The Most Important Question You Can Ask About Your Author Platform

(The section below is excerpted from a book I am currently writing on how to take a spiritual and common sense approach to author platform) 

One day I had the privilege of sitting down with a chaplain who wanted advice on writing a book proposal. He was writing a book about his experiences working as a chaplain with people in hospice. He had been in my “How to Write Your Book Proposal” workshop and was daunted by the concept of platform, which I stressed as important for the Publicity and Promotion Section. He felt he had couldn't write the section because he had no big stage on which to stand.

Suddenly, without consciously choosing them, I found these words coming out of my mouth:

“If you had the book in your hand right now, what would you do with it?”

He paused. “Well, I have friends in the chaplaincy. I guess I’d call them and tell them about it.”

“That’s your platform.”

“I’ve been asked to give a small talk at a local hospital about my approach to chaplaincy. But there will only be about 15 people there.”

“That’s your platform!”

He started to get excited.“And there are hospices downstate I used to work at. I could call them and tell them about the book. Maybe they could distribute it to chaplains, patients, and their families.”

“Platform!”

There are a lot of books and websites and articles about all the things you HAVE to do to build promotion and publicity for your book. But the truth is there is no cookie-cutter answer, no silver bullet. This is a journey, a journey that is yours to take into the unknown. But you must start with your one plank resting on the ground. 

See, a platform can start small. In fact, it has to start small. We can only ever start from where we are. Keep your feet on the ground, use the resources that are already around you. Work with what you have and as you start to see who in your community is responding to your book, grow your efforts in that direction.

The first step is just making that list of what is AVAILABLE TO YOU right here, right now. Your strongest platform elements are already in place. You just have to be able to identify them.

So:

If your book were in your hands right now, what would you do about it?

Without any media coverage, without a national platform to stand on, just with your life being exactly as it is right now, what would you do with your book?

Take a moment to think very practically about this. Try writing down some ideas. And remember, it could be as simple a start as “calling my mom.”

And let me know what you came up with by commenting below, on Facebook, or twitter!

Come back every Wednesday for Writer Wednesdays. Last week's post:
Nina Noir, Fictional Editor and Case of the Strange Thing that Actually Works for Aspiring Authors