by Kathleen Marple Kalb
One of the best investments you can make in your career is dues for professional groups. Which specific group depends on your genre, but every writer benefits from some affiliation.
If you can afford it, you’ll probably want to join one large national group and one local chapter.
The national group (Authors Guild, Sisters in Crime, Romance Writers, etc.) will offer large scale resources: big membership lists, advocacy, member services. Many have online communities, educational programs, and marketing resources like registries or library search engines. Often, they’ll have information about markets or agents or services, and some will even help you understand process issues like contracts.
You get a lot of bang for your buck with these big national memberships, but they’re not usually the place to go for the kind of close support and encouragement you’ll need, unless they have an online community. For personal relationships and writing events, you’ll likely want a local group.
That may be the local chapter of a large national group. There’s a reason Sisters in Crime encourages members to join the local AND national! It may also be a small writers’ group at your library—and those are usually free. What you choose depends on your genre and needs as a writer. But most of us really do benefit from having that close circle of people.
Writing can be lonely work. Joining with other writers makes it a little less so. A very good investment indeed!
Kathleen Marple Kalb aka Nikki Knight is the author of contemporary and historical cozy mysteries and short stories. Look for Hound of the Bonnevilles by Nikki Knight, from Keylight Books and The Stuff of Mayhem from Level Best Books, both launching March, 2025.
