For spooky season, we’re tackling one of the most intimidating and crucial steps for nonfiction authors, especially authors who are looking to traditionally publish: building a visible platform to reach their target audience. Publishers often weigh an author’s platform equally with the strength of the project itself, so its importance cannot be understated. Building a platform can feel scary, because you’re putting yourself out there often well before you actually have a book to sell. You don’t have to let your platform become your boogeyman that keeps you hiding under your blankets. With a few key strategies and mindset shifts, you can start the steady process of building your connection to your audience and a platform that is attractive to publishers.
Sometimes when you don’t know how to start, it can stall your dreams for months, even years. We have helped so many writers not only get started but see the project through the very end! We have created a great free resource to help you make a plan to finally tell the story that lives in your heart. Download the free Memoir Method Checklist today to get started.
The importance of platform-building for authors
Publishers can’t take on every project they see. They can’t even take on all the really powerful and excellent projects that come across their desk that they really believe can make wonderful books. When publishers pass on something that has potential, more often than not, it’s because the author doesn’t have a sizable platform. If publishers are on the fence about a project, it also comes down to platform. It really has a dramatic impact on whether your book is going to find a publishing home.
So what exactly is platform and why is it so important? Platform simply means your ability to reach the people that would be interested in your book. Publishers will be planning to spend some money on marketing, but they are looking for authors who have already shown themselves to be able to be active partners in selling the book. They want to see the authors are willing to engage in building an active community around their ideas. This presence can take time to build, so you can and should start to do this before you have a book to sell.
Misconceptions about platform-building for authors
One of the most common misconceptions we hear about platform is the assumption that number of followers = platform. While lots of followers are nice, numbers aren’t everything—they aren’t even the most important. Passive followers don’t always add up to book sales, but if you have a smaller, engaged community that is interacting with your content, this says a lot more about your value to a publisher than tens of thousands of followers that are just names on a list. Publishers also know that platforms are also a work in progress! So even more than a follower number, a history of consistent and valuable content shows publishers that you can be an active participant in your own marketing.
So, let’s get into those strategic platform-building tips!
Key tip #1: Dial into your target market
We live in a very noisy digital world. For people to grab on to something in all that din, they need to feel like they are directly being addressed, that the content is specifically for people like them.
Often when we ask authors “Who is this book for?”, their first answer is “everyone!” While it’s true that many books have something to often just about everyone, to connect with an audience, we need to have a more targeted strategy. If you are a business owner with clients, your first guidance for defining your audience is looking at the clients you’ve already gathered. Who is attracted to what you’re offering? What were they searching for? What kinds of content are they interacting with the most? In short, where are they?
The start and focus of any marketing strategy is finding where your audience is looking and putting yourself there so they can find you.
Key tip #2: Promote the idea, not the book
There’s nothing more exciting for an author than seeing their book cover for the first time. It can be so tempting to center everything you say online around that image and the title you agonized over. But your book cover and title isn’t really what draws in your audience from a digital platform, it’s the promise of the helpful content inside.
When you are trying to get those ideas out, to show the promise of what your book has to offer, people can tell that you are trying to help them. You won’t be “giving away” the material of your book, because in short form, your reels or posts or interviews can’t fully communicate the big ideas you have in your book, but they can demonstrate your approach, how you can help, and who you can help. Having a regular stream of this short-form content will not give away the milk for free but will attract an audience that will be eager to dig in and hear more.
Key tip #3: Consistency is Key
Whenever authors are just starting to build their platform, we urge you to choose a strategy that will be fun (and at least a little easy) for you to do, because it’s not something you can do once and be done. Developing a strategy that you can be consistent with over the long term is key to platform-building. Whether that is writing blogs, doing reels, or Youtube videos, having a consistent presence helps build up engagement little by little over time.
Key tip #4: Be willing to experiment
Your book—and therefore your platform—will be specific to you. What works for some people might not work for you. For example, you might take on a podcast tour or guest post tour and after a few months, it just doesn’t add up or it isn’t quite working. It’s important to be willing to go back to the drawing board, examine why that isn’t working, and try a different strategy.
Important Caveat:
If the last two tips seem contradictory, keep in mind that platform-building is a marathon, not a sprint. Patience is important to balancing being consistent and seeing those numbers slowly tick up and making adjustments as they are needed. To keep this balance, keep a clear timeline in place. When you are trying a new strategy or rolling out a series of content, don’t switch gears when it doesn’t show results in two weeks. This creates a scattershot presence that is a bit all over the place. Instead, give it at least four months, depending on the strategy and how often new material is being released. Setting this in place from the start will help prevent you from panic-switching.
Key tip #5: Start Early
Often authors have the misconception that they start building their platform when they have a book release date set. Publishers look at this from the complete opposite stance—why should they set a release date when you don’t have a platform yet?
Building a platform before you book is not putting the cart before the horse. Self-doubt can be difficult to overcome when you don’t yet have that tangible book to hold out as evidence of your expertise. You do not need a book to be an authority figure to be able to have people listen to you. You have so much to offer, and you can start right now. Don’t put it off until you have a book or even contract in hand. As soon as you’re done reading this blog post, start making a list of how you can start building that platform of content.
Key tip #6: Don’t be shy
If you have connections, especially connections with audiences that might overlap your target market, don’t hesitate to reach out to them. Don’t minimize yourself just because you’re in the early stages of building your platform. Everyone has to start somewhere.
Authors early in the process often feel shy because they don’t want to impose themselves or ask for favors. But truthfully, you are not asking for a favor, you are offering to help them with their platform as much as you are asking for help with your own. When you reach out, tell your connections what you have to offer their audience and how you can genuinely be of help. Chances are they will jump at the chance of having some help with their content stream.
Platform-building doesn’t have to be scary
Because it’s such an important part of selling a successful book, building a platform can make many authors feel like giving up before they even start. Some authors want to have the credibility of having a traditionally-published book before they start building a platform, so when they learn they need a platform before they publish their book, it can feel like an impossible circle to break into.
When building your platform, remember why you wanted to write a book in the first place. You have something you want to share with an audience, and that is your experience and expertise. Often the thing about expertise is the more we learn, the more we learn how much there is to learn, and we forget how much we have to share with others. Our expertise doesn’t always feel like authority to us, but if we have enough to share with others to write a whole book, then you have enough to build a platform, too!
Sometimes the feeling that we’re trying to gather customers before we have something to sell them can feel disingenuous or nerve-wracking. Remember that your book is made up of your ideas, and you can share those ideas in shorter forms now. You can start helping people and connecting to your audience as a community right now, even if your book is still in development. The more genuine you are in trying to build your community, the better it will feel, the more fun you’ll have, and the more effective you’ll be!
