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Build Your Author Platform: The New Rules: A Literary Agent's Guide to Growing Your Audience in 14 Steps
A great book is no longer enough. Author platform is the most powerful key to success in today’s saturated market, and increasingly, publishers are demanding that new authors come to them with an existing audience of interested followers. An author platform is essential to making each book a success, and even more, becomes the power source for building bigger audiences for future books.
Social media makes building the author platform easier than ever, but, unfortunately, most authors struggle to get it right. How can authors create their unique platform, connect with followers, write a manuscript, and grow their business?
The answers and success strategies are all here in 14 steps. In Creating Your Author Platform: The New Rules, top literary agent Carole Jelen and tech expert Michael McCallister apply their combined 35 years of expertise to outline 14 practical, hands-on steps to create a presence that will produce high book sales and expanded audience.
From pre-publication through book launch and beyond, authors will learn how to:
• Define goals and a unique brand
• Use successful website strategies, content, social presence, media authority, and training
• Secure positive reviews
• Attract viewers efficiently without cost
• Announce books that lead to increased sales
Creating Your Author Platform: The New Rules shows how to showcase your expertise, create book presence, and build an audience eager to buy. Filled with detailed lessons, examples, success stories, and advice from marketing departments at major publishers, Creating Your Author Platform: The New Rules is an indispensable guide for anyone looking for insight into publishing, promoting, and marketing books.
Social media makes building the author platform easier than ever, but, unfortunately, most authors struggle to get it right. How can authors create their unique platform, connect with followers, write a manuscript, and grow their business?
The answers and success strategies are all here in 14 steps. In Creating Your Author Platform: The New Rules, top literary agent Carole Jelen and tech expert Michael McCallister apply their combined 35 years of expertise to outline 14 practical, hands-on steps to create a presence that will produce high book sales and expanded audience.
From pre-publication through book launch and beyond, authors will learn how to:
• Define goals and a unique brand
• Use successful website strategies, content, social presence, media authority, and training
• Secure positive reviews
• Attract viewers efficiently without cost
• Announce books that lead to increased sales
Creating Your Author Platform: The New Rules shows how to showcase your expertise, create book presence, and build an audience eager to buy. Filled with detailed lessons, examples, success stories, and advice from marketing departments at major publishers, Creating Your Author Platform: The New Rules is an indispensable guide for anyone looking for insight into publishing, promoting, and marketing books.
- GenresWritingNonfiction
392 pages, Paperback
First published May 6, 2014
26 people are currently reading
217 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
November 6, 2024
This was a very helpful book that I had the opportunity to read for my MFA degree.
There are lots of great tips and ideas to help inspire you to actually get out there and find the readers who are looking for a book like yours.
I definitely recommend it.
3.5-4 Stars
There are lots of great tips and ideas to help inspire you to actually get out there and find the readers who are looking for a book like yours.
I definitely recommend it.
3.5-4 Stars
August 29, 2017
Pretty good overall. I ended up skimming through a fair bit of this since not all of it was particularly relevant, but when reading about the social networks/marketing tactics I wanted to focus on, I tended to find their advice pretty helpful. They spent a fair bit of time talking about how to practically create a Facebook/Twitter/insert-service-here account, which as a native of the digital world I found a bit annoying and useless. That being said, I'm aware that not everyone is used to how to set up accounts and such, so I suppose some would profit from these sections. At the end of the day, it wasn't the best book ever on the topic, but it did give me several valuable tips that I look forward to implementing as I work to build my platform.
Rating: 4 Stars (Very Good).
Rating: 4 Stars (Very Good).
April 23, 2021
This book was published in 2014, so a lot of information about different software is completely outdated (e.g., you can skip the chapter about Google+, which does not exist anymore).
But the rest of the book has such useful, timeless advice about all the ways to promote a book that I bookmarked a ton of pages! And although LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon have all updated and changed the features and tools available, the book gives great starting points for using those platforms. I really hope the authors do an updated edition at some point.
But the rest of the book has such useful, timeless advice about all the ways to promote a book that I bookmarked a ton of pages! And although LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon have all updated and changed the features and tools available, the book gives great starting points for using those platforms. I really hope the authors do an updated edition at some point.
August 6, 2019
This book was very helpful in guiding the reader through the maze of promotion possibilities and how to grow your platform.
It is well organized and explains everything in detail.
I recommend reading it small sections at a time, because there's a lot of information to absorb.
It's now on the top shelf of my bookcase where I can easily reach it.
