A fiction author wants to start a platform. Let's say he's a scifi author. So he sets up a blog and email list. He starts writing about the craft of writing. He discusses creating the characters, editing, second drafts, and so on.

It's pretty exciting. He starts building a readership. His email list grows. People leave comments. Everything is going great.

Then it comes time to launch his next novel.

He follows all the advice about running a successful launch and then…

[crickets]

The book barely sells.

What went wrong?

The author built the wrong audience.

In the above case, the author has built a following of other writers — NOT of sci-fi readers.

This is the same problem I had with the launch of my first novel, The Threshing.

I have a big 50,000+ person email list here at booklaunch.com.

However, I've built that email list around book marketing… not young adult dystopian novels.

So when I promote my book marketing books and programs, they sell great!

But when I launch my novel to the email list, I sell 200 copies.

200 copies!!!

With 50,000 subscribers.

What to do?

Just starting? Build the right audience.

If you're just starting out, the goal isn't just to build a platform. It's to build a platform with fans that will actually buy your book. 

The process is this:

1. Identify your ideal reader(s).
2. Find places where they congregate online and in-person.
3. Create content that will attract them to your platform.

If you skip step #1, you're going to build a platform for a random set of people who are not going to buy your books.

[I specifically built Author Platform 101 to help you with this problem.]

Doing it wrong? Pivot or Branch.

Let's say you've been building your audience and you realize you've been doing it wrong. Or, you're like me, you built one audience for a specific reason, but now you're doing something new.

You have two options.

Option 1: Pivot

Keep the same platform, just change it to the right topic to attract the right people. Don't try to do this gradually. Send out an email, post it on your blog, etc. Announce that you were talking about topic X and now you're focusing on topic Y, then just do it.

You'll have some people unsubscribe or stop paying attention, but it's fine. They weren't going to buy your books anyway.

If your platform is small and relatively new, I recommend this option.

Option 2: Branch into Something New

If you've built a successful platform around a topic that is providing income and sales for your other books, there is no point changing everything. For instance, I'm not shutting down this website or changing it completely over because I am doing different stuff with my writing.

Instead, I've started a new platform at runningdownadream.com. It's small and just starting out, but it gives me a place to promote my projects that aren't book marketing without distracting or splintering this platform.

If you have an established platform on a topic but are working on an unrelated project, I recommend this option.

Dont waste your time.

If you're going to go through all the work to build a successful author platform, make sure you are focused on attracting people that will actually buy the books you are writing.

If you're not sure where to start, I highly recommend my Author Platform 101 program.

Want more like this? Listen to the Story Grid Podcast.

And, of course, the question gets asked of me from time to time:

“Have you written a book yet?”

On one hand, it completely makes sense that I should have a book or at least be working on one. I know a lot of great book agents and editors at the big publishing firms. I know plenty of great authors that would share their contacts with me and endorse the book. I also am the creator of the Instant Bestseller Formula so I know a thing or two about launching a book.

So why haven't I written a book?

I don't have anything worth saying yet.

Publishing a book now is easier than ever. Editors are more accessible and they are more desperate than ever to sell books. And if you want to skip the whole trade publishing process, you can self-publish your book and have it for sale in the biggest book store in the world in a matter of weeks.

However, just because the tools exist does not mean you should use them.

Earlier this century everything changed with the advent of blogging software. All of a sudden you didn't have to rely on a handful of geeks that knew how to put content online. You could do it yourself free and easy. Fast forward a few years and the number of ways to publish your content are more than you could ever keep up with.

But If I take a cursory glance at how they are being used by a lot of people, I come to the same conclusion:

Just because the tools exist does not mean you should use them.

Even if you take out the clearly horrid things that people accomplish by spreading their bigotry and hate, so many of the tools are used for vapid and useless things. Facebook is used as a narcissistic cry to the universe to prove that you are interesting and matter. Twitter is used to spew useless drivel 140 characters at a time. “Internet marketers” start dozens of blogs and post thousands of words of worthless content in the hopes of gaming the system and making a few bucks.

And we have all read a least a few books that should have never been allowed to reach the light of day.

I haven't published a book yet because I don't have anything worth saying yet. When I start thinking through what I could write, my mind immediately goes to what a published book could do for my career, speaking rate and social status.

Until I'm writing a book for the people that are going to read it, instead of for myself, I'm not going to do it.

The tools exist. They are there, easily accessible, for you to use. If you're reading this, odds are you are using at least a couple of them. So what are you using them for? Merely to make a few bucks? To prove to yourself and the world that you exist?

