My wife though not an author is online friends with more than I even want to think about. In some communities there is a LOT of interaction and loyalty between

My wife though not an author is online friends with more than I even want to think about. In some communities there is a LOT of interaction and loyalty between the authors and fans and the authors are quite active on social media. In addition, for a lot of more niche books (e.g. What 50 Shades of Gray would have remained had it not gone viral) the total number of books sold may be surprisingly small. A lot of those small publisher or self published authors are also the people that 5-10 years ago were posting their writings on community discussion sites (e.g. Bruce Bretthauer's Families military SF series). So, when an author who's been writing a serial on a discussion board finishes and publishes it, there's a preexisting community of folks who have been reading it all along and are likely to purchase it.