on Bad Redhead Media:

When I first started in the publishing industry over ten years and seven books ago, the nebulous concept of an author platform sounded like a vague box of ‘things’ a writer would buy at the Invisible Writer Internet Store.

“Want the deluxe package?” an oily salesman with an extreme side part would ask. “I don’t know,” I would shrug. “How much does it cost?” I’d ask this snake-oil dude. He would smile, wryly, “That depends.”

Sound familiar? Still confusing. I know.

This is how a seasoned writer explained an author platform to me at the time that helped me make sense of it all:

Think of your author platform as a deck. Each tactic is a plank. Without a full deck, your platform isn’t solid. It’s flimsy. Building each plank will give you a solid foundation to work from when selling your book so nothing falls through.

This helped. A lot. And make no mistake: while you may tell yourself you’re allergic to marketing, don’t know what it is, or that it’s all ‘shameless self-promotion’ (it’s not if you’re doing it correctly), you DO want people to read your work, right?

You have a choice here: be the oily salesperson or be strategic about it. Time to stop covering up your eyes and ears and do the work.

Let’s talk about all the planks. Well, at least the most important ones and why they matter, as well as how they impact your platform.