Or, are you trying to make the world a better place by putting your art and ideas out for all to see?

At the 2011 SXSW Interactive conference I attended a great panel discussion titled “Care and Feeding of Blogs and Book Contracts” moderated by Pam Slim of Escape From Cubicle Nation. My favorite part of the discussion was the insight offered by Mary E Glenn of McGraw-Hill and Matthew Holt of John Wiley & Sons. Statements like “You don’t need agents anymore” and “Hiring a PR firm is bulls*** and a waste of money” stood out the most to me. However, the hardest part was listening to the questions from the audience. Here’s a sampling:

• How big of a readership does your blog need to have to get a book contract?
• Does it matter if you can get published in major trade magazines?
• What if you have a big email list but you don’t blog?

If you are asking these questions, you're focusing on the wrong thing. This is not what a publisher actually cares about.

Back in December I spoke at the BizBookLab hosted by Todd Sattersten. There were a lot of publishing folk present and lots of conversations erupted around this idea of what it takes to get a book contract.

The same questions kept coming up about blogging, speaking, Twitter following, etc. And then finally somebody got it right.

It all boils down to this one fundamental question that all publishers care about:

“Can you sell books?”

What if you snapped your fingers and skipped all of the writing, editing, designing and printing of your book? Instead, this afternoon somebody dropped a pallet of 2000 of your books in your driveway. Could you sell them in the next 30 days? If the answer is “Yes” you can probably get a book contract. If the answer is “No”, you’re going to have a hard time persuading a publisher to invest in you.

Last year over a million books were published. Often when an author sits down with a publisher, the first question to come up is not “What is your book about?”. Instead, it’s “What is your platform?”. In other words, “We want to make sure you can actually sell your own book before we invest in publishing it.”

It’s about the tribe, not the tools. Blogging, social media, public speaking, etc are all tools for building and engaging your tribe. If you have a large tribe of passionate followers that are actively engaged and willing to spend money on your book, it doesn’t matter what tools you are using, you’ll be able to get a publishing deal.

Publishers are in the business of selling books. If you can sell books, they’ll be interested in what you have to say.

Photo by The Digital's

“What do you think of book publicists? Good or bad?”

I get some form of this question on a regular basis. This is always an interesting conversation and I usually talk about my own interactions with publicists.

Here are my top three:

The “We can't make any promises” publicists

Last year I spoke at an author marketing workshop and hung around to participate in some of the other sessions. The most awkward was the one the one led by three publicists from three different firms. The majority of the workshop was spent lamenting about how much media has changed and how they can't promise that anything will work. The most depressing of the group was the publicist that focused 100% on getting newspaper coverage.

I guess I would be depressed too.

The “Bloggers are stupid and online media is a waste of time” publicists

I recently had a phone call that included a client, a publicist and myself. The publicist was openly hostile to the online tribe building suggestions I was making. When I suggested that the author spend time in every city he visits interacting with readers, the publicist said it was a “waste of [the author's] time”. When I suggested that bloggers be invited to media events, the publicist said “bloggers can't be trusted and don't drive many sales anyway”.

Wow.

The “We are actually good publicists” publicists

Then there are a very few publicist firms that do a fantastic job. They have great connections and do their best to get you the media coverage you want.

They also cost over $50,000.

Who hires a publicist?

Last year I got a behind-the-scenes look at an author buying their way onto the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. If you hire a couple top tier publicists, run full page ads in the major, national newspapers and buy ad spots on major TV and radio networks, you can absolutely force your way onto the bestseller lists.

If you have more money than time and you care more about selling books than connecting with an audience, hiring a publicist is the way to go.

What about the rest of the authors out there? The ones that care about building a platform and making a difference over a long period of time? What are their options?

DIY

What is so amazing about the brave new world of online media is that you already have all the tools for being your own publicist right at your finger tips. You can develop relationships with journalists yourself. You can build your own following instead of spending a bunch of money to borrow someone else's.

Now, when the topic of book publicists come up, it's no longer a discussion of whether they are good or bad, it's about imagining a world where they are rendered irrelevant. A world where spending over $50,000 and no guarantee of results is ludicrous because you already have direct access to your readers.

That is the world I want every author to live in.

photo by William Brawley

Yesterday Google announced their eBookstore. While at first glance another online bookstore doesn't seem to matter all that much, but Google has a history of knocking down giants. So what do you need to know about this initial launch of the Google eBookstore?

