8 Ways to Build a Reader Community
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Training #648 — 8 Ways to Build a Reader Community

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Most authors already have a reader community — they just never decided where it should live.

An ARC team, a newsletter list, a group chat that formed around a launch: that's a community, even if nobody called it one. This training is about making the choice on purpose.

We walk through the eight real places a reader community can sit with a working author's example for each and an honest note on what each one costs you:

  1. A plain email list
  2. Facebook groups and Discord servers
  3. Membership platforms like Patreon and Substack
  4. Your own website
  5. Book platforms like Goodreads and StoryGraph
  6. Live events
  7. Course-and-cohort platforms
  8. Private group chats)

From there we narrows it down with seven questions you can ask yourself to choose the right community type for you and and your readers, and close with the three mistakes that quietly sink most communities before they ever get going.

The short version: there is no best platform, and you don't need one. You need the one that fits you.

    The first twenty minutes are a recording of Blaine's talk from the Expand Summit; the rest is Blaine and Erin taking questions live. They get into how the Apex Authors community actually came together, what to do when you're starting from close to zero, whether Substack is worth the effort for children's authors, and how to find your first readers when nobody knows your name yet.

    The last stretch covers something that catches people out: what changes when the readers you're gathering are children, and the moderation and privacy questions that come with that.

    There's also a quiz that runs the seven questions for you and re-ranks your options as you answer: apexauthors.com/reader-community-quiz

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