Don’t wait until you have a book to start building your author’s platform. This is something you should have in place before you even think about writing a book.
Too many authors produce books on a particular topic or in a particular genre without any background in that topic or a track record in that genre. They complete the book, put it up for sale and then wonder why no one will buy a book on childcare from someone lacking credentials or a novel from someone unknown.
Sure they make preliminary sales to friends and family. In fact, many authors base their decision to publish on their friends’ and acquaintances’ expressed interest in their books. They believe that if their friends are interested in buying their book, others will be, too. Not necessarily true!
Let’s examine why your friends, coworkers, distance cousins and a few neighbors will purchase your book. Because they know you. It’s that simple. They want to know what you have to say, how you come across—some are interested in critiquing your efforts. They find it hard to believe that you—someone with no writing experience, a failed marriage or two, an out of control kid and a few bad habits could write a useful or legible book.
I had been writing articles for magazines for about 18 years when one of them appeared in “Entrepreneurial Woman Magazine.” It was a piece featuring how various women define success. Well, one night, after that article was published, I got a call from someone I knew only slightly. She started talking about having seen that article and how she couldn’t believe it. Well, I thought she was calling to compliment me on the article. But the more she spoke, the more it became obvious that there were some sort of sour grapes involved. To this day, I don’t know what her problem was, but she began telling me that she was going to write to the editors and tell them that I have no credibility—that I am a fake. Why? I guess because she knew me and, in her mind, did not believe that I was qualified to write such an article.
Obviously this woman did not understand the premise of this article—to explore how various women defined success in their lives—or the concept of research. I’m still confused when I think about that hurtful, mean-spirited call. I guess that since she knew me within one realm of reality—as an ordinary mom of three girls, volunteering in the school library, playing on a women’s softball team, taking aerobics, sewing many of our own clothes, shopping at the same local stores as she does, visiting yard sales on occasion—I wasn’t, in her eyes, qualified to write this article on this topic. My editors, however, saw me as a decent writer, an excellent researcher and a reliable contributor.
Well, now I am the author of 31 books and I have a fairly solid platform for most of them.
So what can you do to establish a platform for your book? Start working on your platform before you even start writing. How? Become known in your field or genre.
For nonfiction:
• Submit articles in your topic over and over again to many different publications.
• Present workshops on and off line on your topic.
• Create a newsletter and a blog related to your topic.
• Build a website that is attractive and useful.
• Participate in other websites related to this topic.
• Join organizations related to your topic and participate.
• Attend conferences related to your topic.
For Fiction:
• Submit stories in your genre over and over again to many different publications.
• Build a website related to the theme and genre of your proposed book.
• Create a newsletter or blog for folks interested in your genre.
• Participate in other websites related to this genre.
• Join organizations related to your genre and participate.
• Enter writing contests.
• Attend conferences related to your genre.
As you can see, the two lists are fairly similar. I separated them, however, because I find that if I don’t speak directly to the fiction writer, he/she often doesn’t “get” it. Novelists will complain that I neglected to consider the fiction writer when I wrote my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. Noooooooo. It’s just that the author of fiction doesn’t want to (or, perhaps can’t) acknowledge the fact that they, too, must step beyond the comfort of their writing room and promote their work and themselves.
Learn more about your responsibility as a fiction or nonfiction author and so much more in my book, The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book. http://www.matilijapress.com/rightway.html
Sign up for one of my online courses:
http://www.matilijapress.com/courses.htm