Writers' Communities

Choosing a world to write for, a tribe to exist in

Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

For most writers, getting known - getting in touch with an audience - is the main challenge. Of course, writing in itself can be seen as a challenge, but since a writer probably starts writing in the first place because they know something about how to write, the main challenges lie outside the trade itself.

Marketing

Somehow, that word marketing sounds reasonable to most people when something is to be sold. They must take the product to the market, convince potential buyers that they should buy it, and buy it now. It can take many steps to make that happen, and some of them are really far away from the writing work itself, which can make any writer very frustrated - how can they possibly be good at everything in the world? 

Writing, designing a cover page for their book, laying out the contents, getting an ISBN, finding places to self-publish, or even trying to get an agreement with a publishing company. And then marketing on top.

The old days

But what they sometimes forget is that it never really was like that. The great writers during all times, or those writers we today remember as great, they were often not marketing their books in a traditional sense - they were simply taking part in community matters, the public debate.

Most of the famous writers are today known for their letters, their excentric behaviour, their political involvement, or their love affairs. Next to their books, of course. 

In the 19^th century, there was only a fraction of the people on Earth that we can count today. Maybe 1 billion, as compared to today’s 8 billions. Most of these people didn’t even take part in society outside their closest circles, and they have simply vanished from history - there is nothing special to tell about them, so nobody does.

It was easier for those who were part of the bigger circles, the cultural spheres, to get attention. When we today see (or don’t see but know, statistically, the existence of) millions of hopeful writers, there were just a few in the old days. Everybody knew about them, as they were talked about, mentioned in the newspapers, and meeting other people.

Life was slower then. There wasn’t the same kind of urgency as, and therefore it was considered acceptable, that writing a book, finding a publisher, and going through the planning and publishing process was often taking several years.

The new days

Today, the world is very much different. Everything is in contrast.

We are more busy. With fierce competition comes ideas of “time-to-market” as logical extensions to the already compressed schedule of writing — and such ideas like NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month) have indicated that a book can be written much faster than the old rumours said, where it was common to proceed slowly, spending years, before deciding that the book was ready. Social media and the idea of publishing something often, to not be forgotten by the followers, has left an impression of writing non-stop to be the normal.

But more important: many more people are taking part in what we could call modern life. Many more are included in the cultural spheres, and many more can spend time and money on writing - buying needed tools, such as a computer and an internet connection, and everybody can easily find the information needed to get started - with writing and with dreaming of success.

When the world of writers has expanded from a few hundreds or perhaps thousands over some years, who everybody else had heard about - into a situation where millions are writing without ever being known to anyone - we cannot expect the old ways of spreading the word about a new book to function any more.

Communities

Enter clubs, communities, and other social networks. With such arrangements, you can become a big fish in a small pond, rather than a small fish in a vast ocean of writers. You can have a name among the few others in your chosen community, and you and the others can support each other with friendship, practical assistance of various kinds, you can read each other’s books, and you can basically all together simulate the smaller society of the 19^th century.

Because, let’s face it: Your alternative marketing that goes out in the world, trying to target everybody, has tough competition from those millions of other writers who are doing the same. So, it is not strange that the idea of “followers” has taken off: it offers exactly that microcosmos you’ll need to be that big fish.

The communities available today are many, and each of them often host sub-communities, such as your own followings or separate groups or “publications” or whatever it can be called on each of them.

Personally, I take part in very many, at varying levels, and they include such as Substack, Medium, LinkedIn, The Multilingual Writers’ Community, Poets & Writers, and more. In each of these communities, there will be inspiration for books that others have written - and a chance for writers to mention their own books or other writings without necessarily engaging in advanced marketing activities.

It works! Many books are today being sold mainly to the communities that the writer belongs to, meaning that we really do not have one world, one writing universe, but a multiverse of writers’ communities.

Who thrives there

It can be difficult over several years to remember exactly where you first ran into a writer, but for me, when I bought books 30 years ago, they were most often recommended by the publishers - through catalogues or library presence, or book clubs that sent a bunch of books regularly. So I got to know many writers this way.

But today, most of the new writers I get to know - along with their books - are from the communities in which I take part. Either they are themselves members, or they are mentioned by peer community members.

This way, I have come to know about great writers like Philip Charter, Vicky Randle, Veronica Llorca Smith, Olga Melnyk, John Ilho, Cormac McCarthy, and many more. 

Publishing

When the old publishing companies bought each other, grew bigger, and at the same time saw a decline in the sales of traditional books - being too slow to adapt to the electronic revolution - they began filtering the incoming requests from writers in such a way that mainly just people who are already famous will get published. They do not have an interest in small names, so they just say no to those.

Indie publishers have appeared, and while it may be easier for writers to get published with these, they most often do not have a big reach - meaning that they do not sell many books organically and will depend on the writers themselves to do a lot of marketing for each book.

Self-publishing is easy, available for everybody, and for electronic books, at least, the distribution channels are there already, well-established and well-functioning. But they do zero marketing for a writer, and here, the community comes in at its full strength: because the community can help not only by reading, reviewing, and spreading the word, but also by actually buying the book.

The future

The world never became that global village, we talked about some years ago. While we do have access to communicate with a large part of the world’s population, we don’t know these people. We cannot know all of them.

Also, we see (to my big and sincere regret) a movement in the world away from internationalization and collaboration across borders. We see nationalism, isolationism, and other means of restricting how much contact we’ll have with people far away. Part of this probably because there are too many actively participating people in the world now for anyone to handle. So, we split the world into smaller pieces. Physically, by building walls and restricting immigration, and mentally, by locking ourselves up to communication in certain forums only, building our tribes and followings, and settle with a perceived smaller world for our activities.

The future belongs to communities, for very many practical purposes, including publishing. Writers will have to pick some and live with them, be part of them, and then only at rare occasions manage to get an influence that stretches beyond these, their own communities.