Your Writer Platform

Build your platform. Engage your fans. Sell more books.

Your Path to Influence: 17 Simple Ways to Make an Impact

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Your Path to Influence_ 17 Simple Ways to Make an Impact _ YourWriterPlatform.com

Languishing in obscurity?

Things pretty quiet on the visibility front?

You’ve tried to follow advice from the “guru de jour” to get your writing career on the map, but despite your best efforts, your ideal audience remains surprisingly resistant to your appeal.

What’s worse, is that you know it’s possible to build a loyal, invested community, because the evidence is all around you.

Somehow, both new and experienced writers are finding ways to stand out and get their work noticed.

But here you are, playing patty-cake with the crickets, debating if it would hurt to just let one of those spam comments through (it’s about time your blog got a little love, right?):

“am to a great extent impressed with the article I have just read. There is not much to say except the following universal truth: You never know where to look when eating a banana. I will be back.”

Okay, maybe not.

(Desperate chic is not the look that bestselling authors are wearing this season.)

So what does it really take to get noticed?

Let’s be honest. Some of the top-selling authors and über successful Indie-entrepreneurs are pretty impressive.

There’s no doubt they have that it factor that compels us to listen (or to act).

But are they six figures a year more charismatic than you? 65,000 plus Twitter followers wittier than you? Sell a million copies and get a sparkly-vampire-movie-deal more talented than you?

What is it that they have that you don’t?

Deep pockets? A better agent?

Nope. [Read more…]

71 Ways to Promote and Market Your Book

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ways to promote and market your book

Do you know the most powerful way to market your book?

Word of mouth recommendation.

It’s a free, highly credible, highly viral resource that helps to amplify your efforts to create interest and buzz about your work.

And all you really need for word of mouth marketing is a book worthy of sharing, and a way to get it into the hands of the people who will spread the word.

Sound simple?

Well it is simple, but not necessarily easy.

The devil is in the details, right?

Although the concept is simple, the implementation is going to require some time and effort, especially in the beginning.

However, with a good plan, you’ll soon reach a tipping point where your fans begin to market for you in numbers great enough to really impact your book sales.

How To Get Started

The best time to design and implement your marketing plan of action is before you even start writing your book. It takes time to build relationships, learn your readers wants and needs, and develop a base of rabid fans that clamour for more.

Grow your readership as you write your book, and when it’s time to launch your book, you’ll already have an invested and eager audience waiting.

Great advice, except my book is already written. Now what?

Even if you already have your book in hand, don’t panic! The process is still the same. It just may take a little longer to see the book sales come rolling in.

So, let’s skip past the year or two (or five) of blood, sweat, and tears that were required for you to write, edit, and polish your masterful novel, and assume that it is indeed worthy of personal recommendation.

The next step is to get your share-worthy work noticed and shared by the right people. Here are a few key things to remember:

  • Focus more on discoverability rather than selling. Your work is important, so help those who can benefit from it, find it.
  • Accept responsibility for the marketing and promotion of your book. Even if you choose to outsource some of the work, your book’s success depends on you taking action.

101 Quick Actions You Can Take Today to Build the Writer Platform of Your Dreams

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101 Quick Actions You Can Take Today to Build the Writer Plaform of Your Dreams _ YourWriterPlatform.com

What does it really take to build a writer or author platform?

Money?

Connections?

An intimate knowledge of vampires, wizardry or erotic romance?

Actually, the most important aspect  to building an author platform is understanding that it’s about engagement; about connecting and interacting with people who are aligned with your message and affected by your story.

Your platform is a web of intertwined beliefs, values, emotions, thoughts, stories, images and ideas that stem from your own core philosophy and are ultimately shared by your fans.

The tricky part is finding ways to effectively share your message with an audience that is yet unknown to you, and you to them.

Establishing and maintaining a link to your potential ‘tribe’ is both the challenge and the reward of building your writer platform.

What can you do today to craft a powerful writer platform?

By understanding that your ultimate goals when creating a writer platform are to find, engage and cherish your audience, it makes the application of the tools much more effective.

But remember: insight is useless if you don’t take action. So, go through the list of tools and strategies below and choose those things that you can easily do today.

By starting with what you can easily accomplish you will a) be more likely to complete the tasks, and b) gain the confidence to start implementing some of the more challenging items on the list. [Read more…]

The Writer’s Weekly Wrap-Up

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your writer platform

This post is part of a new weekly series on YWP, aptly titled “The Writer’s Weekly Wrap-Up”.

Each Sunday, I will endeavour to provide you with a curated list of the best articles that I have seen throughout the week that relate to building your platform.

The featured articles will cover topics on book marketing and promotion, blogging, social media and self-publishing. (I may even throw in a few inspirational and fun posts, just so that it’s not all work and no play!)

Remember the old adage a chain is only as strong as its weakest link? Use these resources to help strengthen the ‘weak’ points in your writer platform and forge a solid career.

[Read more…]

21 Platform Building Insights from Authors and Experts Who Excel at It

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21 Platform Building Insights from Authors + Experts Who Excel At It _ YourWriterPlatform.com

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a magic potion you could drink, a stunt you could perform or even a test you could take that would automagically take you from obscurity to popularity in one painless step?

Wouldn’t it be even better if someone would just hand you the keys to the perfect Writer Platform and you could just hop in, rev the engine and race off to Author Superstardom?

So great, right?!

*pinch*

Right.  Back to reality.

Ok, so perhaps there is a bit (read a lot!) more effort involved in building a strong platform that draws people to you and your work.  But there is a way to flatten the learning curve and increase your chances of a favourable outcome.
[Read more…]

Authors with Platforms Sell Books.

It’s that simple.

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