Create an Author Platform

Publishers aren’t just looking for strong, new books. Quality is great, but sales are what matter in the end, at least when you’re in the selling-books business. So what publishers really want to know is whether you bring an audience along with you. That means you have to create an author platform.

That author-platform requirement explains in small measure why so many writers have opted to self-publish. But here’s the deal. If you’re self-publishing your book, you’re now the one who’s in the business of selling at least one book. Yours. That gets us right back to the fact that you need to create an author platform so that you have an audience who will likely buy your book.

So how do you create an author’s platform? An author’s platform is just what it sounds like. It’s all the things you do that put you in front of people who are interested in what you write and/or what you have to say.

• If you do public speaking, you have the start of an author’s platform, especially if you’ve gathered the names and email addresses of the people who have come to hear you.
• Ditto if you teach.
• If you’ve garnered media coverage in print or on TV, those audiences are part of your author platform.
• If you write a blog or a column or social media posts, your author platform includes all the people you reach that way.

Notice that I haven’t mentioned the words sales or self-promotion. Sure, that’s the ultimate objective. But this is not about selling yourself or your book. This is about providing a lot of people with content they find appealing, intriguing or useful, so that they come to expect and look for that from you.

Some authors create an author platform after they publish their book. My writing coach client Barbara Hinske is the author of a five-book bestselling series called Coming to Rosemont, which straddles both the romance and Agatha-Christie-style-mystery genres. Barb had never published a thing, so she certainly didn’t have an author platform when she started out. But boy does she have one now! When using social media to build her author platform, she didn’t tell prospective readers (and book buyers) what a great novel she had written. She provided them with posts covering everything from Downton Abbey and recipes to personal tidbits and humor. She published a newsletter, gave away books in raffles, and launched an online book club for Rosemont fans. And no, they don’t just read Barb’s books. The About This Group description reads:

We are a group of readers who celebrate books and ideas that encourage, inspire, uplift and entertain. We can discuss all sorts of topics and can disagree without being disagreeable. Let the fun begin!

In short, Barb created a community of like-minded readers who gobble up every book she writes. Her Facebook page has more than 35,000 followers and her book club has more than 2,000 members. That’s quite a platform. But Barb hasn’t stopped there. She has also ramped up her public speaking and dabbled on YouTube. I’m sure there’s more, since we haven’t spoken in a couple of months, but you get the idea.

Barb waited until she had a book in hand before she began to create her author platform. But you don’t have to. Indeed, the sooner you start, the better. If this post helps spur you into action, or if you’re already building your author platform, I’d love to know what you’re up to. In the meantime, I hope the video below helps clarify this author platform building process even more.

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