Wednesday, June 24, 2015
It’s not enough to just write a good book. Today, authors need help promoting their work after launch. In this guest post,
Sandra Beckwith (
@sandrabeckwith) from
Build Book Buzz shares five places you can create the all-important community necessary to help your books sell well.
Photo courtesy of Robert Churchill|123RF.com
An author in a Facebook group I belong to recently complained that she was having trouble getting attention for her free e-book download.
Part of the problem, as we discovered in the discussion that followed, was that she didn’t have an author network that could help her spread the word or offer advice. She wasn’t connected to others in her genre – writers she could learn from, writers she could support, writers who could support her.
It was an “Aha!” moment for her.
This writer realized that you can’t succeed as an author on your own.
It takes more than a village to achieve your author potential – it takes a community.Click To Tweet
Just ask any successful author about key success factors and more likely than not, they’ll mention some kind of community support.
Being part of a writer community takes time and effort, though, and you might feel like you don’t have enough time to write, publish, and promote as it is. Even so, you’ll want to develop community because your community connections will help you with those tasks – writing, publishing, and promoting.
5 Community Resources
Here are five places where you can connect with like-minded authors so you’ve got the right network, relationships, and support you need for your writing career.
1. FacebookUse the Facebook search box to search for specific terms that will work for you (“health writers” or “self-published authors”). In the results page, select the “more” tab and then select “groups” for results.
You might need to join a few groups before you find one where you feel at home. Feel free to join and try out my
private Facebook “Build Book Buzz group. It offers a friendly gathering spot for authors who want to talk about book marketing.
2. Absolute Write Water CoolerThis collection of forums covers a wide range of writing topics and book genres, but because there are so many of them, you can usually get the information or support you need when you need it.
The one thing I don’t like about this site is precisely what so many others
do like – users can be anonymous. I prefer forums where you use your name so that you’re more likely to feel accountable for your comments.
3. LinkedInLinkedIn hosts many author discussion groups. To find the right one for you, go to the search box at the top of the page. From the dropdown menu to the left of the box, select “Groups.” Then enter your search term – ghostwriters, book marketing, and so on.
Participation makes all the difference in LinkedIn groups. The more you start or contribute to discussions, the more you’ll get from your membership.
4. ScribophileThis is a friendly online community with many forums with a lot of daily activity. Get your questions about publishing answered, discuss and review books, or make new friends in “The Cool Hang-Out Chill Zone.” One friendly soul welcomed me with a site e-mail message as soon as I joined – and that’s indicative of the community atmosphere as a whole.
There is both a free and premium level.
5. Savvy AuthorsSavvy Authors describes itself as a network that promotes “mentoring and sharing of knowledge and expertise” among the nearly 8,000 members and offers a strong writer’s support network. Its greatest value for community building is more likely to be in the Yahoo “loop” than on the forums, where there’s less chatter.
While there’s a premium level that offers perks that includes discounts on in-house courses, the free basic level offers all you need to connect with other authors.
Join two groups initially and try them out. Then add a few more. Participate regularly so you get value plus a sense of each group’s personality. You might find that over time, you look forward to signing in to one of them more than the others. That group will be the home of your new author community.
What author communities do you recommend to your writer friends? About the Author
Author
Sandra Beckwith teaches authors how to market their books. Subscribe to her free Build Book Buzz newsletter at
http://buildbookbuzz.com for a steady stream of book marketing tips and advice.
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Where to Find Your Author Community appeared first on
Write Nonfiction NOW!.
Nina Amir, the bestselling author of How to Blog a Book and The Author Training Manual, is a speaker, a blogger, and an author, book, blog-to-book, and high-performance coach. Known as the Inspiration to Creation Coach, she helps creative people combine their passion and purpose so they move from idea to inspired action and positively and meaningfully impact the world as writers, bloggers, authorpreneurs, and blogpreneurs. Some of Nina’s clients have sold 300,000+ copies of their books, landed deals with major publishing houses and created thriving businesses around their books. She is the founder of National Nonfiction Writing Month, National Book Blogging Month, and the Nonfiction Writers’ University. As a hybrid author she has published 15 books and had as many as four books on the Amazon Top 100 list at the same time.