Where to Find Author Virtual Assistants
The good news about finding an author VA in 2026 is that the ecosystem has matured considerably. A few years ago, most authors looking for publishing-specific support had to navigate generic freelancer platforms, hope that a general VA would pick up the industry knowledge they needed, or cobble together help from volunteers in reader communities. The options available today are substantially more structured, and the range of them means there's likely a discovery channel that suits your specific situation, budget, and the amount of due diligence you want to do yourself versus have done for you.
The bad news, to the extent there is any, is that quality still varies significantly across all of these channels, and the label 'author VA' isn't standardized in any meaningful way — anyone can describe themselves with it. Knowing where to look is step one; knowing what to look for once you get there is step two, and that's covered in the next article. This article focuses on the where.
Purpose-Built Author VA Services
The most significant development in the author VA landscape in recent years has been the emergence of services purpose-built specifically for the author-VA relationship, handling the matching, vetting, and in some cases the training infrastructure that individual authors previously had to manage themselves.
Author Anchor, founded by bestselling novelist and Chief Brand Officer J. Kevin Tumlinson and powered by BookBrush, is the most prominent example of this model in the indie publishing world. Author Anchor's premise is direct: indie authors need VA support from people who understand the publishing ecosystem, and most available VA platforms weren't built with that requirement in mind. Author Anchor vets and trains VAs specifically for author work, matches authors with VAs based on their specific needs and working style, and provides ongoing infrastructure support through a $99/month platform fee that covers training resources, software access, and the matching process. The VA's hourly rate — a minimum of $5 per hour, which goes entirely to the VA — is paid separately, with a ten-hour weekly minimum engagement. Authors can start with a free, no-obligation discovery call at authoranchor.com to assess whether the fit is right before committing.
What makes this model valuable for many authors is what it removes from their plate: the search, the initial vetting, the uncertainty about whether a VA candidate actually understands publishing. That due diligence has already been done. The tradeoff is that you're working within a structured service model rather than building a fully customized freelance relationship, and the minimum commitment means it's not the right fit for authors who only need a few hours of occasional help.
Author-Specific Agencies and Collectives
Below the full-service platform model are author-specific VA agencies and collectives — organizations that pool vetted, author-experienced VAs into a single accessible roster without the full platform infrastructure of a service like Author Anchor. Hawthorn & Aster is a well-regarded example of this model, connecting indie authors with VAs who have backgrounds in ARC management, social media, launch coordination, and other author-specific tasks. These collectives typically present individual VA profiles with descriptions of their skills, their genre familiarity, and the services they offer, allowing authors to browse and make a direct connection.
The agency or collective model sits between the full-service platform and the pure freelancer marketplace in terms of both structure and due diligence. You're getting some pre-vetting and some organizational accountability, but you're still doing more of the selection work yourself than in a matched service. The quality floor is generally higher than a cold freelancer search because the agency has done some initial screening, but it varies more than a fully managed service.
Freelancer Platforms
General freelancer platforms — Upwork, Fiverr, OnlineJobs.ph — remain a valid channel for finding author VAs, particularly for authors who want maximum flexibility in how they structure the engagement, budget, and scope of work. These platforms have the broadest talent pools and the most flexibility on terms, but they also require the most due diligence on your end, since the platform itself does no vetting for publishing-specific knowledge.
Author Communities and Facebook Groups
Some of the best author VA hires happen through referrals within author communities — someone you trust has already done the vetting, already learned from their own mistakes with a bad hire, and is recommending someone whose work they know firsthand. This is the highest-signal source available, and it's underused because it requires more legwork than posting a job listing.
Genre-specific author Facebook groups often have dedicated threads for VA recommendations or experienced members who know the local VA landscape well — searching within the group before posting a new question usually surfaces several names
Indie author communities on Discord, particularly genre-focused servers, have become increasingly active channels for VA recommendations and are often more current than Facebook group threads
Author-specific communities like 20Booksto50K, the Alliance of Independent Authors community, and genre-specific organizations are worth posting in specifically because the members understand what publishing-specific VA work involves and can make recommendations accordingly
Your existing network of author peers — particularly those in your genre who are at a similar career stage — may be your most reliable source: they've hired for exactly the tasks you need help with, and they can speak to real-world experience with specific VAs
Job Board Postings
For authors who want to conduct a more open search without platform fees, posting a job listing on author-adjacent job boards can surface candidates who actively seek publishing work. The ALLi (Alliance of Independent Authors) job board, the Reedsy job board, and Joanna Penn's The Creative Penn community have been used by authors for exactly this purpose. General remote work job boards like Remote.co and Virtual Vocations also produce results when job descriptions are written with publishing-specific requirements.
Writing a good job posting is more important than the platform you post it on. Be specific about the tasks, the expected weekly hours, the tools you use, and the genre and tone of your work. A vague posting attracts vague candidates; a specific posting attracts applicants who have read it carefully enough to understand whether the fit is right. The next article covers what to look for in those applicants — but getting the right people into your inbox starts with a clear description of what you need.
Approaching VAs Who Are Visible in Your Genre Community
There's a category of potential VA that most authors overlook: book bloggers, reader community managers, and genre-savvy readers who are already active in your specific community and who may be looking for part-time work that uses their knowledge of your genre. A reader who moderates a large Facebook group for your genre already knows the terminology, the community norms, the comparable authors, and the platform mechanics. They may not have thought of themselves as a VA candidate, but the skills are transferable and the learning curve for publishing-specific tasks is dramatically shorter.
This isn't universally the right approach — not every community member wants to turn their reader hobby into work, and the boundaries between fan relationship and professional relationship can get complicated. But for authors who are already embedded in their genre community, it's worth being alert to people who are organized, reliable, and deeply familiar with your specific corner of the market, and who might welcome the opportunity to turn that familiarity into part-time income.
What to Do Once You Have Candidates
Regardless of the channel you use, the discovery of candidates is only the beginning. The next two articles cover what to look for in an author VA — the skills, personality signals, and publishing knowledge that separate the right candidate from a competent but mismatched one — and the hiring process step by step, including the interview questions that surface the most relevant information and the test project structure that gives you a real-world sample of how someone actually works before you commit to an ongoing engagement.
The one thing I'd add here, as a practical note that applies across all channels: talk to at least three candidates before making a decision, regardless of how much you like the first one. The comparison changes the decision in almost every case — either confirming that your first choice is right, or revealing a better fit you'd have missed if you'd stopped at one. Author VAs aren't rare, but great ones who are the right fit for your specific working style and business needs are specific enough that it's worth the extra time to find them properly.
Conclusion
The author VA market in 2026 offers more structured, purpose-built options than ever before, from matched services like Author Anchor that handle the vetting and training infrastructure for you, to agencies and collectives with pre-vetted rosters, to freelancer platforms where flexibility comes at the cost of more due diligence on your end. The right channel depends on how much of the search work you want to own versus have done for you, and how structured you want the engagement to be. The next article covers what to look for once you're talking to candidates — the specific signals that distinguish a VA who will become one of the most valuable relationships in your publishing career from one who won't.
Hello, I'm Randall Wood. When I'm not pounding the keyboard or entertaining my giant dog I like to build tools for my fellow indie authors. In these articles, you'll find lessons learned over sixteen years spent in the indie author world. I share it all here to help you get one step closer to where you want to be.
— Randall