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Unpopular Opinion: If you’re a new fiction writer, forget about building an audience.
For your writing, at least.
If you’re a new fiction writer with a goal of having your work published (either through self-publishing or by a traditional publisher or yourself), you’ve likely heard all kinds of advice about audience or platform building.
You should be on social media talking about your work, they say.
You should have an email list full of potential readers, they say.
You should be forging relationships in reader Facebook groups, they say.
You better start right now, they say.
I think they’re wrong, and I’ll tell you why.
As a writing coach and teacher, I’ve worked with so many who are paralyzed by the whole marketing/audience building thing that they stop writing.
They. Stop. Writing.
I’ve heard some variation on I need to focus on building a platform first so many, many times.
I’ll share with you the advice I always giving my clients and students. It’s pretty simple.
No, you don’t.
No, you don’t have to build an audience right now.