B Plot
Building An Author’s Platform
It’s tough being an author. Even if you write a perfect book that every reader loves, you may sell only a handful of copies. This is not because you are unlucky. It’s because you don’t have an author’s platform.
Just in case you don’t believe me, here’s an example from literary history. Back in 1846, three unknown young ladies self-published a poetry anthology titled Poems, by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. This carefully collated work of accomplished poetry only sold 3 copies.
Today, those same poems are studied in detail in high schools and universities across the world and have become the subject of many doctoral theses. Why? Because Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë later published bestselling novels, and their author’s platform expanded exponentially.
What is an Author’s Platform?
An author’s platform is a collective term for the goodwill accumulated by a writer. If you’re an accountant or familiar with fiscal terms, you’ll understand what I mean by this. Otherwise, let me explain.
A new author does not have an existing fanbase. They are an unknown commodity. This makes them unattractive to publishers and agents because they may invest money in publishing the author’s books and make a loss.
A published author who has successfully sold books has a fanbase. If they release another book, it is likely that people who enjoyed their previous books will buy their next one. The more successful books this author releases, the bigger their fanbase, and the easier it is for them to sell more books.
So, success breeds success. The established author is a safer investment for publishers and attractive to agents. As a business, that author has what an accountant calls goodwill. But if this is the case, how can a new author ever catch a break?
Building an Author’s Platform
An author’s platform consists of more than a fanbase of readers who have read previous books. It also extends to an author’s social networking accounts, their website visitors, and book reviews.
Quite often an author will have contacts through social networking who have never read one of their books. Despite being unfamiliar with previous books, that contact will still promote their future books for their own reasons.
An established website with a high DA (domain authority) and PA (page authority) provides another platform for marketing your new novel.
Book Reviews are ESSENTIAL to increasing an author’s platform. When somebody is considering buying your book on Amazon or another platform, they will often skip the blurb and hit the review section to find out what other people said about your book.
If you have no reviews on the platform, this puts potential readers off. But if you have lots of reviews with an average of 4 out of 5 stars or higher, you’re likely to sell a book. That’s why you need to get readers to review your book as part of your author’s platform.
Social Networking
If you have never published a book in your life, you can still open accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and other social networking sites. These are all free to join and make great networking tools.
I focus on Twitter because I find it easy to navigate and gain followers. And, more importantly, I have met people on there with similar goals to myself who are willing to work together with me to our mutual benefit. If you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m @TheRomanceBloke.
The same principles apply to any social networking platform, and many find Instagram a great place for writers. For some reasons, a lot of publishers like their authors to have Facebook Author pages. These are easy to set up and completely free. I have one, though I rarely use it.
It’s not easy to start from zero on a social networking site, but it’s not impossible. I opened my Twitter account in December 2020 but didn’t send out my first tweet until sometime in January 2021. At the beginning of January, I had zero followers. By mid-May, I had over 7,300.
Many of my followers have over 50,000 followers of their own and regularly retweet my tweets. That is why my Tweet Impressions for the last 28 days stands at 626,000. This means that my tweets have been viewed over half a million times in the past month. That’s a lot of potential readers for any books I publish in future.
How do you gain followers?
The same basic principles apply to all social media platforms. To become popular, you must interact with other members of the writing and reading community and offer them something of value.
Since you are mainly interested in finding readers for your books, you should focus on book-related posts. What I mainly offer in my posts are links to articles about writing, publishing, book marketing, and book reviews.
Instead of posting links to the same article ten times a day, I have built up a portfolio of articles and book reviews that I rotate so that there are different articles featured on my profile every day.
But interaction is key. By regularly retweeting/sharing the posts of other members of the writing community, I am helping them to market their books and products. Because I am helping them, they are more inclined to help me.
I also offer to publish guest posts on my website. I invite other members of the writing community to write articles about their books, products, or writing techniques. These guest articles help those authors to market their books.
I usually keep a link to one of these guest articles as my pinned tweet on my Twitter platform. This not only promotes the guest author, but it also directs people to visit my website and encourages more book readers and authors to follow me on Twitter. For me, it’s a win-win situation.
Website
Many authors’ websites are white elephants. If you check out their DA and PA scores, they’re around DA 1 and PA 1. But what does that mean?
