Build Your Author Platform. Carole Jelen

Unique Agency at Waterside

      We’re a top literary agency in the USA, and as a team of agents, we’ve been involved with multimillions of book sales over the years. We’re still doing something very right at the leading edge of publishing, even as we build bestsellers in today’s chaotic publishing climate. I still place 100+ books a year from my own desk into contracts, including a large percent of revisions of books that sold so well that we updated them multiple times. The fundamental understanding of what publishers are looking for, and understanding what audiences need, are the driving forces that move us along on the cutting edge. You can see some of the successes our authors have had in the stories concluding the chapters of this book.

      Our agency platform at Waterside has been built over three decades. Our own database of author clients numbers in the thousands, and with each author comes our connection to their network of author friends, colleagues, and associates. The Waterside website has solid traffic along with newsletter subscriptions. The appreciation notes and thanks we receive as Waterside agents often show up online through ebook publications. While showcasing our numerous contributions in the trade, they also help widen our audience outreach online. My own LinkedIn network, which I’ve cultivated over years, reaches over a million targeted and interested individuals through connections and groups; my Google+ circles include a variety of publishing-related groups and thousands of authors and their networks. Our book now has a growing Facebook fan page along with a budding blog and website enhanced by incoming links and Twitter. For years Waterside Conferences were well known in the publishing industry, bringing authors and publishers together to exchange ideas. Our website, massive author network, and longstanding relationships with publishers are fundamental measures of Waterside’s well-established social presence and authority in the publishing industry. Top-selling titles and expansive series such as the For Dummies line began with Waterside clients. Our agency of author clients is more akin to a tribe-type membership who we listen to and dialogue with regularly. Our major success and top ranking in the publishing industry was built on longstanding relationships with authors and publishers, resulting in mega book sales over the years.

      Our Author Clients and Publishing Partners

      Our biggest inspiration has come from working with the amazing cutting-edge thinkers who have shared their techniques, ideas, and best practices with us. It’s through this group of exceptional writers, thinkers, innovators, and pioneers in new publishing techniques (that we’re proud to call clients) that we’re able to articulate proven methods here to propel you to your goals.

      We’re greatly appreciative to all of the many authors who have shared their successes and insider knowledge over the years, and to the talented and dedicated publishers, editors, and marketing departments who have shared their time, insights, and long-standing and in-depth knowledge. We are privileged to work with you. It’s a monumental task to acknowledge all of your contributions over the years that have made their way into this book of solutions for authors. A heartfelt thanks to all of you who have helped transform these ideas into book form!

       —Carole Jelen

       Introduction

      It Takes an Audience

      Authors need readers, and to build audience, this is not the time to remain anonymous! This book solves challenges in growing readership in an era of change. Now even the way the written word reaches your audience is new.

      This book teaches you how to build your author platform, also known as your public persona, to serve as a magnet for building up your audience. We show you the essential elements to build your platform into one that attracts media, loyal audience followers, and buyers of your book. Like every strong relationship, your readers need to feel they can trust you, that they can talk to you, that you are the authentic “real deal,” and that you have the expertise in the subject matter or entertainment they’re interested in. This isn’t about advertising or selling. It’s about informing, entertaining, and knowing that sales will follow.

      Strong author platforms that combine these very elements usually accompany best-selling book titles. Exemplary platforms include the author sites of best-selling authors Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink, Outliers, and The Tipping Point; gladwell.com) or Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (freakonomics.com).

      We know you’re busy! You’re following your mission and life’s work, and you want to work on your manuscript without being distracted by yet another job: marketing your book. But we also know that technology has changed something fundamental in the way we communicate. By holding this book in your hand, you already understand that it’s critical for you to learn to harness new enabling tools on the web and to build your public persona, too. The problem is carving out the time to explore how to do it and then taking the time to figure it out. That’s why we organized this book into self-contained, one-step-at-a-time chunks. Once through the process, you’ll see your own author platform materialize and bring in far more people than you can imagine.

      

      We’re living in an increasingly enlightened and exciting time when people come together and collaborate, when we can even talk directly to the president of our country, to a CEO of a large company, to a thought leader who influenced us, or to a celebrity who used to be out of reach. For authors, that means people want to talk to you, too, to make comments and ask you questions. It means taking your audience into account in writing your manuscript, listening to and responding to comments, and adding your own spin far beyond what a publisher could possibly advertise for you. With digital tools on the web, you’re more empowered as an author to expand your influence and make connections all over our planet.

      Advertising claims and push are slowly going by the wayside, being replaced with interactive dialogue. Now companies selling potato chips on television are asking their audience to vote online for their favorite flavor. News and entertainment shows like American Idol show hashtags on screen to bring audience into the show with Twitter comments on the screen. Live audience comments via Twitter can influence the outcome of a reality show (or shape the outcome of a presidential debate) and always add perspective.

       This is the era of creating dialogue with an audience.

      All authors, experienced and new, nonfiction and fiction, best and brightest and novice, need to know and harness the new rules explained here to create a platform. Here we motivate you to promote and then give you the blueprint and step-by-step how-to. It’s time to run with it! All too often authors run in the other direction from the very thought of promotion.

      This Book Propels You Forward

      You’re reading this book because you’ve taken precious time to seek out specialists with decades of expertise in the publishing and tech industries to translate, pre-digest, and give you strategies, models, and steps that fit your criteria: simple, quick, and clear.

      You’re holding the 14-point author platform guide developed and used by successful authors, with interim steps, checklists, and a plan infused with the best of technology available to you. Here you’re given a choice to go quick and easy by using these standard models or to go a step beyond and customize to fit your purpose and unique author brand.

       Authors who resist the shift from monologue to dialogue are falling behind; those who embrace this shift find that using the power of the crowd and the strength of the Internet engine propels them to their goals.

      You’re holding the blueprint of your own author platform here, and in the summary at the back of this book are tearout sheets that form a complete platform publicity plan. We include some tutorial guides to keep everything under one roof for you and success stories and advice from our successful author clients. We’ve researched and made recommendations based on successful author platforms so that busy authors (you) can save money and a lot of time by avoiding the task of sifting through massive amounts of information. We’ve done that for you.

      How