Common mistakes

We all make mistakes and that is nothing to be ashamed of but learning from those mistakes – that is what winners do.

Procrastination

We authors like to procrastinate. Second only to writing, procrastination might be our favourite past time. But when it comes to platform building that time-wasting is deadly.

Of all of the possible mistakes you could make, this sit he most easily avoided. An effective platform takes time to build up. Constant and consistent time.

Hoping the pixies will do it for you

The reason we call stories about fixies and fairies that come and do your work in the middle of the night fantasy is that they are not real. Supernatural imps make for great stories but they are pretty useless at real-world work.

Posting “please buy my book” daily

I follow a lot of authors with my various Twitter accounts. When I first started doing this I found that my timeline was just filled with desperate authors posting their book over and over again.

I’ve got a book. I’ve still got it. Look here is a photo of my book. Have you brought it yet? I’ve got a book. My book. Book, book, book. Hey, I have a book. Please, for the love of God buy my book, I need to buy food.
Book spam by too many authors

That is not how social media works. People use the internet for one reason – to fulfil their own needs, follow their own interests, and find out about whatever they want to find out about. None of which includes your book.

If you talked like that at parties, you would pretty soon stop getting invited to parties. Which is why when I see an author I might like to follow, I check to see what they are posting. If it is book spam I give them a miss.

Social media is a conversation. You need to give more than you take. You need to entertain, and you need to be interesting. Get visitors to come back to your site where they might sign up for your list and then announce to your list when you have something they will be interested in (like a new book).

Trying to be like everyone else

People will want to read your book because it is not exactly like a hundred other books. Readers care about authors who bring something fresh to the genre. So why would your platform be any different?

You can study all the best practices you want but if you do so at the expense of your passions are you really selling your own voice at all?

If all the authors are on Facebook but you love Tumblr – go do Tumblr with a full passion for the platform.

If everyone is writing about the latest “best topic” and you are utterly indifferent to the subject, don’t write about it. Write about the topics you care about. The themes that matter most to you in your books, for example.

Write to your strengths and interests and the readers who discover you will discover an author of books they can care about. When you focus on the areas that bring you joy – that match up with your personality – then magic can happen.

Not having a blog

Yes, it is possible to build a platform without a blog. If you know exactly what you are doing. If you have a great list and send out a regular email in exactly the same way you would in, say, a blog.

The fix is simple, set up a blog – even if that blog is on a free service like Tumblr, Author Buzz UK (shameless plug), or blogger.com. A better move would be to self-host but if you cannot a blog is still a key part of your platform. The regular posts can then form the basis of social media content and list mailings.

Not even having your own site at all

You need something, someplace, to call home; a part of the web that you own and control. If Facebook went bust and switched off tomorrow, your two thousand followers mean nothing at all. Same goes for every third-party corner of your platform.

Now you site, your list, your blog – these are things that you can control. Which means that no other party (aside from maybe your ISP) can go bust and take your entire marketing attempt with it.

Failing to make backups

Your blog and your list are valuable. That data is the lifeblood of any bookselling or brand marketing that you will be doing any time soon. You had better know how to protect and secure it.

Protecting your data

Your list and your blog’s database should be regularly downloaded to either your own computer or a secure remote server. Ideally, you should do this at least once a month. More frequently as your data begins to grow more rapidly. After all, in the gap between now and your last backup everything you gained is not protected.

Securing your data

In the UK as well as the wider EU, you have a legal requirement to protect the data that other people share with you. Which means you must take steps to secure the backup data so that only you or people authorised to act for you, can access it. If it is on your home PC (one not shared with any family members) that is probably good enough. At the very least there should be a physical lock and/or a strong password between your backup data and anyone else.

Industry-standard is to put the backup on a removable media and keep it in a locked fire-proof safe.

Thinking you are special

We are all unique and interesting but that does not mean that any of us can skate by on raw charisma and groundbreaking writing talent. The Martian by Andy Weir might have sold the movie rights within a week of the book being picked up by a publisher but that was on the back of 10 years of preparatory work (including list building) and a lot of specialist research.

Engaging with trolls

There is a special class of truely obnoxious internet user known as the troll. Trolls love to post hurtful comments. They like to provoke a strong reaction because that seems to validate their existence or something.

Haters are going to hate. If a user is hitting you up with rude, insulting, obnoxious, and hateful comments then the chances are they will never buy your book. If you ignore them you will save yourself a lot of energy and they will go and bother someone else to get their conflict fix.

A little constructive criticism is fine but trolls are just there to suck up your time. Trolls are a bit like spiteful ally cats – do not feed them and they will go away.

Starting your platform around your current book

If you are starting when your book is already out: One, you are late to the party; two, in five years time this will be out of date.

Whenever you start platform building build on who you are and where you want to be in the next five to ten years. If you have a book or two that is great, mention them on a section of your site but build for the future.

Hit and hope

When I was in my early twenties my friends would take me to bars and we would play pool. Not having any idea how to play, I would just hit the white ball and hope for the best. Sometimes I got lucky but mostly I just lost horribly.

Andy Weir got lucky but he got lucky while doing what just so happened to be pretty decent platform building. You and I are not Weir but we can get a lot of mileage by knowingly doing the things that build a sound platform.

Don’t just hit and hope. With games like pool, you lose and everyone laughs at you; with writing, you get nowhere and no one remembers you.

Not being consistent

I have been involved with blogs and blogging for well over twelve years. I’ve started a lot of projects that went nowhere and others that did very well. The one constant in all those projects is that it was the blogs I passionately went back to and consistently updated that grew and generated revenue.

If you have an Author Buzz blog, activate the editorial calendar and plan ahead.

Seeing other writers as “the competition”

Writing is not a business. Selling books is a business. If a customer goes to another bookshop, they are probably not going to go to yours. If readers read another author that does not preclude them from buying and reading your books too.

Author Buzz was founded on the idea that authors working together creates a force multiplier. In other words, when we work together we all get out of it much more in roughly in proportion to the number of us working together. Or to put it another way – teamwork works. Each author in a team of authors gets more back from the same efforts than one author by themselves.

Other writers are not your competition, they are your peers. Collaborating with your peers is good for you.

Forgetting that the internet has a long, long memory.

They say the Internet never forgets. If you have a fight with someone online, that can hang around long after you have transitioned from angry to deeply embarrassed and on to wishing that you had never said anything.

When you are about to say something harsh ask yourself if you would say that to a person’s face. If the answer is no, there is a very good chance you might not want to hit that publish button.

What now?

I have no doubt that there are other common mistakes that I have simply forgotten to write down. If you know of any please say something in the Author Platforms group (we have a forum).

Next, you may want to look at the Essential Platform Checklist.