I understand how frustrating it is when you’re just starting out as a writer and taking the first steps towards building yourself a real readership and a sustainable career. Or rescuing your so-called career from a ditch, maybe, and scrambling to rebuild. I’ve done all these things at various points… except it was less of a ditch and more of a gator-filled hellswamp.
The whole idea of author platform is quite nebulous, and searching on Google is bound to deepen those frustrations further, because there is so much unhelpful information out there. Not necessarily inaccurate, as such, just irritably gnomic. “Build a platform,” agents will tell newer writers, without telling them what a platform is or what it should consist of. Or what it should do.
Authors are left trying to do things like “get their name out there,” or other such nonsense they’re routinely urged to do, wasting their time and energy—and sometimes money—on all the things, because they haven’t been given any actual substance, let alone hands-on help. Other times, though, the advice is actively harmful; I’ve seen literary agents at conferences make awful statements like “I wouldn’t consider a query from an author unless they had 5,000 Likes on their Facebook Page”—which leads to hordes of aspiring authors running in the wrong direction. (Also chasing the wrong agent, I respectfully suggest.)
And then there are the platforms themselves: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, whatever they call Google+ next, Pinterest, Quora, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Wattpad, YouTube, and Medium. And each of those just opens another hornets’ nest of questions. Should I blog at Medium or on my own site? Isn’t blogging dead? Do you need to have a blog on top of the demands you already have to write thousands of words every week, on top of learning how to improve your craft, and how to sell books to readers?
Who has the time for all this?
No one.
Here’s the truth: very few of these things actually sell books. I’m speaking as someone who has built large platforms that made me “famous” in certain circles, but those platforms didn’t sell very many books. And I’m also speaking as someone who learned that lesson and then built smaller but more effective platforms that were ten times better at actually driving book sales.
Not all followings are equal—particularly when it comes to the rather important business of selling books to readers.
Following will cut through the noise.
