Your author platform helps you find readers and helps readers find you

Reading time: 2 minutes, 38 seconds

Author Platform. They say you need one if you hope to:

• self-publish your memoir, or
• find an agent, or
• find a publisher, or
• sell your memoir to more than your immediate family. (If you plan to publish only a few copies for family and friends, you probably don’t need an author platform.)

“You can’t assume that the act of printing a book equates to developing a sizable readership,” says Dan Blank.

He’s right. You develop a significant readership—in other words, you sell books—by establishing an author platform which connects you with people and builds relationships.

A platform gives you visibility. It gives you an audience.

Let’s flip this coin over: 

Rather than look what you need, let’s look at what readers need. Did you read Tuesday’s post?

In it, Dianne E. Butts wrote that people:

“need to hear what you have to say, or . . .

need to know what you know. . . .

Write for them. Reach out to them.

Work to reach them with your words.

You will make a difference in their lives. . . .

And isn’t that really why we write?”

Your author platform is how you reach out to them and make a difference in their lives.

So, working hard on your author platform can be a win-win for both you and your readers.

It helps you find people, and it helps people find you—

• people who are interested in your story,
• people who will buy your memoir,
• people who will tell others about it.

But first, a message platform:

Dan Balow, blogging at the Steve Laube Agency, says that a message platform is “the first step for developing the author platform.”

A message platform, he says, “must be in place before you get a website, Facebook Page or start a social media effort.”

Authors who don’t have a good message platform “will be frustrated and discouraged when trying to assemble a large number of devoted social media followers,” he says.

If you’re confused about the difference between a message platform and an author platform, Dan explains it this way:

“Message Platform + media = Author Platform”

What we need, he says, is “a consistent message, delivered creatively, one that attracts readers and followers and meets the expectations they have for you.”

Learn more about developing a message platform by studying Dan Balow’s three blog posts:

Author Platforms 101, Part One: Message Platform

Author Platforms 201, Part Two: Consistency

Author Platforms 301, Part Three: Customer Service

Next, your author platform:

Sarah Bolme offers detailed advice for developing your author platform, which she defines this way:

“Having a platform simply means that you have an audience—a group of people—who listen to what you have to say . . . because you are saying something different from everyone else, something that resonates with them.

“As a result,” she says, “these people trust you and share your message with others. When this happens, you develop influence with this group of people.”

“To be effective at building a platform,” Sarah continues, “you must first identify who your target audience is and what your unique spin on your topic is.”

You’ll want to read Sarah’s post, Do You Have a Platform? and answer questions in the following categories:

• WHO is your target audience?
• WHAT is your unique message?
• WHERE will you hold your audience?
• HOW will you build your platform?

Sarah gives this final advice: “Don’t rush out to start building a platform . . . until you have identified who your target audience is and what makes your message different from all the others out there on the topic.

“You can’t get to your destination if you don’t know where you want to go,” she says.

Dan Blank offers additional help in his post, The First Steps to Building an Author Platform:

• Understanding your Goals
• Identifying Your Brand (including how you represent your authentic self, how your personality makes you unique, and how your brand can be visual)
• Understanding Who Your Audience is and What Motivates Them

Don’t miss Dan’s post! It’s packed with valuable, insightful info. 

Brace yourself—

building a platform is lots of work!

But you can also think of it as

“the expansion of your passion for telling your story,”

writes Matilda Butler at Women’s Memoirs.

I like that!

Tuesday Tidbit: Do you know what an author platform is?

Reading time: 10 seconds

Last week I asked, Do you know what an author platform is?

Here's a quote to get you thinking about your author platform:

buttsaboutwriting.blogspot.com

Come back Thursday for :

• an in-depth look at what an author platform is, 
• why you need one, 
• and how to get started developing yours.

An opportunity to publish your big truths

Reading time: 49 seconds

“We are looking for your big truths,” the announcement read. Dinty Moore of Brevity Magazine had shared it on Facebook.

And here’s what he wants us to know:

Little Fiction Big Truths is inviting us to submit brief stories for their first ever “Flash Nonfiction” publication.

“Be brave, be bold, be fierce, be you,” Little Fiction Big Truths writes. (I love that, don’t you?)

“As per usual, we like nonfiction that isn’t afraid to break our hearts, that takes chances, and introduces us to new worlds and different perspectives.”

They’re looking for short pieces of only 1000 words—creative nonfiction, memoirs, and essays—and it must be previously unpublished.

Submission deadline: March 31, 2019, at midnight.

I have a hunch some of you have already written something you could spiff up and submit.

If not, you have until the end of March to write and polish a piece to submit.

Check out the details at their post, Call for Submissions: Flash Nonfiction Issue.

Share your big truths!

Be brave, be bold, be fierce, be you!

And if you submit something,

be sure to let us know here at SM 101!

P.S. When your work appears in publications like this, it helps build your author platform.

Do you know what an author platform is?

Come back next week! I’ll tell you about it!

Tuesday Tidbit: “The 100 Best Websites for Writers in 2019”

Reading time: 39 seconds

I’m excited to point you to a whole bunch of excellent resources!

