GITP Guest Linda Sandifer on Platform

Thanks to Linda Sandifer for providing this Guest Post.

Linda Sandifer is author of thirteen novels in various genres, mostly western romance. She is a member of Western Writers of America, Women Writing the West, and Idaho's Blue Sage Writers. Her latest release, The Last Rodeo (contemporary fiction) is available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble online. It is also available in the Kindle Store. Learn more about Linda's books at her Web site.

Build Your Platform Today
© 2010 Linda Sandifer

We writers continually face the challenge to keep our writing fresh for today's readers and also to be knowledgeable about new technology and marketing trends. We are expected to be able to describe our book and its concept in one line and to state our platform right up front. The platform has, in fact, become increasingly important to agents and editors before they will consider a contract. They want a ready-made audience and a way to create a buzz for your book. In this tough market, it isn't sufficient anymore to assume the publisher will handle the marketing so you can sit back and write your next book. They want you involved.

So what is a platform for a writer? According to Merriam Webster, a platform is simply "a plan, a design." It is: (1) "a declaration of the principles on which a group of persons stands," (2) a "device or structure incorporating or providing a platform," and (3) a "place or opportunity for public discussion."
We spend months, sometimes years, plotting our books. When the book is finished, it's time to take a good hard look at ourselves. What have you got going for you--other than having written a marvelous book--with which to get readers' attention? If you look through Writer's Digest Magazine, you'll see some of the "Breaking In" writers state their platforms as social networking; i.e., a blog and an audience on Twitter and Facebook. This might also include doing guest blogs and having a website. Some writers write articles for magazines, ensuring a byline. Other writers speak at conferences and talk to writers' and readers' groups, or they teach writing classes. It's always smart to join a writer's organization that reflects your genre. This will open more doors with which to reach readers. If you have special expertise pertaining to your book it will give you more credibility. For example, you're a doctor and you've written a medical thriller.

What if you feel you don't have any particular expertise with which to build your platform? No title behind your name. No Masters or PhD. Does it doom you and your book? No, just dig deeper. Be creative. Perhaps you did an incredible amount of research for your book. Perhaps you spent a year talking to locals and exploring the Australian outback where your book is set. Is there a way you can "brand" yourself? To identify yourself in some unique way?

A platform boils down to any means you have to get your name and your book out there. Start building your platform early on, even before your book is finished. A solid platform will help you get published and maybe even become a "name brand" writer. But, first and foremost, write the best darned book you can! Everything else aside, your book will stand on its own legs. It will be the foundation for your platform.

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Here are two of Linda's platforms: her blog and her Web site.

 

 

3 comments on original post:

1. 
   Sue RoebuckNovember 26, 2010 at 12:39 PM

   This is so true, Linda - and not easy for us "breaking-in" authors. It can take years to get a name for yourself, I think.
   Great, and interesting, post.
   Sue

   ReplyDelete
2. 
   Linda SandiferNovember 27, 2010 at 1:22 PM

   Thanks, Sue. Glad you enjoyed it. I think it's hard for all authors, even those of us who have been around for awhile.

   ReplyDelete
3. 
   B.J. AndersonJanuary 21, 2011 at 4:00 PM

   Thanks for this post! Lots of good information to think about.

   ReplyDelete

Telling the BackStory

Here are two books that have different and effective ways of telling the backstory. The tactic often used is a direct narrative about the past, but these authors were more creative.

In the historical piece, The Diezmo, Rick Bass used a first-person narrative, and the reader learns right at the beginning that the story is a remembrance, told fifty-years after the fact. This allows information to be presented that the narrator wouldn't have known at the time, and we're told that:"...he always paused near the end. It was not until much later...that I found out he had been skipping a sentence..." (page 11). Background information about characters is given ("$1400 worth of jewelry…")--precise facts that the narrator wouldn't have known at the time. Bass could also relate incidents about other people who weren't in the narrator's presence--information the narrator learned during the ensuing 50 years ("John Alexander and his group spent the rest of the day lying in that pool...In the meantime--never dreaming of Alexander's success...")

The book's Epilogue reinforces the fifty years that have past before the telling, and gives closure to the story.

The other title is contemporary. In Blue Dog, Green River author Brock Brower chose to make his first-person narrator the recipient of a story. The "I" character is river rafting with a friend, and the friend, Paul, tells the story. Opening lines: "'I spaced the dog [Blue Dog].' Paul Nozik started telling me his story up on a Navaho sandstone ledge..."

The narrator isn't really a participant in the story, but the verbose Paul tells it all, including the background of other characters, the geology of the region, and more. The reader is reminded of the passive narrator on occasion: "Paul stood up, dusting his palms, you could see excited. He does love to tell you the best part of a story…He got me up, politely dragging me along for company, talking his way around to the far side of this squared-off limestone." Brower breaks up Paul's storytelling with chapters from Blue Dog's perspective, in an omniscient narration rich in language and detail.

Both authors kept their stories short (Blue Dog, Green River - 108 pages, The Diezmo- 208 pages) and I enjoyed reading these well-crafted books.

Contact-- Finally

I while back I contacted the Barnes & Noble "corrections" department and asked them to consolidate my meager titles under one name. Contact was made by e-mail with an addie given to me by the rep in the distribution department. I hadn't been able to find a single link on the site for "customer" or "author" service.

So I e-mailed my request. Received nada in return and after two days with no changes to my B&N page, I assumed my missive didn't get through.

So I emailed my request again--this time with a delivery confirmation tag and a return receipt request. Ah! Delivery confirmation! but that was it.

Yet when I visited my B&N page the next day, my titles were consolidated as I had asked.

Wouldn't you think a company with a big online presence would at least have an auto-responder to let people know they "heard" you?