Get Used to Building Your Platform

Here’s an inconvenient truth. 

Your audience can always be bigger. 

In fact, everyone in the publishing industry — literary agents, publishers, and even me — always want your audience to BE bigger. To continuously grow.

The clients I work with range from brand-new entrepreneurs to Internet famous leaders with eight figure businesses (as well as rose farms, ranches, and vineyards). Even clients who have millions of views on YouTube and get recognized in foreign countries by fans . . . are expected to grow their audiences.

And it’s not because the whole publishing industry is a bunch of demandy-smurfs.

Instead, it’s because building and maintaining an audience of engaged fans is essential to keep your business thriving and new customers coming in. It’s also really good for consistently selling books. 

I encourage you — and every client I work with — to think of platform-building activities as a process and not as something you have to do in order to get what you really want. There are more reasons to build an author platform than just securing a literary agent and a book deal. By getting visible, creating content that attracts fans, and interacting with a growing following you’ll also be able to make better offers, gain more clients, and generate more revenue. I see that in my Author Platform Builders community and among our clients everyday. 

Get used to building your audience and author platform. Because, in order to get a book deal and have a successful business, you’re never ever going to want to stop.