How To Build Your Author Platform When You Have No Clue What That Means
What’s an author platform, anyway? Let’s break it down!
When I first started in the publishing industry over ten years and seven books ago, the nebulous concept of an author platform sounded like a vague box of ‘things’ a writer would buy at the Invisible Writer Internet Store.
“Want the deluxe package?” an oily salesman with an extreme side part would ask. “I don’t know,” I would shrug. “How much does it cost?” I’d ask this snake-oil dude. He would smile, wryly, “That depends.”
Sound familiar? Still confusing. I know.
This is how a seasoned writer explained an author platform to me at the time that helped me make sense of it all:
Think of your author platform as a deck. Each tactic is a plank. Without a full deck, your platform isn’t solid. It’s flimsy. Building each plank will give you a solid foundation to work from when selling your book so nothing falls through.
This helped. A lot. And make no mistake: while you may tell yourself you’re allergic to marketing, don’t know what it is, or that it’s all ‘shameless self-promotion’ (it’s not…
