A social media book fair is being organised on the Mastodon (and ActivityPub) social media network. It is free to participate, but you may, if you wish, register here.

The Fediverse Book Fair (#FediBookFair) is an annual virtual book fair. The next fair will run over the weekend of 7th/8th November 2026. During that weekend, authors and publishers will post about their books, or about related subjects like research, with the #⁠FediBookFair hashtag. They may also run competitions or offer things like signed books.

Fediverse Book Fair (#FediBookFair)

The book fair is being organised by UK outfit Author Help.

Call me curious if you like, but I would love to know what you are reading. Who would you recommend what you are reading to?

Among the AB community of book lovers and writers, here’s what people are talking about currently.

• Aspiring to what, pray tell?
• Horror Writing Prompts (a slowly updated thread)
• Which of life’s side quests are you doing RN?
• Do you use writing prompts?
• When is it OK to call myself a writer?

To our little community’s members and possible future friends, writers, readers, posts, and book lovers, may tomorrow be full of joy, and may the muse visit you with an abundance of new ideas.

I’d like to challenge you to write about the authors who inspired you. I’ll pick my top favourite answers at the end of the challenge, but I will honourable mention every reply.

How this works

Anyone can take part. There’s no charge at all (much like a dead battery). You can enter as many times as you wish. Write about all the authors you love.

You can join this challenge in one of three ways.

1. You can post a reply right here. But you want to own your own content, right?
2. You can answer with a blog post or web page (or even a forum post) of your own. Just link to this page and put the URL in the ping form at the bottom (unless you have automagical WebMention pings set up).
3. You can also reply via any ActivityPub blog or social media (Mastodon, for example).

The last day of this challenge is the 30th of September. After that, I will collate all of your lovely replies and pick a “winner” or two.

If you have nowhere else to publish your entry, you can use our general chat forum.

If we get a large number of entries, I’ll write a roundup post of the entries so far. So get in sooner rather than later for the most attention.

How I pick a winner will be based on a mix of how much I enjoyed reading your writing as well as the number of comments, likes, shares, boosts, mentions, replies, and so forth.

Prompts about your author (all optional)

• When did you first discover your author?
• What book from your author did you read first?
• Where did you read this book?
• How was that first reading?
• What about this author inspires you?
• Why did you first pick up a book by your author?
• What do you admire about them?
• What’s a perfect quote from your author?
• Which book by your author should new readers try first?

I look forward to reading your entries.