How Do You Stay Connected to the Book Community?

Twitter

I resisted Twitter for a long time but now I love it.  I’m super picky about who I put on my feed though so there is no drama or negativity.  I love Twitter parties like those through #historicalfix and #ttwibrat (Travel the World in Books Read a Thon).

I follow a few authors who are interesting.

Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) is a fantasy writer who is a prolific twitter user.  He talks about geek issues and life as a Muslim-American.

Courtney Milan (@courtneymilan) writes historical English romances that she self publishes successfully.  On Twitter she writes a lot about diversity in publishing.

Nnedi Okorafor (@nnedi) is one of my favorite authors.

Tananarive Due (@tananarivedue) writes horror/fantasy and her Twitter feed is full of civil rights information.

Swaps

I fell in love with internet swaps for quilting and now I do book ones too.

Bex’s Ninja Book Swap is a fun one.  It happens periodically.  You get a person to send a bookish package too.

I’m doing the OTSPSecretSister swap this time too.  This is a 6 month commitment to send packages to your Secret Sister.

Blog Events

Obviously I love blog events or I wouldn’t be doing Book Blogger Appreciation Week!  Here are some other ones I do during the year.

Armchair BEA – I love this one.  I’m actually thinking about prewriting my answers this year and still participating even though I am going to BEA because I feel like I’ll be missing out if I don’t.

Diversiverse – Usually in October for 2 weeks it celebrates POC authors.

Travel the World in Books Read-a-thon – Usually in October too after Diversiverse

Weirdathon – This is a new event for March 2016 celebrating weird books.

Nonfiction November – So many great recommendations from this one.