It’s never too early to market your book or build your author platform, even if your book isn’t written. But what is an author platform?
When I first learned about author platform, I thought it was a tagline, like Bill Nye the Science Guy. The truth is taglines, marketing, and branding are all involved in platform building, but aren’t platform. Defining platform as email, social media or branding is like defining a cake as eggs, sugar and flour. Yes, they’re all ingredients to making a cake, but they aren’t the cake itself.
It wasn’t until I came across Jane Friedman’s definition of platform that I finally understood what it meant and, therefore, could build one. Friedman describes author platform as the representation of your authority, visibility, and reach to a target market. In simpler terms, your author platform represents how much influence you have (authority), the number of people who know and listen to you (visibility and reach), and the most likely reader of your book (target market). Your goal in platform building is to increase your influence and reach to your readers.
How Platform Building Can Help You Get an Agent
It’s important to understand how agents decide on the books and authors to represent. Sure, quality is important, but agents also need to determine if the book is sellable to a publisher. Publishers decide books on what they can sell to a bookstore. Publishers are a business, so their focus is on making money. Authors who can show they have a following—a built in market to buy the book, have a stronger chance of getting a publishing contract. E.L. James, author of Fifty Shades of Grey, is a perfect example of this. She had a huge reader base for her work, and publishers took notice.
Note that if you’re a nonfiction author, you absolutely need a platform to get a traditional book deal.
Here are the steps to building your author platform.
Laying the Foundation
Before you can build your platform, you need to know yourself as an author, the value of your book to a reader, and identify your target reader market. Here’s how:
1) Define yourself as an author. This is where branding comes in. A brand is a promise of an experience to a reader. For example, if I say “Nora Roberts,” readers know they’ll get a romance. John Grisham’s brand is legal thriller. Martha Stewart’s is home decorating and cooking. Some authors write in multiple genres, which makes things tougher because it requires branding oneself in each, and recognizing that there are multiple target reader groups.
2) Identify your ideal reader. Who reads the type of book you’ve written? What is their demographic? What are they wanting in their reading experience that your book provides?
3) Where can your ideal reader be found? This is crucial because there are too many strategies to build your platform and market your book to do them all. Instead, you want to focus on those tactics that will reach your market where they’re at. If you write romance, where do romance readers hang out? What blogs do they read? Do they use the library to borrow books? Are they on Twitter, Facebook and/or Pinterest? If you write self-help, where do those readers look for self-help information?
Building Your Platform
Once you’ve determined who you are as a writer and your target market, it’s time to start implementing strategies to reach them. As a visual person, I like to view platform as having a center hub with five radiating spokes of activity, all working together to build influence, visibility and reach to the reader market.
1) The hub. The center of this platform wheel is your blog or website. All authors need a central single place from which to market their books. It’s also the place to include author bio, media kit, scheduled events and appearances, social media profiles, and anything else your target reader would expect to find. All marketing you do should include a link to your hub.
The spokes:
2) Your books. Whether you’re self-published or traditionally published, include your hub website URL in your books. This makes it easy for readers to find your other books, as well as to learn more about you, your events, and engage with you on social media.
3) Social/Community. Today, consumers prefer to know and interact with those they do business with, including authors. Members of your community will not only buy your books, but if they like them, will leave reviews and tell others about them, increasing your authority, and expanding your reach and influence. Methods for assembling a community include engaging in social media, building an email list, and organizing a street team.
4) Media/PR. Appearing in the media increases your authority, as well as expands your visibility and reach. Your website (hub) should include a media kit with your bio and information about your books. When your book is ready to launch or has a tie-in to news, send press releases to media outlets that target your reader market and include a link to your online media kit. Consider signing up to receive the HARO report (Help A Reporter Out), which emails media requests for guests, experts, and interviewees on a variety of topics.
5) Outreach. Authors can’t rely on Amazon or sending a press release to generate interest in their books. Instead, it’s crucial that they reach out to resources that target their reader market. The advantage of outreach is that it’s free and effective at building authority, while also expanding your reach. Methods of outreach include contacting bloggers about running an article or doing an author interview, appearing as a guest on a podcast, and participating in groups and forums. Outreach can be done offline by submitting articles for print media, and attending groups or meetings targeting your reader market.
6) Events. Writing is a solitary activity, but success as an author requires getting out and mingling with other writers and readers. Every author should attend workshops, seminars or conferences geared toward writers and readers each year. While you can go as a participant, ideally, you should apply to be a speaker or panelist, or pay to have a table from which to sell and sign your books. Other places to set up events include libraries and organizations that target your ideal reader. Consider participating in online events, such as a blog or podcast tours, or hosting or being an author guest at a Facebook book party.
Putting It All Together
While it might seem overwhelming to maintain a hub and manage the various activities of each spoke, they actually all work together. Integrating your platform building strategies is more efficient and effective than haphazard marketing techniques. Readers can find your hub through your book, or your book through your hub. They may learn about you in a social media share of a friend, follow you, and discover your book. Maybe a reader doesn’t buy your book at an event, but she signs up for your email list, giving you the opportunity to sell it to her later.
As you do the activities involved in building your platform, keep in mind that your goal is to increase your authority, visibility and reach to your ideal reader. The most effective and affordable platform building tactics are focused and strategic. Each marketing task whether it’s a Tweet, blog post, or press release, should have an end-goal of improving your authority, and/or expanding your visibility or reach.
Sharing Your Platform in Your Query
Your query letter will include an overview of how you plan to market your book. This is where you share your platform. Be sure to include data such as the number of email subscribers or followers. Check out the example below. I’ve bolded the areas that let the agent know about the author’s platform:
For example:
My name is Sally Sue and I’m a writing instructor at Acme College and run my own online writing community (www. website .com) where I teach, coach, and support emerging authors. I’ve written articles for magazines and online writer resources (note, name any publications you’ve been published in). I’m active on Instagram and TikTok where I share regular tidbits on writing, and host weekly live events. When I’m not teaching or coaching, I enjoy baking and gardening.
I’ve already started talking about Write Your Book with the 5,000 members of my online community and 7,000 email subscribers. I will continue to promote the book to them and on social media, through in-person and online writing events, and reaching out to podcasters for interviews.
If you’re a nonfiction author, you’ll have an entire section of your book proposal to share your platform, as well.
If you write fiction, you may not have all the pieces a nonfiction author has, but you can still start building your platform before your book is done. Doing so lets the agent and publisher know you understand your efforts are needed to successfully sell the book. Here’s an example:
I plan to market The Day Sally Died through a website and email list and using Tik-Tok, although my dancing skills still need work. I’m currently researching the market more to develop a comprehensive marketing plan.