Yesterday I mentioned networking and how important it is. There are numerous author groups which have a variety of excellent benefits. These are where you can find authors with whom you can do a beta swap or provide editorial reviews.

Just about every community will have a writers group. Sometimes these work and sometimes they don’t. It often depends on how serious you are about your writing. If you’re brand new and at this point it’s mostly a hobby, this is a good place to start. However, if you’re really serious about becoming a professional, you may eventually outgrow a local group unless there are others there who are publishing and actively pursuing a writing career.

One place you can start if a local group doesn’t fill the bill is a platform such as LinkedIn. They have several groups for writers and that is where I got my first connections. I’m still in contact with some of the authors I initially met in that forum.