The term “author platform” has become THE buzzword in the publishing industry over the last decade. A platform can be the deciding factor in whether an agent takes on an author, or whether or not an author is offered a publishing contract. It’s a big deal—and it rarely materializes without strategic thought and elbow grease.
What is an author platform, exactly?
An "author platform" is an author’s accumulated audience. The online portion of an author platform encompasses website traffic, video views, email newsletter subscribers, and social media followers. It could extend to students in any online courses, followers on your Goodreads and Amazon pages, or writing sites like Wattpad or Medium. If you write columns for other websites or news outlets, that counts towards your author platform as well.
Your author platform is what agents, publishers, reviewers, bookstore owners, speakers bureaus, and book buyers see when they search for you.
It is what readers and fans will share with others and post about on their own social media.
What does every author platform need?
At a minimum, your author platform should be:
Visible—you should have a website, a social media presence, an Amazon author page, or someplace that you can share for people to see your biography and your work.
Searchable—you should pop up when your name is searched on Google.
Active—even if you just post once a month, try not to let it look like an abandoned ghost town.
Representative—people should be able to get an idea of who you are and what you write within the first few minutes of discovering you.
Here are five essential elements that every author platform needs.
Your Name(s). The first thing that most agents, publishers, and editors will do when they come across a new author is to do a quick web search. A search of your name should bring up your website, social media channels, and your body of work, on the first page of search results.
If you write under a pen name, you can either build up an author platform for each pen name or make sure that you just explain and describe the connection between your author personas on your website and social media. There’s not really one “right” way to do this—but keep in mind that maintaining multiple author platforms and social channels can be time-consuming.
Links to Buy Your Books. Make it easy for people to buy your books! Put the bookstore links front and center on your website or pinned to the top of your social channels, and share the links frequently on social media (check your website and social media from time to time with a newcomers eyes’ and make sure that it’s simple to find and buy your books). Include links to your books at the bottom of your blog posts, and on the homepage of your website.
Support Your Community. Your author platform should strengthen your ties to your community! Whether it’s linking out to your friends’ published pieces from your website, or sharing op-eds and new books on your Facebook or Twitter feeds—you can use your author platform to celebrate and connect with others. This will benefit you, by creating warm relationships for swaps, and provide interesting content for your readers!
Your Personality and Expertise. Let your personality shine through in your author platform. If you love yoga, art, cigars, your children… if you’re an historian, a teacher, or if you’re wonderful at outlining novels—these are all opportunities for you to create connections with readers.
A Target Reader. It’s helpful to have a target reader in mind when you build your author platform. It helps you stay consistent with your tone and the types of things you share. Ask yourself:
How old is your reader?
What other authors’ books do they read?
Where do they shop?
What news sources do they trust?
When you incorporate these elements and build your platform a bit at a time, you’ll end up presenting a strong online presence to the agents, editors, and publishers who want to get to know you—and you’ll attract more readers and sell more books over time.
*This post was written in collaboration with creative coach Anne M. Carley chenillebooks.com