What I would<\/em> like to talk about is the big trend in book publishing, the author platform.<\/p>\n First off all, what is<\/em> the author platform?<\/p>\n Michael Hyatt, the guy who literally wrote a book about the subject\u2014Platform: How to Get Noticed in a Noisy World\u2014<\/em>puts it like this:<\/p>\n \u201cVery simply, a platform is the thing you have to stand on to get heard. It\u2019s your stage. But unlike a stage in the theater, today\u2019s platform is built of people. Contacts. Connections. Followers.\u201d<\/p>\n How did we get to this place?<\/p>\n Just yesterday, it seems, J.D. Salinger was holing up in his house, escaping the glaring eye of public scrutiny\u2014and now we have that hideous, terrifying thing, that new buzzword tossed about by all the big publishers, the unwelcome and hard to obtain entrance pass that will allow us to enter the gates of the publishing world\u2014you guessed it, the author platform.<\/p>\n As if us literary types were performers, too!<\/p>\n But does this Hyatt guy have a point?<\/p>\n Say you\u2019ve just finished typing out the last of twenty revisions on your novel. You\u2019ve sent out pleading query letters with the first few chapters, and agents say they like your work, but they have hesitations. Who would buy this book? It doesn\u2019t have a market.<\/p>\n Perhaps you slouch over to your computer in despair, plant your face in front of the screen, and begin the mindless, soul-consuming scroll through past acquaintances on Facebook.<\/p>\n A story pops up on your news feed\u2014a blog post by a boy you knew way back when you were getting your MFA. So many years since then, and yet a bowl of Cheerios still remains your cost-effective nightly sustenance.<\/p>\n You\u2019re bored, so you click on the post. You’re redirected to the MFA guy’s blog, where he’s busy telling people how to get their books published, how to develop their author platforms, how to market their work.<\/p>\n Author platform, you think. Pshhh<\/em>. Any real <\/em>writer wouldn\u2019t fritter away their time on social media. The fact that you, yourself, are on Facebook at this moment does not cross your mind.<\/p>\n But wait, what’s this? Oh shit of shits<\/em>\u2014this guy has already published three novels, and with big New York publishers, too. When you were in the MFA program together, he was that kid who wrote all those stories about talking dogs with alter egos that purred like cats. And now\u2014this?<\/p>\n The twerp divulges his secret. He started blogging years ago, and now he has 10,000 followers. You do a little more investigation, and discover that his Twitter account, SecretlyADog,<\/em> has fifteen<\/em> thousand followers.<\/p>\n Despite your previous doubts about his descriptions of species-confused talking animals, a realization begins to prickle at the corner of your brain\u2026and now you remember…the internet is a vast and ever-changing sea of glutinous, twitching eyes.<\/p>\n Authors have become public personas, super stars, and even the dead ones have a following. Check out Facebook, and you\u2019ll be amazed. The author page of Ernest Hemingway has 356, 806 likes; Fitzgerald has 102, 293. These numbers aren\u2019t much compared to the likes of Lady Gaga, who has an astonishing (and perhaps appalling) 43, 246, 576 likes, but hey, we authors will take what we can get.<\/p>\n More and more these days, if you want to be published, you have to have a fan base. Think of Julie Powell, whose blog became a book, and then the movie Julie & Julia. Think of Ree Drummond, whose cooking blog, The Pioneer Woman, sparked her very own line of printed, bound cookbooks.<\/p>\n With the help of the internet, publishing has become a grassroots endeavor and reshaped the traditional mindset of publishers. It\u2019s no longer simply a process of write, publish, promote\u2014instead, all three have blended together through the world of blogging, Twitter, and social media.<\/p>\n What you should not <\/em>do is write a book, get a publisher, and then quickly start a blog for the sole purpose of shamelessly promoting your latest creative endeavor.<\/p>\n What you should <\/em>do is pick something you love, something your passionate about, and share as much of that passion as you can with the world. If you\u2019re good, and if you care enough, you might get a following\u2014and maybe, just maybe, your book will sprout wings, or perhaps a hundred sets of centipede legs, but hey, that will be a start.<\/p>\n This is a big one everybody. Get ready. Don your chunky yellow hard hat and your white paper mouth masks and the oversized plastic goggles that make the rounds of your eyes expand to the size of fish bowls. You ready?\u00a0 You good? Because this is explosive. Drumroll, everyone\u2026 I JUST PUBLISHED MY NOVEL!!!!!!!!!!!! TELL […]![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pixel.wp.com\/b.gif?host=writedrunkandeditsober.wordpress.com&blog=37194364&%23038;post=606&%23038;subd=writedrunkandeditsober&%23038;ref=&%23038;feed=1\")
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