I have met so many wonderful people through SheWrites and other communities I am a member of.  These types of sites are great to meet authors, readers, reviewers, and others in the industry. 

So, first, what are some of these sites???  (Note:  These are all FREE and generally have a blog feature)

The obvious catch-all sites include Facebook and MySpace.  LinkedIn and Twitter can be included as well as other poplular sites.  However, I want to focus on writing-related social communities.

Of course, we are here at SheWrites, which has about 16,500 members and many great groups as well.  This is a wonderful resource for information on numerous topics for writers, readers, and people in the biz.

There is BookBlogs which has about 13,200 members!!  It's format is very similar to SheWrites so you don't need to learn a whole new format.   Make sure to join groups that interest you or coincide with your purpose.  You can find almost any resource you need, so before resorting to google, check around here first, where you can find a broad range of extremely useful information!

YALITCHAT is also very similar to SheWrites in how it is set up.  If you are in the YA market, this site would be good for you.  It has over 2,500 members and various groups to join.  Everyone has been great there.

Shelfari (by Amazon) is another social community, but it is set up differently than the sites above.  It seems more geared towards readers, but there are also groups for writers and others.  You will need to spend some time setting up your profile.  To be honest, I haven't had much feedback to my posts or discussion topics on that site, but there is a lot of useful information on it.  I couldn't find a member count, but they have a ton of members.  Once you are published, you can get a special 'author' tag. Similar sites areLibraryThing and GoodReads.

WriteSocial.com is a site geared more towards craft.  According to their site:  "WriteSocial.com is a community where writers of all types can submit and review written material. Learn more about your craft with daily feeds consisting of news and advice on various styles of writing. Get feedback from fellow WriteSocial members consisting of established and amateur writers. Create and/or join writing groups to discuss and further your development as a writer."  I do not have experience with them, does anyone out there know more?  Is this site helpful?

I just recently joined the community at Writer's Digest.  It is very similar to BookBlogs and SheWrites as well.  http://community.writersdigest.com/  It has over 9,500 members and the groups are good too.  I can't wait to get started there!

WritersCafe.org has a large following (one poetry group alone had over 12,000 members).  I just joined them and haven't done anything yet, but it looks very similar to BookBlogs, but with an added "my writing" component where you can post stuff you write and can search others' writings too. It has other features too, like free courses - and you can post your own courses!  It looks pretty promising.  According to the site:

WritersCafe.org is an online writing community where writers can post their work, get reviews, befriend other writers, and much more..

• Post your poetry, short stories, novels, scripts, and screenplays
• Get reviews and advice from thousands of other writers
• Enter hundreds of free writing contests
• Join writing groups or start your own
• Take and subscribe to free online writing courses
• Search publishers, literary agents, and literary magazines
• Befriend and subscribe to other writers
• Talk about writing in the WritersCafe.org forum
• Save your favorite writing to your own library
• Easily share your writing with all your friends

Is anyone a member??  Can you give us some more insight into the site?

And finally, I am also a member of Jacketflap.  It is geared towards YA and children's lit. I like this site because it can link to your blog and automatically updates it!  It is easy to maneuver around and you can add lots of stuff in your page. According to their site, "JacketFlap is a comprehensive resource for information on the children's book industry. Thousands of published authors, illustrators, librarians, agents, editors, publicists, and publishers visit JacketFlap every day."  They also claim to have the world's largest database of information on publishers of children's books. This is a place worth checking out!

What other sites do you recommend??  Any that you would avoid?

So, what do you do once you are a member??

Check my next post!! : )  Cheers!  Jan