The Digital Scholar

Following the success of social networking websites like Facebook and LinkedIn, websites that use similar interactive formats to create online reading/publishing communities have begun to appear. By joining one or more of these communities, you can connect with other readers and writers, as well as publish your own writing electronically. Indeed, at no cost to you, you can easily use these websites to publish an entire book electronically and even sell it on the Web.

Below is a short list of some of these reading/publishing community websites. All of them are free to join and they don’t charge anything to publish your work on their site. They also use elements of online community websites to help you market your writing and to connect with other writers and readers.

Through these websites, you become the publisher of your own book by formatting and uploading the content yourself. In most cases, this process is very easy to do. Keep in mind, however, that when writing for the electronic publishing world, the less formatting your original manuscript contains the better. When you upload your writing to some of these sites, the website converts your text into a different format, so any special formatting your writing originally contains may get in the way of this conversion process.

You can make your content available for free on all of the websites listed below. On some of them, you can earn money by opting to charge readers to download and read your writing. There are many good reasons for making your writing available for free, however, foremost among them is that it will help you spread your reputation faster. Readers are much more likely to download your book if you make it available for free than if you charge money for it. All of the sites that give you the option to charge money for your work also allow you to set your own price for it, although the website will keep some percentage of that price.

Through these websites you can dabble in publishing your work without having to find a publisher for your book. All of them let you edit or even un-publish your book at any time, so they can be a great way to test out your ideas and gauge your market before finding a publisher for your book or article.

Even if you are not interested in publishing your work on these websites, you can find interesting works to read and comment on–and maybe even build a community of writers and readers with similar interests as you.

Goodreads – The Goodreads website focuses more on creating a community of readers than on a community of writers. As in Facebook, you create a profile where you can share what you have read with other friends, comment on and rate books, and even track your progress in the book you are currently reading. You can also upload your writing to the website by copying your text into their highly structured template, which organizes it into individual chapters. Writing uploaded by individual users, however, can only be read on the Goodreads website.

Feedbooks – Whereas Goodreads focuses more on sharing the reading of traditionally published books, Feedbooks focuses more on the sharing of writing. The profile you create in Feedbooks strictly centers on content available on its website, which is mainly works that have been uploaded to the website by its users. Unlike in Goodreads, this content can be downloaded in a variety of formats, including Kindle, Sony Reader, and PDF, so that you can take the writing with you.

Scribd – Scribd gives you a choice of uploading your documents to share (i.e., offer them for free) or to sell, and the uploading process is incredibly easy. The site offers all kinds of documents, including books, magazines, brochures, recipes, sheet music, and even resumes and CVs. The website also allows you to create communities, where books can be grouped together on a specific topic. Navigating through the morass of titles on the Scribd website can be difficult, but they tell me that they are working on improving the search and browse functions. Books published on Scribd can be read on the website or can be downloaded in PDF or plain text formats.

Smashwords – Smashwords works a lot like Feedbooks, but it allows you to create a more vibrant author page where readers can learn more about you. You can even add an author video to your page. Just like on Scribd, you can make your writing available for free or for purchase. Books can be read on the Smashwords website or can be downloaded in a plethora of e-book formats.

Do you know of any other reading/publishing communities on the Web? Share them by clicking on the Comments button for this article.