Creating a Platform & Selling Books
One author turned her cancelled wedding into a successful book and a new career. Another author's platform - almost publicity-free - has made him one of the most well-known experts in his field after ten books in only seven years. How did they do it?
Take a look at how Rachel Safier and Carl McColman created their platforms.
Advertisments
Feature
You've Gotta Have a Gimmick
The Truth About Author Platforms
It’s a phrase we’ve all heard a million times. But it’s also a show-stopping tune from the Broadway musical (and later, the movie), Gypsy, in which a bunch of strippers teach the young Gypsy Rose Lee that it’s not enough to take your clothes off…that’s right, you’ve gotta have a gimmick!Well, I don’t know about that.
Ask any red-blooded, heterosexual male if he’d ever refuse to watch a woman take her clothes off because she didn’t have a gimmick.
Unfortunately, publishing has become the new strip show.
Credentials aren’t enough. Talent isn’t enough. Now you need a platform…you’ve gotta have a gimmick. That’s the bad news. The good news is that very few books need the platform of celebrity, or even fame within a certain market, to get published.
WHAT’S A PLATFORM? Your platform is your network, your accomplishments, your place in the world, your degree of notoriety among the general public or a specific market, your previous media and/or target market exposure…all of which become your publicity and sales angle that a publisher expects you to have so you can promote your book and reach out to your target readers with little help from the publisher.
Ironically, those authors with the best platforms – big celebrities – get the most promotion from their publishers, even though those celebrity authors really need the least help from their publishers.
It didn’t use to be this way. Platform as the determining factor in getting published is a recent phenomenon that grew in the ‘90s and is now firmly in place. Publishers make exceptions to the platform rule all the time, if they want to. And this ridiculous focus on platform begs the question: How many great books go unpublished for lack of a platform?
When you read a great book review or recommendation, it’s not filled with praise for the writer’s platform. It’s all about how wonderful the book is. The same goes for when someone recommends a book to you. Only the publisher’s marketing department cares about a writer’s platform. Readers, reviewers, and believe it or not, even the media, don’t give a rat’s ass about platform.
SO, WHAT DOES THE MEDIA CARE ABOUT? The media has been taught to care – by the publishers – about only one thing: what the publishers care about, what the publishers are putting their money and time into, and that’s their lead titles. Especially the major publishers’ lead titles. The media automatically covers them, even if the book is by a first-time novelist or a non-fiction author with a limited platform or no platform.
Anything less gets less media attention. Often little, if any. That’s because it’s about power. The big companies have it. The smaller companies don’t. The majors get the lion’s share of the media attention. The independents don’t. The lead titles have more power than the midlist titles. The lead titles will get more publicity, so the midlist author must draw upon the power of his or her platform to get attention, to spread the word to potential readers. That’s why platform is even more important to the midlist author than the lead title author.
When your book is a lead title, your platform automatically expands. When a publisher invests so much money and time in promoting your lead title book, from costly publicity to expensive marketing strategies, such as advertising and in-store displays, the publisher is also, in effect, now creating an expanded platform for you after you’ve already been published. That platform is: “Here’s the author we’re promoting a lot, the one we’re making a star!” Even if you had little or no platform before, now you have the platform of “famous author,” sometimes literally overnight. It’s also about money: the major publishers have the big bucks to devote to promoting that select group of books they call their lead titles. The independents have fewer financial resources to do that.
HOW DOES ALL OF THIS WORK FOR AUTHORS WHO ARE WITH INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS? Because independent publishers get less attention for their books, even lead titles, than the major publishers, platform can be even more important when you’re pitching your book to an independent publisher. Your ability to promote your book, use your ties to a certain segment of the reading market in order to help generate publicity and sales, and network via your platform, becomes even more valuable to the publisher, who will always be working with less power and a smaller marketing and publicity budget than the major publishers have.
WHAT KIND OF PLATFORM DO I NEED? That all depends upon what kind of book you want to write. It also depends on what your career goals are.