Dianne McCartney, author of Just One Night. @AuthorDMcC
It is well organized and explains everything in detail.
I recommend reading it small sections at a time, because there's a lot of information to absorb.
It's now on the top shelf of my bookcase where I can easily reach it.
Dianne McCartney, author of Just One Night. @AuthorDMcC
February 22, 2021
This is an excellent, up-to-date resource for aspiring authors who want to build their digital presence. It covers the basics of creating an author webpage, blogging, and using Twitter, Google+, Facebook,LinkedIn, YouTube, Amazon.con, Goodreads and more. It gave me a number of ideas to follow up on. The only criticism I have is that it is geared towards non-fiction authors, but writers of fiction such as myself can definitely benefit as well.
August 18, 2024
There are many books available that cover the title's topic. For me, although voluminous, this was a very complete and up to date resource, particularly focused on marketing and developing a unique brand. Designed especially for independent self-publishing authors, the book outlines 14 hands-on steps to create a media and social presence that will lead to increased book sales and an expanded audince.
May 8, 2018
a valuable resource. As I prepare for my book being released by SelectBooks this book has proved very helpful in strengthening my author platform and plans for making the most of it.
November 8, 2017
I haven't finished this book (a giveaway win by the way), but it is arranged in such a way that you can read each stand alone chapter on your own time. So I'm going to do my review and then continue coming back to the book itself at my leisure.
This is a worthwhile book for the author who wants to learn more about promoting themselves. For the beginner, there is nearly everything in here, in one place, in enthusiastic, can-do language with well organized chapters. For the more experienced author, there are still many points to absorb, tips to pick up, and reminders of facets they might have forgotten or not really given serious consideration to.
The cover is a good informational cover. I get a bit annoyed when a cover has tons of little banners all over it, each yammering for my attention. This book, for the record, did NOT do that to me...but it almost got to that point. It stayed just far enough away from a cluttered self help book cover to surely earn the designation of true informational text. But that's just a quibble of my own personal idiosyncrasy.
I also was a bit amused by the inclusion of a foreword, preface, AND introduction. I had to think about that for a bit, and I absolutely found it helpful. While I haven't read all the chapters yet, I did read all of these. They had all sorts of helpful tips, as well as a catching enthusiasm. I loved the story of how the "Chicken Soup" series of books began.
I like the lay out of the book over all, and the chapters cover different forms of social media/ public self promotion/book selling boosts. This information would work for all genres, whether fiction or non fiction. The text has some variety of fonts to emphasize points and show sub headings, but they are useful and not cluttersome. The very heft and feel of the book felt pretty near perfect.
Over all, I'm very glad to have this book in my hands. It is chock full of practical information organized in reasonable ways and it has a good presentation over all. I look forward to returning to it on a regular basis. I recommend this book for young and old authors- and I can't do that with all the informational books on writing/publishing. Some of those nuts can't write a single book without cussing their unprofessional heads off. From where I'm standing, that is a serious credibility issue. This book doesn't seem to stoop at all, let alone stoop that low. Kudos to them!
This is a worthwhile book for the author who wants to learn more about promoting themselves. For the beginner, there is nearly everything in here, in one place, in enthusiastic, can-do language with well organized chapters. For the more experienced author, there are still many points to absorb, tips to pick up, and reminders of facets they might have forgotten or not really given serious consideration to.
The cover is a good informational cover. I get a bit annoyed when a cover has tons of little banners all over it, each yammering for my attention. This book, for the record, did NOT do that to me...but it almost got to that point. It stayed just far enough away from a cluttered self help book cover to surely earn the designation of true informational text. But that's just a quibble of my own personal idiosyncrasy.
I also was a bit amused by the inclusion of a foreword, preface, AND introduction. I had to think about that for a bit, and I absolutely found it helpful. While I haven't read all the chapters yet, I did read all of these. They had all sorts of helpful tips, as well as a catching enthusiasm. I loved the story of how the "Chicken Soup" series of books began.
I like the lay out of the book over all, and the chapters cover different forms of social media/ public self promotion/book selling boosts. This information would work for all genres, whether fiction or non fiction. The text has some variety of fonts to emphasize points and show sub headings, but they are useful and not cluttersome. The very heft and feel of the book felt pretty near perfect.
