Mark your calendars: Christina Katz is visiting our forum, Monday, January 12, 1 p.m EST to chat about developing your author platform. You can post questions for Christina here. And if you’re able, stop back next Monday for a live chat!
Here’s an excerpt of a Q&A I did with Christina back in November.
Christina Katz has been supporting and educating writers for more than a decade now with her Writers on the Rise E-Zine, her book Writer Mama, and she’s recently published a really helpful book on establishing a platform, Get Known Before the Book Deal. I really admire Christina’s can-do spirit and practical approach to publishing. Here she answers 5 questions for writers wondering about this “platform” thing we hear so much about:
1. Why is it so important to publishers that writers have a platform?
Your platform communicates your expertise to others, and it works all the time so you don’t have to. Your platform includes your Web presence, any public speaking you do, the classes you teach, the media contacts you’ve established, the articles you’ve published, and any other means you currently have for making your name and your future books known to a viable readership. If others already recognize your expertise on a given topic or for a specific audience or both, then that is your platform. A platform-strong writer is a writer with influence.
A writer can have a great book idea at the perfect time and be the absolute best person to write that book, and still not land the deal if he or she doesn’t have the platform that is going to fulfill the promise to sell the book. A platform is a promise, which says you will not only create something to sell (a book), but also promote it to the specific readers who will want to purchase it. Agents and editors have known this for years and they look for platform-strong writers and getting them book deals. If you want to land the book deal, today, then you need to be a platform-strong writer.
2. What are the social networks that you most recommend for platform building?
The new rules are: get out and mingle virtually. One thing I have noticed during my years as a teacher is that my students come from every which way imaginable. Word-of-mouth seems to have evolved so that there are fewer degrees of separation between people before a connection is made. You could have someone say, “I heard about your class because my friend on Twitter said she met you on Facebook after her friend took your class, after she read your book because she saw your article.”
You can find the complete interview here.
“A platform-strong writer is a writer with influence.”
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