My friends, Lee’s Anti-bilious pills are excellently adapted to carry off superfluous bile, restore and amend the appetite, produce free perspiration, and thereby prevent constipation, lumbago, softening of the brain and Bronze John fever. They’re celebrated for removing habitual costiveness, dropsy, and severe headaches, and ought to be taken by all persons on a change of climate.
When the West was wild and social media was still 150 years away, snake oil salesmen rambled from town to town hawking their mystery potions, capable of curing everything that ailed ya. They stood on their rickety platforms and were masters at closing sales. Even before they rolled into town, destitute farmers lined up clutching dollar bills in their fists, already aware of what they were about to buy. The only thing they were waiting for was the opportunity to give their money away.
What many new authors don’t know is that marketing a book is a lot like selling snake oil potions and needs to begin months before they put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. Even before they come up with an idea for the next great American novel they should be standing firmly on their unique platforms.
When literary agents and publishers decide whether your manuscript deserves space on their desk or cast eternally to the bottom of their slush pile, the first thing they’ll do is look for your author platform. Who are you? What’s your message? What have you done? Why should I work with you instead of someone else?
Simply put, your writing platform is everything. It’s the difference between your book gaining traction with literary agents, publishers and the reading public versus taking up space on a pallet in the back of a dank, musty warehouse. Without a strong, persuasive platform, your book is likely to drown in the sea of other titles competing for attention. But how do you build a writer’s platform?
There’s nothing complicated about building a writer’s platform. You don’t have to be a marketing genius. What you DO have to be is someone who’s committed to successfully promoting their work. It consists of ten elements:
- Create your own unique voice
- Maintain an active and current website or other online presence
- Promote a strong message
- Build a sizeable email following
- Send out frequent newsletters
- Manage an active blog site
- Build an active presence on social media
- Contribute to guest blogging sites
- Maintain outside influencers
- Conduct regular podcasts
Create Your Own Unique Voice
Mark Twain once said, “Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words.” Even if you weren’t familiar with this 
particular quote, it’s a safe bet you knew who probably said it. Twain had a unique voice and wasn’t bashful about using it.
Take what you can from the writers you most admire, but never copy their style. Develop your own signature while foraging through other people’s work. What better compliment can writers take than to know instantly when they read something that they said first.
Another way to make a unique mark is to label your blog site with an eye-catching title. For years, I wrote blogs for my own site called, “Circling the Drain.” It was my unique, tongue-in-cheek take on what was wrong with the world, offering few if any solutions. I can guarantee you that while most people have long forgotten my name, they’ll never forgot a title like “Circling the Drain” and some of things I said there.
Maintain an Attractive and Active Website or Other Online Presences
With the Yellow Pages far behind us, Googling names or businesses is the first place people go to learn about you and your book. The second for published writers is Amazon.com. These days, if you don’t have a website, no one knows you exist. While some website hosts will claim otherwise, it’s not something you can throw together in an afternoon.
Consumers are fickle and make snap decisions about who they choose to follow. If your website looks archaic and designed by a three-year-old child, that’s the reputation you’ll inherit: someone who doesn’t give a hoot about the quality of their work.
The buying public has the attention span of a gnat. If you don’t capture it in less than three seconds, chances are you’ve lost them. Forever. Your home page should be attractive and offer everything they need to know about you and what you’re offering without endlessly scrolling through page after page.
Every time you entice consumers to scroll down or leave your home page, you risk losing them. That’s why having a simple, concise, but powerful landing page is critical to your website—including menu options like “My Books,” “My Portfolio” and “My Blog.” One of the most valuable add-ons is a “sticky menu.” You’ve probably seen them. No matter where you travel on a website, the main menu “sticks” to the top of the screen so you can easily find your way back home. You also need to ensure that your website looks as good on an iPhone as it does on a desktop PC or tablet.
If you’re a technically challenged writer who has more to offer readers than your mechanical expertise, fear not. You don’t have to have a website. But, if you don’t, you need to play an active role on other sites. More about that later.
Promote a Strong Message
These days, we’re overwhelmed with information. It comes at us twenty-four hours a day from all directions. Depending on how many sites you subscribe to, you might see over a hundred new emails in your inbox every day. That’s where having a 
strong message will ensure that you rise to the top of the heap instead of suffering the indignity of the delete key.
Crafting a strong message is essential to your success. One of the easiest ways to develop yours is to come up with a “30-second elevator speech.” What would you say to someone if they asked you, “What do you write about?” “What’s your book about?” “Why should I buy your book?” If you can’t reflexively answer those questions, you’re dead before you’ve begun. Once you arrive at a compelling elevator speech, paste it liberally on your website and on social media pages.
Build a Sizeable Email Following
Two of the most popular marketing terms you hear bandied about marketing circles are “outbound” and “inbound” marketing. There’s a huge difference between the two and can make all the difference in the world whether or not people know you exist and buy what you’re selling.
Outbound marketing has been around forever. It involves physically or virtually reaching out to consumers without their approval. It includes spam emails, robocalls to your cell phone, television commercials and flyers stuck under your windshield wipers. Inbound marketing puts the onus on the consumer. People come to you because they’re interested in what you have to offer, or at least they think they do.
You capture inbound marketing clients through attractive websites, Google rankings, and email lists where they voluntarily opt into. While they do require some administrative attention, mailing lists essentially take care of themselves.
Send Out Frequent Newsletters
Once you have a sizeable list of email subscribers you can capture and hold on to their attention by sending out monthly newsletters. Newsletters let people know 1) you’re still alive, 2) you’re actively contributing to the craft of writing and 3) you care about them. There are dozens of easy-to-use WordPress plug-ins and other apps that you can install on the landing page of your website. You’ve probably seen them. After several seconds on your website’s home page, a friendly reminder pops up inviting you to subscribe to the mailing list.
