How to Increase Your Readership and Feedback On Your Work Through This Group

The Inner Circle Writers’ Group has earned a reputation over the last few years as one of the most constructive and fruitful writers’ groups on the internet. It’s done this largely because of YOU: your participation in the group, supportive remarks, genuine feedback and insights, and general all-round goodness has made this a flourishing and vibrant community for writers new and established.

It’s also achieved such feedback because of its production record, with dozens of anthologies published and routes set up for any writer to earn his or her own paid collection. Many members of the group have become published writers because of this, and have gained readers for the first time, and even established writers have grown their readership through it. Several writers have earned money as a result of all this.

But it’s just a beginning. To move to the next level as writers, there are a few steps that everyone can do. If these things are done by a significant proportion of the existing group, then everyone benefits. Why? Because there will be more members, and more activity. That means more potential readers for your work, and more feedback and help from a like-minded community.

Here’s what you can do:

1. Add more members to the group.

Don’t add people without their permission, and don’t add just anyone — but definitely spend a little time adding a couple of people each month to the group. If we can get to between 20,000 and 25,000 members, we will have reached a point where the activity in the group will be self-sustaining and alive enough to help everyone in it.

More members equals more wisdom and more readers -- as long as the people we add are similar to ourselves, passionate about writing (and reading) and desirous of success.

2. Encourage more members to download the free gifts and/or buy the key books.

This means that members will become more engaged and individually successful Free gifts include my book Your Biggest Challenge as a Writer, which explains how to develop a writing-centred life; and the central book How Stories Really Work gives all writers the tools to become more successful in writing fiction. There is plenty of other material around too on the website designed to boost writers’ abilities and careers, including the Become a Professional Author book. Avail yourself of it and encourage others to do so too. Then we will have a community of writers educated in the basics of the craft of writing — which can’t be bad.

3. Get people to subscribe to the magazine.

The magazine takes things to the next level. Subscribers become a kind of ‘Inner Circle’ of the Inner Circle, getting to know each other on a completely new level and gaining wisdom and insights beyond what any social media group can achieve. Subscription costs have been kept exceptionally low in order to make it possible for anyone to become part of this, so the price of subscription is not a real barrier.

Again, though, the best way to approach this is to select individual people whom you know and talk to them about the magazine and its benefits. Posting about the magazine to the larger groups of writers helps, as many still haven’t heard of it — but nothing beats a one-to-one conversation when it comes to getting commitments.

The thing is that, because the price of the magazine is so low, a commitment is easy. A year’s subscription opens the door for readers to gain so much knowledge and to glean so much about the world of fiction — and of course increases the options for successfully submitting their work as writers.

If we all did these things, expansion would occur very rapidly and we would soon notice the difference in terms of new faces, new input, new possibilities, new friendships, more support. In the scheme of things, not everyone will do them; and of those who do, not all of them will do everything. But these steps exist as guidance to a better life as writers for all of us.

And that's always the aim.