To sell your book to a publisher, you don’t need the platform of a Hollywood celebrity, newsmaker, famous self-help author, business tycoon, political pundit, or Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist or novelist, unless you want to be one of those.
Just because famous people are offered book contracts doesn’t mean you have to be famous to get a book published. Go to the bookstore, go on Amazon.com, and see for yourself that most books are not authored by celebrities or famous newsmakers, they’re authored by somebody who had a good idea for a book, the ability to research and write it (or the help of a ghostwriter), and enough of a platform or gimmick to help the publisher market and promote the book. AUTHOR/PERSONALITY DRIVEN VS. TOPIC DRIVEN BOOKS: Is the book an author/personality-driven book or a topic-driven book? The answer to that will determine what kind of platform the author needs to sell the book to a publisher.
Are people going to be most interested in buying the book simply because it’s written by a particular person? If so, then it’s an author/personality-driven book: a famous novelist’s latest, a famous self-help author’s latest, a pop star’s memoir or first children’s book…you get the idea.
The platform for these books is that you are either 1) already a famous novelist or non-fiction author, or 2) a famous celebrity or newsmaker, and now publishers want you to do a book.
Want to be a famous novelist? Then, create that platform: write your novel, get it published, then write another and another, all the while wooing the literary community and the public. Want to be a famous non-fiction author like Dr. Phil, Deepak Chopra, or Donald Trump? Then create that platform: become an expert at something, go on the lecture circuit, hire a publicist to splash you all over the media, then land your first book, and your next and your next. Want to get a book deal because you’re a celebrity? Then become an actor, singer, dancer, outrageous heiress, Playboy centerfold, comedian, director, politician, a famous person’s mistress, the victim of a well-publicized catastrophe…you get the idea…and a publisher will come calling.
Are people going to be most interested in buying the book because of the topic, the information in the book? If so, then it’s a topic-driven book. You can create a platform for a topic-driven book out of a variety of components.
THE COMPONENTS OF A PLATFORM: Your platform is the aspects of your resume – your professional and personal experiences – that have brought you, and can continue to bring you, the attention of readers who will be interested in buying your book. Your platform is your network, your pipeline to potential readers.
Publicity is the public attention you receive via the print, broadcast or widespread internet media. But, publicity is only one component of a platform, and it doesn’t have to be the largest component. Your platform can be created with little or no publicity when you go directly to your target market via one or more of the following:
THE “NO PLATFORM” PLATFORM: Yes, you can get an agent and sell your book to an independent or major publisher with little or no platform. Sometimes, the lack of platform becomes a platform, a gimmick to promote a lead title.
“Look at this fabulous new author we’ve just discovered!” the publisher announces. It doesn’t matter if it’s fiction or non-fiction, every year publishers need the gimmick of discovering somebody “new.” Even if that so-called new author has been toiling away for years writing for literary journals or magazines and newspapers. “New” to a publisher just means you aren’t a household name yet.
Another “no platform” platform is when a publisher actually buys a book solely on its merits for a change. The publisher makes it a lead title and creates the “We fell in love with this masterpiece!” gimmick. Once the publisher begins to promote your book, you have yourself a platform: genius author.
THE ONLY REASON A PUBLISHER WANTS AN AUTHOR TO HAVE A PLATFORM: So the publisher doesn’t have to devote much time and money to promoting the book, and so the author’s platform can help generate sales and publicity even more than any effort the publishing company may make. Your platform is often a big part of why you landed an agent and a publisher in the first place.
It used to be that having your book published could make you well known.
Now, you have to be well known, or at least well connected in some circles, in order to get the book contract.
You probably won’t want to do this, however, by taking off your clothes.
* * * * * *
Nina L. Diamond is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Omni, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.
Ms. Diamond was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, for its entire run in Miami and select markets nationwide from 1984-1998. As an editor, she works frequently with other authors and journalists on both fiction and non-fiction.