Newsletters work in concert with your blog site, offering subscribers free, or discounted information. Assuming they signed-up because they’re interested in what you have to offer, it’s a simple, inexpensive way to let people know what’s happening in your corner of the world: a new book coming out and podcasts coming next month. How about offering your members free gifts like copies of your last book, or a T-shirt with your logo emblazoned across the front? People LOVE getting something for nothing, whether it’s a tangible gift or just new information. Newsletters are probably the easiest way to stay in touch with your audience while building their trust and confidence.
Manage an Active Blog Site
In between books, newsletters, and email mails, blog sites are the most effective way to communicate with your audience and gather interest with new subscribers. It’s your opportunity to talk about whatever you want. Posts can range from short and to the point, to lengthy diatribes about something that sticks in your craw.
Blog posts can be any length you choose, but studies have shown that readers’ attention span follows a bell-shaped curve. Posts shorter than 500 and greater than 2,000 words don’t capture readers nearly as well as those between 1,500 to 2,000 words. More importantly, you need to constantly contribute to your blog site.
The kiss of death is a blog site that goes on for months unattended, void of new contributions. When consumers see that the last time you posted something was during the Nixon administration, it’s a giant red flag, claiming that the administrator (you) couldn’t care less about its content. They project that lethargy to the rest of your website, particularly what you’re trying to promote: your new book.
Build an Active Presence on Social Media
While most of the suggestions here can be accomplished in a matter of weeks or months, developing an active social media presence isn’t one of them. For that reason, it’s an accurate indicator of just how serious you are about your business and online presence. It’s impossible to fake.
There are literally thousands of social media channels you can subscribe to and follow. The most important are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram; not necessarily in that order. Each has its specific pool of subscribers, aimed at capturing their target audiences. How active you are on them will speak volumes about your enthusiasm for your subject matter. Most literary agents and publishers are looking for clients who have tens of thousands of followers and make contributions on a regular basis; something that could take years to develop.
The good news is it’s easy to build your list of followers. Handy apps like Hootsuite allow you to post relevant information to multiple sites at one time. Social media sites can send your new book into the stratosphere through shared viral subscriber connections. It’s by far the least expensive and most effective way to get the word out about what you’re up to.
Contribute to Guest Blogging Sites
Even if you don’t manage your own website or blog, you can still gather attention by guest blogging on other people’s sites—
usually followers you gained through social media who are in the same business or have the same interests as you. By regularly posting interesting, thought-provoking content, you can hitch your wagon to others’ sites promoting your business.
Website hosts are always interested in promoting other points of view from other writers. The difference is that you can write about whatever you want on your own site. But when posting your thoughts on social media or other people’s sites, you have to ensure that you’re following their administrative guidelines, taking care not to offend other subscribers.
Maintain Outside Influencers
Do you belong to any professional associations like the American Society of Journalists and Authors? The Association of Ghostwriters? Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators? How about Romance Writers of American? What about public speaking? Have you ever done a TedX talk? When evaluating your new book, literary agents and publishers are always interested in who you associate and rub shoulders with. Like social media, your reputation and work are easier to promote when you belong to a number of professional organizations—people who might be open to promoting your work.
Conduct Regular Podcasts
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably aware of the recent explosion of podcasts. According to podcasthosting.org, there are over 800,000 active podcasts with more than fifty-four million episodes available, world-wide. That’s a lot of podcasts. There are podcasts about everything from fiction writing to the care and feeding of albino alligators. If you can’t find one about your expertise, you can create one. Like social media, literary agents and publishers are interested in what you are doing to actively promote your platform, not what you expect them to do for you. If John Fitzgerald Kennedy were a literary agent today, he might say, “Ask not what your literary agent can do for you. Ask what you can do for your literary agent.”
Granted, you may not need all of these in order to be successful, but you will need some of them to capture the attention of the literary marketplace. If you don’t have time or the inclination to build your platform, there are plenty of other professionals willing to do it for you. Marketing professionals who can help you build and maintain a snappy website using the most effective search engine optimization principles guaranteed to launch you to the top of Google search pages. People who are solely in the business of promoting writing professionals, bloggers, and podcasters like you.
So, when should you start building your platform? The answer, of course, is yesterday. What I recommend to future writers is to begin building your platform the day you start writing your new manuscript—or before. So, take a tip from successful snake oil salesmen. Whether you’re just beginning a new writing business or ready to launch your new novel, your on and off-line platform is everything. Make sure it precedes you and puts you in the most favorable light possible.
Allen R Smith is a syndicated writer and ghostwriter living in Oceanside, California. He is a three-time award winner for America’s Funniest Humor and has published thousands of long and short-form articles in print, on the web and social media.
Smith has been featured on NBC News, ABC’s The View, KYSL Radio, The Hollis Chapman Show, TV8 Vail, and Plum TV16. He has also been published in The Writer Magazine, Funny Times, the Professional Skier, Denver Post, Aspen Times and was a founding writer for Lance Armstrong’s wellness website, LIVESTRONG.COM. Smith was the Gear Editor from 2008-2011 for Onthesnow.com, the most visited winter sports website in the United States.
Smith’s first book, Ski Instructors Confidential: The Stories Ski Instructors Swap Back at the Lodge was published in 2005, is in its second printing and continues to sell around the world in book stores and online. His second book, Watching Grandma Circle the Drain was published in 2011 and has received rave reviews on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and dozens of independent websites and blogs. He has also contributed to Chicken Soup for the Soul: Runners (2010) and The Gigantic Armchair Reader (2008). His latest book, Monkey in a Pink Canoe was published in April 2014 and earned the Best Humor Award from the Colorado Independent Publishers Association.
