Starting from today, Mondays will be Skill Swap day on BookMachine. The idea is to help our members to discover and offer each other new opportunities in light of the challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Skill swapping is an increasingly popular means of investing time rather than cash. Perhaps you need help with your SEO, your Amazon ads, social media ads or other ways of getting your books into readers’ hands; there will be individuals out there who could manage all of these areas for you in exchange for your editorial skills, InDesign expertise or online event management.

To participate, all you have to do is log in to BookMachine and use the hashtag #SkillSwap to share your ideas on the Community Home feed. This is the main communication stream on BookMachine for members. To find opportunities simply type #SkillSwap into the search box, or browse through recent posts.

The advantage of swapping skills within BookMachine is that you will already have a sense of who other members are from meeting at events and taking training courses together. Over the next few weeks we will be recording interviews with individual members too, and this will help the community to get a deeper sense of where knowledge and expertise lies.

The BookMachine #SkillSwap initiative will bring together a wide range of skilled professionals from across the community, including editors and proofreaders, marketers, production professionals, technical whizzes, designers and more.