As you might guess from the name, Author Buzz is a project that started in the UK and the focus will always have a UK slant to it. However, our community is open to book enthusiasts from all over the world. We do not discriminate. Whoever you are, you are welcome. Except for abusive types – those are shown the door.
Author Buzz was created by Matt (that’s me) as a passion project. Progress towards the site’s goals has been slow and mostly supported by the community. Author Buzz UK does not make any money nor do I intend for it to necessarily ever make money. I can (for now) afford to fund the site myself.
Membership is free and will remain free forever.
Author Buzz is intended to be a home for authors, writers, book lovers and all other readers. I have found that most of us writerly and readerly types are largely gentle, kind, and a little sensitive sometimes. I want our community to be a place where that is totally okay. That way, readers can discover new (often indie) authors and authors can connect with interested readers in a low-pressure safe space.
To put it in marketing terms, I hoped to make Author Buzz a place where Authors can build a platform that reaches people keen to hear from them. To put it more casually, the goal is to make it easier for readers to find new stuff to read and writers new readers for your stuff.
Author Buzz UK is built on WordPress to enable Authors to create their own blog for free. There is a technical limit on how many blogs we can host. Should we get close to the limit, I will figure out what to do when that time comes.
Not all headlines from our front page come from the blogs and forums. Our group feature accepts external feeds (RSS, Atom, etc.) which will pull your headlines in and add them to the group and the front page. They can also be included in users’ custom feed if they choose to subscribe to the group. Making a group (free and available to all users) is also when you can create a blog.
On our to-do list is a way for Authors to list all their books on their profile and create a searchable database of those books with links to where you can buy them. The always active to-do item is the never-ending quest to keep things up to date, fixed, fast, and nice to use. That last one UX, is something I am still learning about. Please do offer me advice at any time.
You can follow the entire site (blog, forum, topics etc.) on Mastodon and other fediverse locations as @authorbuzz.co.uk@authorbuzz.co.uk. You can follow each contributor’s content – I’m @lordmatt@authorbuzz.co.uk. This is also true of most blogs in our network. If you want to chat, I am @lordmatt@mastodon.social and we also have an outpost at @authorbuzzUK@bookstodon.com.