No matter how new—or not—you are to writing, you’ll find a wealth of instruction and inspiration from among these 100 websites.

I follow a number of them and—Wow! What valuable resources they have been for me over the years!

Dana Sitar has organized her long list into the following categories:

• freelancing
• inspiration
• writing tools
• blogging
• creativity and craft
• editing
• podcasts
• marketing and platform building
• writing communities
• publishing

Set aside some quality time to scroll through Dana’s list and get acquainted with a number of these websites.

Some won't be of interest to you, but you’ll definitely find gems that could make a huge difference in your writing journey.

And this is important to remember: Websites aimed at novelists can also offer helpful tips for those writing nonfiction (memoir, creative nonfiction). Look into them!

Among many other valuable links you'll find there, check out Manuela Williams’ post, Using Fiction Writing Techniques to Enhance Your Creative Nonfiction. (Memoir falls in the creative nonfiction category.)

There you have it, your Tuesday Tidbit.

Happy Writing!

Fun writing contests for you!

Have you ever entered a writing contest? If not, give it a try!

“You don’t have to be an expert or published in [your] genre or have entered a lot of contests, you just have to try,” says Angela at WoW (Women on Writing). “You may think your writing is not good enough or other things your inner critic may whisper in your ear, but the truth is if you don’t put yourself out there, consistently, you’ll never know.”

A couple of years ago I invited you to enter a First Paragraph contest hosted by Pamela at Women’s Memoirs.

Did you participate?

I submitted an entry and—whoa! Women’s Memoirs honored me with a Silver Award! (Click on Silver Award to read more about it.) In Pamela’s post announcing the Silver Award recipients, she included each person’s paragraph and gave a brief critique of each.

Reading the other submissions and Pamela’s comments further educated me about fine-tuning that all-important opening paragraph. Click on First Paragraph Silver Winners Revealed for your own enrichment.

But let’s get back to YOU. If YOU have never participated in a writing contest, please give it serious thought.

Here’s an opportunity for you: WoW—Women on Writing—hosts quarterly creative nonfiction writing contests. The next deadline is October 31, 2017. Check here to learn more.  

Don’t miss Chelsey Clammer’s post, Writing Contests: You Have Nothing to Lose. She lists reasons most of us talk ourselves out of entering a writing contest. And then she points out, “Someone has to win…. Contests are created so someone wins, and you are someone.”

And even if you don’t win, Chelsey shares this wisdom: “Contests aren’t about who wins…. When we enter a contest knowing that we probably aren’t going to win, it is at that exact moment when we hit ‘submit’ that we know contests aren’t about who wins.”

She goes on to list what writing contests are all about, things like believing in your writing, meeting a deadline, and resisting the thought that your writing is about a dollar amount.

Chelsey concludes with this encouragement: “…there is one thing you’re guaranteed to obtain with each contest submission: just by believing in yourself enough to enter, you’ve already won.”  Click on Writing Contests: You Have Nothing to Lose to read Chelsey’s post.

Click here to download Women on Writing’s PDF about word count, deadline, guidelines, etc.

In The Ultimate Guide to Finding Christian Writing Contests, Jerry Jenkins offers lots of tips and wisdom, and also lists the following contests:

• The Write Life, 31 Free Writing Contests: Legitimate Competitions with Cash Prizes
• Poets and Writers  
• The Christian Writer’s Market Guide  
• Writer’s Market 2017  

And I have more opportunities for you! Click here to find lists of additional nonfiction writing contests at The Writer Magazine.

Take note: Beware of scams! Kelly Gurnett urges this caution: “Some legitimate contests do charge a small entry fee or ‘reading’ fee, but often a fee can be a red flag or a scam….” (Read about one such scam in Kelly’s blog post.) 

Jerry Jenkins recommends checking with Writer Beware to help you determine if a contest is legitimate.  

Do consider entering writing contests.

In the process,

you’ll improve your writing, editing, and proofreading skills,

and if you win, or even get an honorable mention,

the publicity helps build your platform.

God has given you stories to tell.

They’re important.

Others need to read them.

Write your stories.

Do you have an author platform?

If you plan to publish only a few copies of your memoir for family and friends, you probably don’t need a platform.

But if you hope to (1) self-publish your memoir, or (2) find an agent, or (3) find a publisher, (4) and sell your memoir, you need an author platform.

“You can’t assume that the act of printing a book equates to developing a sizable readership,” says Dan Blank.  “[T]oo many writers cannot see beyond the publication of their book.” That means you need a platform.

A platform helps you connect with people, to establish relationships with them.

A platform gives you visibility, an audience. It helps people find you—

• people who will be interested in your story,
• people who will buy your memoir,
• people who will tell others about it.

Dan Balow, blogging at the Steve Laube Agency, says that a "message platform” is “the first step for developing the author platform….” A message platform, he says, “must be in place before you get a website, Facebook page or start a social media effort.”

“Unless an author has a clear message platform,” he says, “they will be frustrated and discouraged when trying to assemble a large number of devoted social media followers.” 