1. Distributed/social comments

To leave a comment on Amazon.com you have to be logged in with your account. They also take steps to make sure people aren't spamming the comments or running multiple accounts. Google eBookstore on the other hand is aggregating comments from several different sources. GoodReads.com is the main source but there are also comments from editorial sources and Kirkus.com. You can also leave your review directly in the Google eBookstore.

My question is, what are they doing to protect from people spamming comments? Are they checking for people using multiple accounts either through Google or GoodReads? The consumer reviews are very important in online sales so I would love to see more information on what they are doing to protect the process.

2. Device Agnostic

The Google eBookstore launches with support of reading on the web, Android phones, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Barnes & Noble Nook and Sony eReader. Curiously left off the list is the Amazon Kindle although I would assume that will happen in the near future. Google's site says, “Currently, Google eBooks are not compatible with Amazon Kindle devices, though we are open to supporting them in the future.” Once it does, I would start to wonder why anyone would buy an ebook anywhere BUT a store like Google's that allows you to remain device agnostic. Hopefully this will twist the arm of the other major players to decide on a single format for ebooks that can be used (and protected) across all devices.

3. Huge amount of titles available

Google launched with over 3,000,000 titles! That is bigger than any other store currently.

4. Google is crawling the entire book

Depending on the copyright of the book and the publisher's requirements, Google is crawling the content of the entire book. The most exciting thing about this is that books will start showing up in search engines for terms outside of the authors name, book title and short description. What this will do to actual book sales is yet to be seen, but I can only assume this increased exposure will increase sales as well.

I'll pause here and mention that the launch of the Google eBookstore was made possible by a settlement in the class action lawsuit brought against Google by the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a handful of authors and publishers over three years ago. By reading through some of the information on this lawsuit it sounds like a lot of decisions have been tentatively made and there is a lot of progress yet to come.

5. Book previews

Publishers will have the option of making 20% to 100% of their book available for preview to readers. It will also make it very easy to embed portions of the book in your website. This is exciting as it will make it much easier to share portions of the book and make them available to potential readers.

6. Analytics

The Google eBookstore will integrate with their analytics software as well. From Google site:

Online reports let you manage your account information, view how many consumers have looked at your titles, see click rates on purchase links, and review other stats related to the Google Books program.

For those of us that focus on analytics and website optimizations to drive sales, this is an exciting feature. I would love to see the other retailers follow suit on this one. The ability to see stats and user actions will help make decisions on how we are driving people to the various online book stores.

7. Adwords integration

An obvious move, the Google eBookstore integrates with their Adwords product to make it easier to purchase and track advertising campaigns.

8. Resources and Education for Authors and Publishers

While it is current pretty sparse, Google has created a resources section to help authors and publishers take advantage of their new platform. Keep an eye here as this section is sure to grow quickly.

—

I'm most excited about what this move by Google will force the other online retailers to do, especially Amazon.com. Will Amazon open their Kindle format? Will they allow authors and publishers to track their analytics? I'm very interested to see what comes next.

I could not locate very much information on how much control authors and publishers will have in the listing of their books. Will you be able to change the primary category for your book? Will you be able to customize the author's page with video and other content?

Google has a history of launching a product and then quickly growing it and adding additional features. What will be next for the Google eBookstore and what will they continue to push the other major retailers to do? Time will tell.

A tribe is a group of people connected to an idea, connected to a leader and connected to each other.

What does this mean for you, the author? Let's go through each element individually.

Connected to an idea

When people join your tribe, what are they becoming a part of? What is the bigger “idea” behind your work? If you are a non-fiction writer, answer the question “How are you trying to make the world a better place?”. For the fiction writer, start with a question like “What is the world I'm inviting people to be a part of?”

People join a tribe because they want to be connected to something bigger than themselves and, even when it's your fans, something bigger than you. What are your ideals? Why are people connecting with you instead of one of the other millions of authors out there?

Answering these questions is a key step towards building your tribe. The ability to put this into one phrase or sentence allows you to easily communicate to people why you are someone worth following and connecting with.

Connected to a leader

In this case, YOU are the leader. In next week's email I will go into more depth as to what your job is as the leader, but for now, know that for your tribe to exist, you will be inviting people to connect with you.

This can look different depending on the tribe you are building (more on this subject in the weeks to come) but start thinking about how your tribe is going to connect and interact with you.

Connected to each other

You are one person and can only do so much. It is important when you build your tribe to connect the people in your tribe to each other. This will allow them to engage around you and your ideas without your direct involvement. Give your fans opportunities to share with each other how your work has changed their lives for the better.

