Top 4 Informative Communities for Authors

Over the years, I've found there are quite a number of author forums and communities online. Some are pretty "dead", while others are thriving. A few have given me a tonne of important information, as well as a sense of camaraderie. I wanted to put 5 down, and there are many more I could have selected, but in honesty, these are the 4 platforms I use on an at-least-weekly basis.

1. Writers' Cafe, kboards

Kboards is usually my first port of call for anything book-related. ​Or, more specifically, the Writers' Cafe forum area. Most of the time, if you have a question and google it, kboards comes up with the answer anyway. More than that, there are a variety of interesting and topical posts to peruse. A lot of people were upset about a big change in ownership and management some years ago, but I've always found it highly useful.

2. KDP Community

Eek, the dreaded Amazon-owned KDP Community! But, don't let that put you off. For me, it has a similar utility to kboards, although more Amazon/KDP-geared. I used to go quite a lot for specific information about KDP and Amazon, whereas now it's more that I skim the "General" and "Marketing" forums from time to time to ensure I'm not missing a beat / any recent innovations. 

3. ​Reddit

There are so many useful communities here that, to be honest, I wouldn't know where to start. Here are a few that I've recently visited, for eponymous reasons. r/scifiwriting, r/publishing, r/PubTips, r/WritersGroup, r/writing, r/writers, r/CharacterDevelopment, r/WritingHub, r/worldbuilding, r/fantasywriters, r/spaceopera, r/wroteabook... and so on. So, so many. Reddit is useful to read about the industry, promote your work and meet like-minded people. I also frequently use it to try to encourage writers to use my free glossary generator (many books could use one!).

​4. Twitter

I probably use twitter the most out of all of these, although I've included it last because it's less information-centric, and more community-centric. You'll easily be able to find other writers and what they're up to with hashtags like #writingcommunity, #writerslife, #authorcommunity, #authorslife, and so on. Come say hello!

Good luck!