Hostage of Dolour

Author Platform – How to..

OK so I’m new to this.  I’m guessing you are too if you’re reading.  I had my lovely novel all completed and was surfing for presentation advice on how to send off the manuscript to my list of agents and publishers when.. Uh-oh, I need to have a what?  A platform?  WTH’s a platform?  And so my favourable disposition changed from a gung-ho, “Let’s mail these literary agent buggers until it hurts!”, to the more typically forlorn, “Back to the bloody drawing board”

So, a platform eh?  Well of course.  You send out your manuscript [and repeat ad infinitum] but maybe one morning, you get something other than the smudged, skew-copied standard publisher’s letter of rejection.. You get a, “Yes please, we’re interested.”  And things move from there.  A year later your lovely novel’s on the shelves.  Only.. ah.. who exactly is going to buy it?  The publishing house is prepared to grant you a small marketing budget but you’ve never done this before and thus your novel vanishes, not into bargain bins, just back to the pulp from which it came.

Rewind then.. Before you send out your manuscript, you hear about this writer’s platform idea.  The well-known authors have it already.  All celebrities do.  People buy your wares because you’re you.  But if nobody know exactly who you are, then nobody’s gonna buy.  And you’re not writing for the enjoyment of it are you?  Are  you really?  You’d not hoped for an audience of people eager to find out how that screamer of a novel ends?  Of course you had.  Every artist seeks to have their work known.  Art without an audience is vapid and useless imho..

So with that in mind you want to grab yourself some renown prior to the big mailout.  But how?  Well “Build it and they will come” is for me a most loathsome mantra [was it Field of Dreams or Wayne's World, I can't remember??] because nobody comes to you if you ain’t got celebrity, renown [read platform].

For me, this is exactly where I am now.  Embarking on that journey of construction.  I’d like to post up what I’m doing and how well it’s going.  My hope is that maybe if you’re heading that way we can share the trip.

More to follow.. Take care speak soon maybe, David.