On Platform and Why It's Important

If y'all have been kicking around my corner of the Internet for awhile, you might've heard me waxing lyrical about platform building before. Or maybe not, as in skimming through my back catalog here I'm not finding something about platform specifically.

Anyway, that wondrous thing known as platform is the real topic of this here set of ramblings. Platform, as defined in this case is not the flat area you stand on while waiting for a train, but rather the position from which you market yourself. Ah yes, our old friend marketing -- now I know I've written about that before. And I also know that authors, almost as a rule, tend to dislike marketing. (Well, at least people who write novels do. Nonfiction writers tend to take marketing as a matter of course.)

However! A good platform can be an integral part of any writer's success story, even for those writing fiction. I can hear the question now -- "But I write novels, how does a marketing platform help me if I'm creating a made-up world? Shouldn't the book be able to sell itself?"

Au contraire, mes auteurs. A book cannot sell itself, no matter how brilliant it is, if no one knows that it exists. To drive the point home a little bit stronger, conventional wisdom states that very few people are willing to purchase a book by an author they don't know. Looking back, I think that saying "very few" is probably an overstatement -- try instead that it's much harder to convince a stranger to purchase your book than it is to convince someone who knows you to do so.

That comes back to a combination of things really: word of mouth and platform. We're talking about platform today though, so that's where I'm going with this.

Now, a common misconception is that your "platform" is that you're a writer. WRONG! Your platform is that you're a writer of mysteries, of Steampunk, of historical romances set in the Elizabethan Age, etc. Extrapolate this out and you realize that the topic you're knowledgeable about is not really writing. This is mostly becauss every writer writes about writing (sort of like how most filmmakers will inevitably make a film about making a film).

Am I saying you shouldn't write about your struggles with your latest chapter? Or about plotting and characterization and the like? No, of course not. Everyone has their own style and everyone has something to offer to everyone else. But what I am saying is that the real thing you have to offer is your skill in the research you've done to write your book.

Take Gary Corby for an example (I know I use him a lot for my examples, but there's a reason for that). His platform is that he's a writer of mysteries set in Classical Athens. Well wouldn't you know it, but Gary build his blog "A dead man fell from the sky ..." around that very topic area -- Classical Greece. So we then say that Gary's platform is that knowledge of Classical Greece, and Athens in particular. One would find his material online, realize they like his voice, and say "Oh look his debut novel came out. I like Gary's style, so I'll go purchase The Pericles Commission."

Granted, this is a much truncated example, but you get my point. If Gary hadn't built his platform at his blog, he still might have gotten represented by Janet Reid and then sold his novel to Minotaur, but a lot fewer people would've known about it. And there are a few people (myself included) who might not have bought Gary's book if they didn't know him prior to it being released. Full disclosure: I'm not that big a fan of mysteries, but since I know Gary I know I want to buy his book.

Dear lord that was a rambling bit of randomness, wasn't it? Anyway, final point: Building a platform can establish you as a writer that someone wants to read. Since I started Free the Princess back in July 2009, I've built my platform to the point where I have a network of contacts that spans 4 continents. I might not be able to count on every one of those contacts as a sale for if and when I have a novel coming out, but my chances are significantly increased because of that platform. This also means that there's a network of hundreds of people who know my name and know my work, and may even pass that word along.

Now do you see the benefit of building a platform?

The Benefits of Writing Non-Fiction

If you happen to be reading my daily musings over at Free the Princess, you'll recall that on Friday I announced I'd be writing a work of non-fiction that's tentatively titled The Steampunk Research Primer, with the aim of collecting enough research on the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries to give my fellow Steampunks a base point to start their own research from. I came to this decision because of three things: Gail Gray suggested it, L.T. Host coerced me into it, and I realized that it's taken me roughly a year to get to my current amount of knowledge about the Victorian period.

Why is that time frame important? Well, Harry Harrison said at one point that it took him five years of part-time research to get to the level of know-how he needed to write A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! Remembering that got me to thinking: How much faster would I have been able to draft CALLARION AT NIGHT if I had a primer like the one I intend to write at my fingertips? Probably a heckuva lot quicker, that's for sure. And then this has a double benefit for me, at least, in that my knowledge of the period will become even greater through putting together this primer.

There's a secondary benefit to writing the SRP as well. That, of course, happens to be platform-building. Let use another example: I'm going to be part of two panels at Upstate Steampunk in Greenville, South Carolina this fall. While on these panels, I'm going to discuss the roots of Steampunk literature, which as you may or may not recall, I spent the entire month of April on over at FtP.

The resulting academic paper, which I will hand in at that conference, will then be included as a writing credit in any query letter/non-fiction proposal I write. Why? Because it means I got published. If/when the SRP gets picked up, I fully intend to also mention that in any query letter I write.

Beyond the fact that it means I will be able to say I wrote the book on basic Steampunk research (which is kind of cool by itself), it will prove that I have the writing chops to put a coherent, salable book together. Will it translate directly into being able to craft a compelling novel? Probably not directly, but it does mean that someone enjoyed my writing style enough to take a chance on it. It also means that I know the type of people who'd buy my novel if I've already written a non-fiction book directly targeted to them.

The point of rather rambling post is this: We hear time and again that platform is an important part of being a writer. Non-fiction is dependent on platform and marketing plans and so forth. What better practice can you get than putting together a non-fiction proposal and trying to get it sold? Particularly if you know your topic well.

It's a thought at least.

Marketing Yourself

On Monday, my fellow Alliterati (Alliteratus?) L.T. spoke about how important author branding is. Now, I agree with all of her points -- particularly in regards to being careful what you say and who you say it to. Eventually it will come back to bite you in the bum if it's offensive to the right people. So take very, very good care about that. If you don't care about negative publicity then by all means go nuts. But if you do, you need to craft a brand and stick to it for one simple reason:

Marketing

Marketing is a fascinating animal; and especially when you talk about it on the internet. Full Sail University offers an entire online degree program on Internet Marketing, in fact, and it touches on such topics as Keyword Research, Search Engine Optimization, Keyword Density, so on and so forth. It's enough to make your head spin, and I've spent quite a bit of time researching and studying all these concepts for various reasons. Mostly because of the tee-shirt company a friend and I decided to start up recently.

Now, you might be wondering I haven't spoken about said business before. The simple and true fact? Because Matthew Delman, co-owner of Leprechauns Eat Unicorns, is not the same as Matthew Delman, Steampunk writer. My brand as Matthew Delman is as an unpublished writer who is working on a Steampunk novel. My brand under Leprechauns Eat Unicorns is a company focused on irreverent sayings.

My partner in Leprechauns Eat Unicorns asked me, prior to the launch of the company blog, if he could use it for both his writing stuff and news about the company. I told him no, he couldn't, because that would dilute the marketing potential of both brands.

So now you've gotten your brand all set and ready to market -- how do you go about that? It's easy really, to maintain a good marketing presence on the internet, especially if you're marketing yourself and your writing as a product. Be yourself, but be the best possible version of yourself that you can. Participate in the communities that are available to you. Sign up for Twitter and use it; blog regularly; comment on other people's blogs, if only to tell them that you agree with the post.

There's a culture of reciprocity floating around the Internet. It may take a few months (I think Free the Princess was up for two to three months before I got any significant number of followers) but if you are consistent in content generation, and participation in the community, then you will build your brand and become noticed.

*I could go into a heckuva lot more detail about my theories on marketing and how to do it well, but that would be entirely too lengthy for a blog post. Feel free to email me if you want more specific info/advice/etc. I'm always willing to answer any and all questions that come my way, as the folks who know me will tell you.