Writer’s Support Groups

Whether you are self-pub, indie/small press, or traditionally published, as an author, one of the most beneficial tools to your success can be writer’s support groups.  The expansion of social media has made access to online forums, facebook groups, goodreads communities and the like, far more accessible than they have been in the past.

As a writer, the first thing you usually learn about yourself once you become published is, no matter how hard you’ve worked on that first novel, there is still an ocean of things you don’t know.  There is an ocean of experience you’ve yet to gain.  And finally, there’s ocean of critique just sitting out there waiting for you.

You can really only gain so much through beta-readers, even if you don’t go the route of people you know, and writer’s groups can really help out.  And not just for critiquing your manuscript either, but offering networking support, advertising, blogging, and even editorial reviews.

I mean, what better way to boost up yourself by immersing yourself in the company of other writers?

But I’ve come to notice a few disturbing trends when it comes to these groups, and it’s a trend created, I believe, by the lack of courtesy, etiquette, and competitive market when it comes to publishing.

Let me detail this out with an experience I’ve had recently when it comes to facebook writing groups.  When I first got started, I joined a ton of groups.  Most of them geared toward indie writers, offering advice, support, reviews, and blog opportunities for the self-published community.  It seemed great at first, and I had some rather influential friends who were able to garner me hoards of reviews for my first book.  And by hoards, I should say, I got around thirty.  Which is great comparatively.  You can see the results in my subsequent books that followed when I didn’t use these contacts to get my work out there.

But as I continued on writing, as months passed, the groups slowly began to shift in different directions.  One of the most review-lucrative groups turned into, forgive the term, “a boys club.”  And what I mean by that is, unless you were chummy with the mods, creator and the ones who reviewed the most amount of books, you could count yourself out.  You might get a review or two here or there, but it was nothing compared to the triple digits some of the writers were getting.

I put the pattern together once they started doing monthly review features on their blog, highlighting authors in order to get them to a certain review count.  I noticed that the ones who weren’t included in the “inner circle” were mysteriously left out of those monthly features.

I thought about beefing up my contact, reviewing more books, but the truth is, that was just not on the table.  As a mother of three, with lessons and scout meetings, with my editing job, the book I was currently writing, and the fact that I did want to spend some free time enjoying the company of my husband (who was already seeing very little of anything besides the back of my head at the computer) I knew that just wasn’t going to happen.  I didn’t have the time to tear through piles of indie books. 

So I dropped contact and slowly my presence in the group disappeared until I became a non-member.

But it was one of many, so no real loss there, right?

Except the other groups had taken another turn, this one possibly even worse.  There were other groups dedicated solely to the review of books.  You posted a link, offered a free copy in exchange for an honest review, and you just sat around and waited until someone was interested your book.  It seemed far better than the review exchange market, because you don’t have the risk of retaliation if you don’t like the book from the person you’ve exchanged from.

However, I noticed that I would get a lot of review exchange requests, and upon denying them, interest in any of my books slowly whittled down to nothing. 

That was around the time I took a good, hard look at what I was doing, and decided to step away.  I needed to figure some things out and decide where I fit in, in all that mess.  When I came back, I slowly went through my groups list from facebook.

Having a friend count of over 2600 people, I was often added into very random groups, and weeded those out.  Next I went to those geared toward authors, and began to weed them down to what I felt was best for me. 

What did I notice?  Every site, even the ones which had been moderately helpful, had become a dumping-ground for book links.  Even the reviewer sites.  Though they have official “rules and regulations” and “moderators”, each and every group was dead.  I remember scrolling through about seventeen posts on one before I found a book link where someone had bothered to comment on it. 

Authors stopped bothering to help each other and simply started link dropping, like a social media grave-yard.  No interaction, no discussion, no help, no nothing.  It was the same on goodreads.  There were forums which at one point had been wildly successful in my editing business which had now become a name-dropping thread where no one discussed or replied to anything.

In my search of hundreds of groups on facebook, I found zero that were helpful.  Zero. 

So it’s no wonder new authors are floundering.  They don’t have support anymore.  Such decay in the year I’ve been doing this, and it’s disturbing.  I’ve considered starting up my own group with different areas, but I don’t think I could take watching my group turn into one of these pointless link-dumping sites.

Now, I know there are separate groups online, websites and things like that with author support, and that’s great.  But social media is free, which is a huge benefit to the indie author who might be living on a budget, and is spending what little they can on their book.  Advertising costs are high, and book sales are low, and it’s a tough business to crack, assuming you ever do.

I realize this article was less helpful because there isn’t a solution.  I didn’t find a light at the end of the tunnel here, and in fact I’m still looking at my list and reeling a little.  Reviews are what help authors get noticed, and most readers don’t realize that.  Critique groups are what help authors grow, helps them discover their strengths and weaknesses, but they’ve become nearly extinct.  It’s every man for himself, and I didn’t think that’s what this was.

If you know an active group or participate in one, I’d love to hear about it.  I’d love a link, and more info, because these are necessary.  And maybe, if there aren’t any, we can band together and start it back up, because what are we if we lose sight of community?