I got an e-mail from a client last week or so. I always ask my clients to keep me updated on how their books are selling, and Stevie was reporting in. Not all my clients keep me updated. Some tell me how things stand when they ask me to reserve a date for them. And some, like Stevie, drop into my inbox every now and then with status reports.

It’s all good.

What made this status report so cool was what Stevie added at the end: It was a report about how one of my other clients was doing. Client #2 had also been charting at Amazon, and Stevie was glad to see the presence of another West of Mars client on the list.

Classy move.

Let me tell you, I’ve been places. I’ve heard authors talk about how we’re all in this together. Heck, *I* talk about how we’re all in this together. That’s why I offer the Monday Featured New Book Spotlight to any author, not only West of Mars clients. I often wish I could do more to help my authors — and by “my,” I mean my clients, my friends, the casual acquaintances I come across.

Yeah, that sounds sorta self-righteous, but I do believe the cream rises to the top, and there’s some damn good fiction out there. There’s a lot of crap, too, and it comes from every single publisher out there. That’s because fiction is a subjective thing. Not everyone’s going to like what the guy beside them likes.

This is what makes life wonderful. Our diversity.

So remember that the next time you don’t want to help a fellow author. Or even if you do. You’re not losing readers by helping someone else. You’re looking for that spot where your audience overlaps with theirs, the people you can share.

Or, in the case of Stevie, you’re just being a class act, keeping an eye on a fellow author you’ve got something in common with. There’s nothing wrong with cheering from the sidelines. In fact, there’s quite a bit right with it.

We’re all in this together. Helping each other is good stuff.