10 Ways to Build Your Writer’s Platform
These 10 effective ways to build your writer’s platform will not only make you more marketable as a writer, they’ll help you become a better writer, too. You’ll develop your skills and writing discipline.
First, a quip from a famous published author:
“What I had that others didn’t was a capacity for sticking to it,” said Doris Lessing.
If you want to be a published, fellow scribes, you need to persevere…and stand on a solid writing platform!
Your writing platform can make or break your chances of selling a book proposal or manuscript to a publishing house or agent. Read on for ten ways to build your writer’s platform, and, for tips on writing book proposals, click on Author 101 Bestselling Book Proposals: The Insider’s Guide to Selling Your Work by Rick Frishman and Robyn Freedman Spizman.
What is a Writer’s Platform?
Your writing platform is a tool you use to promote yourself and sell your writing. To build a strong writing platform, you need to be an entrepreneur and marketing guru with established followers. It’s a tall order – but take heart! In our modern technological age, it’s possible and not too difficult to do.
Your writing platform proves your ability as a writer to promote and sell your book on a national or international level, which drives book sales. It provides a measure of security to the publisher and acts as a vehicle to promote your book and you, the writer.
Some writing and publishing experts say not having a writing platform is an automatic death sentence to an article query or book proposal. If you don’t have a writing platform, you won’t get published. According to Frishman and Spizman’s book called Author 101 Bestselling Book Proposals: The Insider’s Guide to Selling Your Work, building your writing platform is not only necessary, it’s essential.
10 Ways to Build Your Writer’s Platform
1. Create your own website with blogs, forums, newsletters, and photos. To promote your website and yourself as a writer/blogger, use social networking (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc).
2. Blog or write for an established website. I write for Suite101, and I love it. It doesn’t pay as much as About.com (who I don’t write for but really wanted to for awhile) but…every trickle of income and exposure counts.
3. Figure out what your specialty or niche is, then build your writing platform around that. For example, I love love love inspirational quotations, so I build two blogs around them.
4. Give talks about your specialty in schools, churches, libraries, local groups, etc. Ugh. Personally, I’d rather give myself a Brazilian wax than than give talks about writing. I love to talk about writing and blogging, but I don’t want to give a talk about it.
5. Teach classes or offer workshops. Ditto, but at least you could get paid.
6. Offer products or services related to your niche. Just last night, I read that one blogger makes and sells his own t-shirts online.
7. Participate in online communities and forums, focusing on building your writing platform, but still offering thoughtful comments and helpful information.
8. Sell or donate articles or bits of your book to magazines, newspapers, or newsletters. Writing for free can be a great way to build your writing platform.
9. Conduct focus groups or send out surveys to convince publishers that your idea has merit and will sell. This will build your writing platform by providing you with tangible support.
10. Ask an organization to commit to buying a hundred or so copies of your published book – and include their letter of commitment with your book proposal.
The idea is to get your name and writing out there as much as possible. Publicity begets publicity, writing begets writing, getting published begets getting published, books beget books…
Fellow scribes, do you have a writer’s platform? Is it a necessary evil of a writer’s life…or the best part of getting published?
Want to make your blog "sticky", so visitors stay longer? Try this beta "Click and Stick" program -- it's free!
But before you can entice visitors to stick to your blog, you need to learn a bit of search engine optimization. Scribe SEO offers information for web writers, bloggers, and affiliate marketers.
And, to find more freelance writing and editing jobs, consider joining GoFreelance.
I interviewed a writer just...
Afi Scruggs | Feb 3, 2009 | Reply
I keep asking this question. If I do all of the above and build a platform, why should I submit a manuscript to a publisher?
Why don’t write the manuscript, do a print-on-demand or ebook, and sell books to the audience I’ve created?
Laurie PK | Feb 3, 2009 | Reply
Thanks for your question, Afi. If you ask 10 different writers, I suspect you’ll get 14 different answers! Here’s what I think:
Regardless of the size of my platform, I’d rather go with a traditional publisher because I don’t want to take on the marketing, selling, distributing, etc that e-books or self-published books demand. (Though I am well aware that even traditional publishers require their writers to market their own books!). Plus, I want the weight of a big company like Penguin or McGraw Hill behind me. And, I think publishers offer additional exposure and opportunities, which you don’t have as an indie publisher.
There’s a writer in my writing group who self-published her first book. Though she doesn’t regret it, she’s now looking for an agent and traditional publisher for her second book. Self-publishing seems to be its own business — and as a writer, I don’t want to get involved in the business and marketing end, any more than I have to.
That’s just me — I do know other writers who love self-publishing — to each his own!
Laurie