Over all, I'm very glad to have this book in my hands. It is chock full of practical information organized in reasonable ways and it has a good presentation over all. I look forward to returning to it on a regular basis. I recommend this book for young and old authors- and I can't do that with all the informational books on writing/publishing. Some of those nuts can't write a single book without cussing their unprofessional heads off. From where I'm standing, that is a serious credibility issue. This book doesn't seem to stoop at all, let alone stoop that low. Kudos to them!
November 7, 2015
How to- chapters can be very boring or very helpful. This book has a collection of both types. While I sometimes skimmed a section because I was overly familiar with what the authors were telling me to do. In other sections of the book, I slowed down, looked up websites and learned techniques for working with Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites.
As an author with an unpublished novel making the rounds, I keep reading and hearing the phrase, “build your author platform.” I’ve read a few other books, some of them covered all of the most popular social media sites as this book does; others concentrated of Twitter or Facebook.
This is my favorite book so far on how to use the social media. I plan to keep it on my reference bookshelf.
As far as those sections I skimmed because they were overly simplistic, someone somewhere needs this advice. Every reader is different. Even if you don’t have a novel ready to publish, this book is an excellent overview of how to use social media to build blogs, businesses or networks of friends.
I sincerely thank the authors for providing me with a lot of needed information.
As an author with an unpublished novel making the rounds, I keep reading and hearing the phrase, “build your author platform.” I’ve read a few other books, some of them covered all of the most popular social media sites as this book does; others concentrated of Twitter or Facebook.
This is my favorite book so far on how to use the social media. I plan to keep it on my reference bookshelf.
As far as those sections I skimmed because they were overly simplistic, someone somewhere needs this advice. Every reader is different. Even if you don’t have a novel ready to publish, this book is an excellent overview of how to use social media to build blogs, businesses or networks of friends.
I sincerely thank the authors for providing me with a lot of needed information.
July 17, 2015
For someone who is a brand new author, this is an excellent book. For a somewhat seasoned author, I found the book useful, but many of the strategies the book mentioned were things I was already doing. I can say that the book did help me improve many of the strategies that I was already implementing. The two strategies I didn't find very useful were using Linkedin and Facebook to build your author platform. To me these two social sites are kind of useless to an author, especially Linkedin. I have to be honest that I haven't used Linkedin as much as I could, but I haven't seen a lot of results from the site when I was active. Facebook has become so negative and commercial, it can feel like a waste of time. Facebook is good for promoting your work when you are already established. I found the chapter on podcasts very useful. This is one of the areas of marketing that I haven't explored. I still feel like this book can be very useful and informative whether you are just starting off as an author, or you have been an author for awhile.
September 10, 2014
I got my free copy of this useful and user-friendly book here on Goodreads.
Geared toward published writers, the book is full of helpful advice for setting up and using social media. There are checklists and a pull-out guide to make it easy. I don't think the information here is specific only to writers, and see many more applications than selling books. Anyone with something to sell could make use of the information here.
While I use email and Facebook every day I've yet to send a tweet. Should I decide that's something I should or want do, I have a blueprint for how and why to do so.
Social media can make or break an author or a product these days. With this book, here's no reason to make newbie mistakes.
Geared toward published writers, the book is full of helpful advice for setting up and using social media. There are checklists and a pull-out guide to make it easy. I don't think the information here is specific only to writers, and see many more applications than selling books. Anyone with something to sell could make use of the information here.
While I use email and Facebook every day I've yet to send a tweet. Should I decide that's something I should or want do, I have a blueprint for how and why to do so.
Social media can make or break an author or a product these days. With this book, here's no reason to make newbie mistakes.
October 20, 2014
This book is full of practical information on how to set up your author platform. In fact, it's so chock a block full of what to do, that it becomes mind-blowing. However, it is certain if you follow the plan outlined you will have the author platform your desire, or rather, the author platform that you need for today's promotion and marketing of yourself and your books. You will need to dip back into this book as you go. Well worth the read, and a must for all aspiring authors. Be quick though, times are a changing, and if you wait too long some info will most certainly be out of date.
September 8, 2014
This is a great book, it covers a large range of activities to market authors, from the common sense to ingenious insider tips. It is well set out and easy to follow, though I do think a lot of the forward matter is unnecessary.
August 10, 2016
What can I say? Fabulous resource for aspiring authors/writers who are cultivating their reading audience. An invaluable tool. A worthy investment. A must-buy. Five stars, easy.
July 29, 2014
An excellent, up-to-date, comprehensive book that covers the author's platform. It's the only reference you need on the subject.
November 3, 2016
I very helpful read.
February 5, 2018
A thorough guide to the business side of being a novelist.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews