Author Platform

Every writer knows that in order to succeed they have to become known. It really is a fact, if people have never heard of you it is going to be rather difficult to sell your book to them. Gone are the days when you could just write your novel and leave everything else in the hands of your publisher or agent. Today, writers need to become marketing experts too. They need to create visibility and the best way to do this is through their author platform.

Now before I jump into explaining the author platform, I feel it only fair to mention that it will require some hard work and effort on your part to make it work.

Now that you understand that, let’s take a look at what makes up an author platform and what services you should be using.

• Author website and blog
• Facebook fanpage
• Twitter
• Google +
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest

I personally feel that it is important to utilise all these services and use them wisely. There are plenty of marketing guides and articles that explain the fundamentals of each of these services all over the web. These are worth reading and they explain the best way for writers to use these services. My favourite resource is Writers Digest http://www.writersdigest.com which I find to be a reputable information portal that always has everything I am looking for.

In my own author platform I use all the services above and I have as many of them linked to my blog as I can. This means that whenever I add a new blog post it automatically appears on my facebook page and my twitter feed. I also manually add the link to my Google+ account and Pinterest boards. I try to spend at least 20 minutes each day checking my accounts and responding to any questions or comments that I have received. I also try to post a couple of times a week on my blog. Guest posting on other blogs is another way to get your name out there as is hosting a blog tour to promote your new book.

Having an author platform is a must and learning how to get it to work for you is paramount if you want to taste success. Your writing is important to you and getting others to recognise its importance is something that you yourself have to work on. People aren’t just going to find your books, you have to put them out there and make sure that people see them.

As this is the start of a new year it is a great time to work on getting your author platform just right and investing some time into learning how to use it to your advantage. There is no point is having all those social networking accounts if you don’t know how to use them. If you have any additional information that you would like to add or some marketing techniques that seem to be working well for you, please feel free to comment, your advice might just help someone else.

Amanda J Evans

Amanda J Evans is an award-winning Irish author and writing coach. Amanda writes adult romance that often crosses into paranormal and fantasy. Growing up with heroes like Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones, her stories centre on good versus evil with a splice of love and magic thrown in too. Her books have all won awards and her novella, Hear Me Cry, won the Book of the Year Award at the Dublin Writers Conference 2018. Amanda is also the author of Surviving Suicide: A Memoir from Those Death Left Behind, published in 2012.

www.amandajevans.com