantly as getting your point across is not drowning your message in extra words. While some fiction authors have a problem with this, my stories tend to be more concise, and this has helped with my business writing.

I miss writing fiction because of the workload from my day job, but I'm glad that my fiction writing background serves me well at work too. Once I finally get to return to writing stories again, it'll be interesting to see if all of the practice in business writing helps with writing fiction.