By connecting your fans with each other you will increase their enthusiasm about your tribe, give them comradery around your idea and allow you to distribute the work of building and supporting your tribe to others.

Your Homework

Take the time to sit down and put together your tribe's “idea”. Start by writing out everything you are trying to accomplish with your book(s) and your career. What are you calling people to be apart of? Then put that idea into one sentence. This will be the sentence that drives everything else you do.

Extra – Download our free 16 Principles for Building and Leading a Tribe ebook.

I was first introduced to the mind of Sunni Brown at SXSW 2010 conference where she was on the Visual Note-taking 101 panel along with Mike Rhode, Dave Gray and Austin Kleon.  The most impressive thing about the panel was how engaged they were with the audience. Everyone in the room was following along, learning to draw, etc.  It was a lot of fun to watch.

While I did not get to meet Sunni at the conference, I tracked her down a couple weeks later and told her she needed to hire me, so she did.

We recently launched Sunni's new website and made a lot of changes. Here's a few:

We helped explain what she does

“Graphic Facilitation” is the technical term for what Sunni does.  Unfortunately, this means nothing to most people. We needed to break down the all encompassing phrase of “graphic facilitation” into bits that people can understand and clearly see the benefits of working with her team.  Here's what we did to get over this hurdle:

• Added a tagline to the top of the site with a clear explanation.
  
• Instead of a typical “Services” page, we decided to called it “What We Do“.  We wanted people to easily find out what Sunni and her team does.  Since the launch of her new site, this is the second most visited page on the site.
  
• On the “What We Do” page, instead of focusing on words like “Infographics” and “Graphic Facilitation”, we broke it down into the problems she solves:
  • We visualize complex ideas
  • We help you tell your story
  • We facilitate groups using visual problem solving

  This helps break down the technical aspects of what Sunni does into things that most people can understand and identify with.

Here's a few more things we did on Sunni's new site:

• We had Sunni hand draw her logo and other elements of her site.  This gives a creative feel to the site without going overboard with distracting design.  It gives a visual representation of what she does while keeping her site clean and professional.
  
• Made her blog much easier to browse through while also keeping her images front and center.  The latest post is at the top, nice and big with her latest art piece prominently displayed.  When you scroll down or browse the archives, there is a thumbnail image with each post.
  
• Made it much easier to share her posts and art across Facebook, Twitter, etc.
  
• Made it much easier and more prominent to sign up for her email newsletter (every author's most prized community building tool!)
  
• Added the three boxes at the top to highlight the three most important things Sunni is working on.
  
• Added social proof – all the great companies Sunni has worked with.
  

With these changes to Sunni's website we were able to make it easier to see her artwork, understand what she does and stay in contact with her. Let us know what you think!

Have you noticed how most people have an incorrect view of their social status? They either consider themselves more important or less important than what is reality. I find authors are often skewed to not thinking highly enough of themselves.

In most cases, this isn't a bad trait. Nobody likes someone that is too full of themself. However this will also hold you back from successfully marketing yourself as an author. I'll get to that in a minute but first let me offer some reasoning behind the bold title of this post.

Let's take Brad Pitt for example. On one hand, he's just a normal guy. Gets up the morning, feeds his cat, brushes his teeth, etc. On the other hand he's freaking Brad Pitt. Movie star, millionaire, activist, etc. He probably won't answer the phone if you call.

You, as a published author, are better than everyone else in a similar fashion.

Sure you're just a normal person, but you've also convinced a publisher to spend money on your words. This automatically establishes you as an expert and puts you on a different playing field than most people. Even with a million books being published every year, you're still a part of an extremely small community. A community most people dream of being in.

That said, until you get over selling yourself short, you'll never be able to lead, grow your tribe or market yourself.

What are people looking for in a leader?

• Authority in their ideas and beliefs
• Guts to go first and put themselves on the line
• Willingness to put their own skin in the game
• Confidence to give direction on where people should go and how they should act
• Create a culture around their movement. Establish who is “in” and “out”
• Effectively communicate their vision
• Challenge the status quo

All of this is much easier to do sitting behind a computer screen and turning in a manuscript to the editor. To truly lead your tribe you have to step out into mediums that are much more risky and takes the confidence of knowing you and your ideas are superior enough to call other people to join you.

—

What is that feeling you get when you get a book autographed or get an email from an industry icon you have huge respect for?

To lead your tribe, you must embrace the fact that this is how people will feel when they connect with you.

