The Author’s Platform
Image: www.sleuthedit.com
By now we’re pretty sure we want an Author’s Platform, even if we don’t have a book to sell yet. Actually, building your platform is especially important if you do not yet have a book ready. The longer you wait to get yourself established in the world the longer you will have to wait to see any real success.
Fine. But what does an Author’s Platform actually look like? Is there some kind of template? Is there a required look and feel?
Good questions.
Let’s start by comparing a website with a blog.
Some folks will say that there is a very great difference between the two types of web presence. Others will disagree.
I’m kind of in the middle. While a website may not be a blog, a blog is certainly a website. By definition any individual web presence you have is a website. Individual means privately, or at least semi-privately branded.
Do Facebook, Myspace, Twitter or accounts on an on-line resources like GoodReads or WEbook count? Well, they help, but they don’t fit the bill entirely. Why? Because they require accounts. They force you into one specific—or a restricted number—of formats. Also, as a writer you share a brand with the host.
Image: www.authorauthorshreveport.com
This is not to say there is no value in Social Networking when it comes to writing. Getting the word out about your work, no matter how you do it, is worthwhile.
What, then, is the difference between a conventional website and a blog? A website is (mostly) static and a blog is (mostly) dynamic. The examples I give at the end of this post are types of Author’s Platforms that are clearly hybrids of static and dynamic sites.
We will get deeper into the steps of creating your platform in a future post. For now, take a look at the website/blog hybrids that are used by some famous writers:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio... and isn't it time you experienced some of them?
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A platform then is a strategy for advertisment. Unless you have a known name, what would be the methods for advertising the advertisement? If you just have a book title on Google, (I do) then it is a matter of chance who if anyone runs across your ‘site’, even if they are advertising that it’s a free read. I’m particularly wondering, if having an audience would at this time be an incentive to pick up the novel again and start writing….. After all the theme knowledge is power is a good one.
Loreen
There are methods for advertising your site, for making you more visible to Google and Yahoo/Bing. We’ll get into those down the line.
Thanks Richard. You always come through. Actually I’m not worried that it’s been ‘picked up’ the way it has been, and is free. You never know what might develop from what. I know you twitter, etc. for contacts, by the way. But I’m rather a ‘limited blogger’, etc. etc. etc. So I’ll go with what I can get.
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