Dan explains that a message platform differs from an author platform in this way:

“Message Platform + media = Author Platform.

So, with that in mind, we must first build a message platform, which we accomplish, Dan says, with “a consistent message, delivered creatively, one that attracts readers and followers and meets the expectations they have for you.”  

Dan also points out that “Most authors have no idea what their message platform is until someone else tells them. If you try to figure it out yourself, you are engaging in a form of self-deception. We never see ourselves as others see us. Ask someone who will be honest. Don’t ask close friends or family. They will be nice and usually agree with whatever you say.”

If you want to develop a message platform, study Dan Balow’s three blog posts:

Author Platforms 101—Part One—Message Platform 

Author Platforms 201—Part Two—Consistency 

Author Platforms 301—Part Three—Customer Service

Sarah Bolme offers detailed advice for developing your author platform, which she defines this way: “Having a platform simply means that you have an audience—a group of people—who listen to what you have to say.... because you are saying something different from everyone else, something that resonates with them. As a result, these people trust you and share your message with others. When this happens, you develop influence with this group of people.”

“To be effective at building a platform,” Sarah continues, “you must first identify who your target audience is and what your unique spin on your topic is.”

You’ll want to read Sarah’s post, Do You Have a Platform? and get to work answering questions in the following categories: 

• WHO is your target audience?
• WHAT is your unique message?
• WHERE will you hold your audience?
• HOW will you build your platform?

Sarah gives this final advice: “Don’t rush out to start building a platform (developing an audience) until you have identified who your target audience is and what makes your message different from all the others out there on the topic. You can’t get to your destination if you don’t know where you want to go.” 

Dan Blank offers additional help in his post, The First Steps to Building an Author Platform. 

He covers detailed information about the following first steps in developing your author platform:

• Understanding Your Goals
• Identifying Your Brand (including how you represent your authentic self, how your personality makes you unique, and how your brand can be visual)
• Understanding Who Your Audience Is and What Motivates Them

Don’t miss Dan’s post! It’s packed with valuable, insightful info for you. Click on The First Steps to Building an Author Platform.

Brace yourself—

building a platform is a lot of work!

But you can also think of it as

“the expansion of your passion for telling your story,”

writes Matilda Butler at Women’s Memoirs.

I like that!

Three writing opportunities for you

In writing vignettes for your memoir, some of you have written stories worthy of a broader audience.

Others might be looking for ways to strengthen your platform.*

If so, today I have three opportunities for you.

Dena Dyer, writer, editor at The High Calling,* and lover of all things literary, is collecting 500-word stories from contemporary women who've been healed in various ways—emotionally, spiritually, physically, or mentally. Based on “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds,” (Psalm 147:3), the book—and a companion women’s retreat—will be released in 2013 from Kregel Publishing.

Dena says, “We need LOTS of material from others. I'd love to see anything you want to send. You don’t have to be a great writer—I can adapt and edit your story while keeping your thoughts and voice.…” Read more at Help Me with my Book (please?) at

http://denadyer.typepad.com/my_weblog/2011/10/a-writing-opportunity-help-me-with-my-book-please-.html

Over at 1^st Writes, Pam encourages submissions to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series of books. She credits the enormous success of these books to “writers like you and me, who contribute wonderful stories of ‘inspiration, hope, overcoming life’s challenges, and realized dreams.’” Find out more at http://1stwrites.blogspot.com/2011/10/1st-mentions_29.html

Here’s an opportunity for—ahem—seasoned folks to participate with David Brooks, currently with the New York Times and the PBS Newshour. In his recent New York Times article, he writes:

“If you are over 70, I’d like to ask for a gift. I’d like you to write a brief report on your life so far, an evaluation of what you did well, of what you did not so well and what you learned along the way.…

“…I’ll write a few columns about them around Thanksgiving and post as many essays as possible online.

“I ask for this gift for two reasons.

“First, we have few formal moments of self-appraisal in our culture. Occasionally, on a big birthday people will take a step back and try to form a complete picture of their lives, but we have no regular rite of passage prompting them to do so.

“More important, these essays will be useful to the young. Young people are educated in many ways, but they are given relatively little help in understanding how a life develops, how careers and families evolve, what are the common mistakes and the common blessings of modern adulthood. These essays will help them benefit from your experience.…” Continue reading The Life Report at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/opinion/brooks-the-life-report.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Please pray about these opportunities.

Remember, your stories are important! *

You have stories only you can tell.

Your stories are not your own. They have been entrusted to you by God.

People need to hear them.

Be sure to check out Cecil Murphey’s new 50-part series on writing. He’s a hugely successful author with a wealth of expertise. You’ll find a link to his blog here in the right column.

*Resources:

What is a platform?  http://womensmemoirs.com/memoir-writing-book-business/memoir-marketing-your-platform-and-the-statue-of-liberty

Your stories are important:  http://spiritualmemoirs101.blogspot.com/2011/05/are-your-stories-important.html

The High Calling: http://www.thehighcalling.org/