Photo by internets_dairy

1. The number of books being published in the U.S. has exploded.

   Bowker reports that over one million (1,052,803) books were published in the U.S. in 2009, which is more than triple the number of books published four years earlier (2005) in the U.S. (April 14, 2010 Bowker Report). More than two thirds of these books are self-published books, reprints of public domain works, and other print-on-demand books, which is where most of the growth in recent years has taken place. In addition, hundreds of thousands of English-language books are published each year in other countries.

2. Book industry sales are declining, despite the explosion of books published.

   Book sales in the U.S. peaked in 2007 and then fell by nearly five percent between 2007 and 2009, according to the Association of American Publishers (April 7, 2010 AAP Report). Similarly, bookstore sales peaked in 2007 and have fallen since, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (Publishers Weekly, February 22, 2010). The major bookstore chains have been especially hard hit, with a 12 percent sales decline between 2007 and 2009 (Publishers Weekly, April 12, 2010).

3. Average book sales are shockingly small, and falling fast.

Combine the explosion of books published with the declining total sales and you get shrinking sales of each new title. According to Nielsen BookScan – which tracks most bookstore, online, and other retail sales of books (including Amazon.com) – only 282 million books were sold in 2009 in the U.S. in all adult nonfiction categories combined (Publishers Weekly, January 11, 2010). The average U.S. nonfiction book is now selling less than 250 copies per year and less than 3,000 copies over its lifetime.

4. A book has less than a 1% chance of being stocked in an average bookstore.

For every available bookstore shelf space, there are 100 to 1,000 or more titles competing for that shelf space. For example, the number of business titles stocked ranges from less than 100 (smaller bookstores) to approximately 1,500 (superstores). Yet there are 250,000-plus business books in print that are fighting for that limited shelf space.

5. It is getting harder and harder every year to sell books.

   Many book categories have become entirely saturated, with many books on every topic. It is increasingly difficult to make any book stand out. New titles are not just competing with a million recently published books, they are also competing with more than seven million other books available for sale. And other media are claiming more and more of people’s time. Result: investing the same amount of effort today to market a book as was invested a few years ago will yield a fraction of the sales previously experienced.

6. Most books today are selling only to the authors’ and publishers’ communities.

   Everyone in the potential audiences for a book already knows of hundreds of interesting and useful books to read but has little time to read any. Therefore people are reading only books that their communities make important or even mandatory to read. There is no general audience for most nonfiction books, and chasing after such a mirage is usually far less effective than connecting with one’s communities.

7. Most book marketing today is done by authors, not by publishers.

   Publishers have managed to stay afloat in this worsening marketplace only by shifting more and more marketing responsibility to authors, to cut costs and prop up sales. In recognition of this reality, most book proposals from agents and experienced authors now have an extensive (usually many pages) section on the author’s marketing platform and what the author will do to market the book. Publishers still fulfill important roles in helping craft books to succeed and making books available in sales channels, but whether the books move in those channels depends primarily on the authors.

8. No other industry has so many new product introductions.

   Every new book is a new product, needing to be acquired, developed, reworked, designed, produced, named, manufactured, packaged, priced, introduced, marketed, warehoused, and sold. Yet the average new book generates only $100,000 to $200,000 in sales, which needs to cover all of these expenses, leaving only small amounts available for each area of expense. This more than anything limits how much publishers can invest in any one new book and in its marketing campaign.

9. The digital revolution is expanding the number of products and sales channels but not increasing book sales.

   We are in the early stages of an explosion in digital versions of books and digital sales channels for books and portions of books. However, early indications are that the digital revenues are replacing traditional book revenues rather than adding to overall book revenues. The total book publishing pie is not growing, but it is now being divided among even more products and markets, thus further crowding and saturating the marketplace. And although some digital costs are lower, other costs are higher while price points are lower – making digital profits even slimmer than print profits thus far.

10. The book publishing world is in a never-ending state of turmoil.

    The thin margins in the industry, high complexities of the business, intense competition in a small industry, rapid growth of new technologies, and expanding competition from other media lead to constant turmoil in book publishing. Translation: expect even more changes and challenges in coming months and years.

    STRATEGIES FOR RESPONDING TO “THE 10 AWFUL TRUTHS”

    1. The game is now pass-along sales.
    2. Events/immersion experiences replace traditional publicity in moving the needle.
    3. Leverage the authors’ and publishers’ communities.
    4. In a crowded market, brands stand out.
    5. Master new sales and marketing channels.
    6. Build books around a big new idea.
    7. Front-load the main ideas in books and keep books short.
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