Domain authority (DA) is a measure of how authoritative a website is. A higher DA means that the website is respected as a source of information within its speciality. Page authority (PA) is a measure of how likely it is that a page on that website will rank high in a Google search.
The DA and PA range is between 1 and 100 for all websites, but few sites come close to 100. Wikipedia, for example, stands at DA 93 and PA 81. An established publisher like Penguin UK has a high DA and PA. Penguin’s scores are DA 73 and PA 63.
When you start a new website, you begin with DA 1 and PA 1. That means that it is unlikely anyone will visit your website without being invited to do so. They won’t stumble across your website in a Google search. If you want to get noticed, you need to improve your DA and PA.
To increase DA and PA, you need to publish new articles on your website on a regular basis. You also need to attract readers to view these articles, and you need other websites to build links to those articles on your website. The more visitors that come to your website and the more links that are constructed, the higher your DA and PA will grow.
I have divided my website into different areas for different kinds of articles. I have a Book Reviews tab for storing all my book reviews, an Articles tab for the writing-and-book-related articles that I have authored, and an Experts Opinion tab for the guest articles written by authors I have met via social networking. This makes it easy for my website visitors to navigate and find what they want to see.
The Cost of a Website
Unfortunately, you have to pay to set up a website. However, it’s not as expensive as you might think. You need two things: the software and a host. You can get the software for free from corporations like Wordpress but you must pay for the hosting, which is the place where all your website’s information is stored and processed when you run a site.
I paid around US$90 for a 3-year deal with HostGator for my hosting and then imported WordPress software for free. Shop around and never pay the full price. There are always ads that offer a discount on hosting at various hosts if you use their discount code. If you want to keep setup costs minimal, you can get hosting for a year for less than $40.
The biggest expense on your website growth and maintenance is your time. Websites don’t grow on their own. You have to write articles and post them. If others write articles for you, you still have to format and post those.
Book Reviews
As I said earlier, book reviews on Amazon and other platforms are an essential part of your author’s platform. When you are planning to publish a book, it’s a good idea to hand out a few Advanced Review Copies (ARC) to people you are confident will read your book and write reviews.
The authors and readers you’ve connected with through social networking are ideal candidates to read and review your ARCs. If you’re previously read and reviewed their books, they’re even more likely to agree to read and review your ARC.
There are also organisations like Reedsy Discovery, Book Sirens, and Book Bub who will distribute your ARCs to readers who promise to read and review your book in exchange for a fee. Now, it’s always better if you can get your ARCs read and reviewed for free. But these services do help you to gain more reviews quickly if your “volunteers” fail to deliver.
I have found writing book reviews to be one of the best ways of quickly making new friends in the Writing Community. Authors love to receive reviews, especially if it’s clear you’ve actually read their books and noticed what they did. On Twitter, authors have become much warmer to me and likely to retweet my tweets after I’ve reviewed their books.
My Final Word
After reading this article, I hope you understand why building an author’s platform is so important for new authors. Don’t be daunted. Anyone can build an author’s platform.
I would advise you to avoid the temptation of publishing your book before you’ve built an author’s platform. No matter how good your book is, you will most likely be disappointed by a low level of sales.
Once you’ve established a loyal author’s platform, you should find it much easier to get volunteers to read your ARCs and even find customers who buy your books. The larger your author’s platform, the more likely you are to publish a successful book.
Also, if you dream of traditional publishing, agents and publishers will be much more interested in your unpublished manuscript if you can demonstrate to them that you have a huge author’s platform. An established website with a high DA and PA alongside a social media account that shows you have thousands of followers will go a long way toward you receiving that elusive acceptance letter.
Thank you Robert Baker for your guest post on Building an Author's Platform.
Robert Baker — The Romance Bloke @TheRomanceBloke
Robert is the founder of The Romance Bloke, a website devoted to romance book reviews and articles about books and writing.
He passionate about reading and creative writing. He has published short stories and poetry in magazines, such as the ASP Literary Journal, Open Door Magazine and Meet Cute Press. He is frequently found hanging out on Writing.Com with other wannabe authors.
Robert is a freelance content writer and website manager. He has written informational articles, reviews, and blogs for a wide range of online businesses in the fields of travel, health, technology, and outdoor adventure.
When he is not reading or writing, he loves traveling with his family and horseback riding. Robert is also on the judging panel for the Book Bloggers’ Novel of the Year Awards 2021.