One of the questions I get asked a lot is, what is Author Buzz? When people ask me that what they are really asking is why should I use Author Buzz?

Today I want to talk about two parts of Author Buzz that I feel have the potential to make the site a compelling place to hang out – the directory and the guide.

Before I get into that, I want to talk about a third subject. This subject plays into the other two – the potential for community.

Potential for community when you use Author Buzz

Like any site with a social dimension, Author Buzz has a great potential for community. Things like forums, activity pages, personal blogs, and the like allow a level of interaction that is outside the control of the developers and allow members a high degree of agency. Agency simply means control and ownership over something. In the case of using Author Buzz agency means the ability to make the site yours, to own part of what happens here.

This user agency has also created one of the greatest bootstrapping problems of all time. When a community is forming, such as Author Buzz, the character of the community determines who will want to join the community. Who joins the community largely dictates the character of the community. It is a chicken or the egg problem written large.

As we get new people in to test the site, we have to realise that some or all of those folks are going to want to stick around and enjoy it. After all, they invested time and effort into what we have. We have to choose carefully who we invite to do testing as we are effectively giving away the power to dictate our future. In our experience, writers are not really prone to being the kind of early adopters that do testing. Which is a problem.

That means the community is likely to grow more slowly at first. Which sounds like a bad thing until you realise that by joining now, you get it all. You are in a prime position to have a disproportionate say in the shape of our community. In essence, you get to make Author Buzz the kind of place you want it to be.

That agency on offer is going to diminish over time from vast to reasonably large but right now, you have almost total say.

The Directory of Author Buzz

The Author Buzz directory is a relatively late addition. It was not a feature we planned when we set up the site but rather, once we started, we recognised that it was needed. The directory filled an obvious hole.

So, what is this directory and why should it be a reason for joining?

The idea of the directory was to provide a resource for all the things that the fine people who use Author Buzz might need. This would be where you find:

• Bookshops (especially Indie bookshops)
• Services, such as agents
• General support such as writer’s groups

This works with the potential for community that we talked about before. We want Author Buzz to be a community of writers, artists, and readers. So what better way to seed that community than by actualyl servicing people from that industry?

A single great reason for creating a user account (or logging in with your WordPress.com account) is to promote what you love. Be that your writer’s club, bookshop business, or literary agency. The best part is that as the community grows, your listing is going to be seen by exactly the sort of people who need to find you. Which, as you might have guessed, is because the people that use Author Buzz are your target demographic.

For us this means that we are more likely to realise the potential for community in a way that is consistent with the vision for Author Buzz. That sounds like a win-win, to us.

The “how to use Author Buzz” guide

One of our biggest irritations in the past have been promotion sites that are hard to use. That’s why, despite some serious pain in the development stakes, we chose to use WordPress. Trust me, as a dev, I did not want to work with WordPress again.

Our solution to the need for the site to be easy to understand was to document everything. That’s what the guide is – the ultimate how-to guide to using Author Buzz to sell more books, find great books, and truly enjoy just being a writer.

Unless you happen to be technically minded, all that author self-promotion stuff is just hard work. Setting up a blog and a website and getting noticed by readers is hard. Trust us, we know it sucks. Finding new readers is a headache. Finding new talent for your agency is just as hard. Keeping a steady flow of stock and customers to a small independent bookshop is no picnic. Author Buzz solves all these problems but only if you join us.

The number one reason to use Author Buzz is that we exist to make the non-writing part of being an author better.

But, again, this goes back to the potential for community. If you want ours geeks doing the hard work for you, then you need to stick around. That free gift comes with you staying here while it is only potentially amazing. There is still an investment on your part but, I hope, one that is a lot less painful and could be kind of fun.

Sign up today. Make this your home and we promise to make being part of the writing world a little bit more interesting.