Introduction: What is an Author Platform?
Author Platform: (n) The sum total of all the people who are paying attention to you and thus might rightly be considered primed for selling books to.
Why is it called a platform?
“Platform” is a marketing jargon. It means the people who are willing to listen to you. In politics, a platform describes the issues and stances a candidate publicly supports in the hope that people who care about those issues will vote in the candidate’s favour.
For authors, this is pretty much the same. Your platform is all the ways you have of getting the word out about your book to people who are already paying attention.
This differs from advertising in one significant way. Advertising is where you pay to interrupt people to present your product in the hope of driving sales. This is pretty much what pays for most free TV channels and radio stations.
Your platform, however, is made up of people with whom you are already conversing in some way. Which makes it very easy for you to bring up your book which your listeners (you hope) are delighted to hear about.
The basics of an author platform
Have you ever heard of this thing called an author platform? It is supposed to sell books, right.
The dream of being an author is highly compelling for us writers. We spend hours and weeks and years writing our book. Finally, it is ready to go. There is just one snag – how do you get people to buy your book?
That’s where the author platform comes in.
A comprehensive introduction to author platforms
There are a few common aspects of an author’s platform. Usually, these are a website, blog, social media, and an email newsletter.
How to get started building your platform
What are author platforms for?
A pretty good author platform will sell books. A great one will go further and sell the idea of you as an author (and thus many books). Whatever way you look at it, writing books also requires someone or something to sell those books for you.
Author Buzz lays a lot of the ground work to help you set up a good platform but only you can make it a great platform.
A comprehensive introduction to author platforms
Author Platforms do two things really well.
- Inspire confidence in agents and/or publishers
- Give you a marketing foundation for selling books
Both of those are actually the same thing from two perspectives. For the agent or publisher considering taking you on they see a well-established platform and they think, “oh good ready-made sales system”. But if you self-publish you take a look at your well-made platform and think, “now I see what all the work was for, I can sell books with my ready-made sales system”.
The only difference is, for a self-published author, their author platform has to be fully authentic and absolutely has to work.