Your Author Platform: It’s Not About You!

by Joel Friedlander

As some of you know I’ve been conducting book marketing mastermind sessions with some top book marketers recently.

Exposing myself (figuratively, of course) to the ideas and practices of these experts has changed my thinking on some topics.

One of these is the author platform, something I’ve written about often before.

And here’s what changed for me: I’ve always thought of the metaphoric platform as something we patiently and consciously build, board by board with our marketing and networking activities.

You write a blog, give talks to groups, establish your authority, authenticity and helpfulness, gathering fans and readers along the way. This foundation becomes your platform.

The Big Change

But what if you thought about it from the other side, so to speak? What I learned from talking to these marketing pros is this:

The platform isn’t about you at all. It’s about the unmet needs of your audience.

That’s the platform that already exists. It’s there for you if you can address those unmet needs, because then you’ll have the platform to sell from, to spread your message or your stories.

The audience creates the platform. What you do with all your activity is try to move yourself onto the platform so that you have a place to speak from.

What does this mean in reality?

For an example out of left field, look at the contest going on right now for the Republican presidential nomination here in the U.S.

For months there’s been a large percentage of Republicans who have been unhappy with the candidates in the race. This unmet need of the audience created a powerful platform for anyone who could legitimately get up there to make their case.

So when someone like the Governor of Texas, Rick Perry, got into the race by jumping up on the platform already created, he rocketed to the top of the polls.

Was it his marketing, speaking, or books that did that? Nope. It was the power of all those unmet needs—the power of the platform—that did it. Once people got a closer look at him, he fell right off, but that’s not the point.

Think about your own subject area. No matter how many books have been written about it, there are still lots of unmet needs.

At the Pitchapalooza I participated in a few months ago one of the big hits was a pitch for a book about tree pruning. It turned out the best book on this narrow subject was very old, and had never been modernized or replaced. The person pitching had the exact credentials and the ability to create the new version the market needed. Every one of us on the panel immediately recognized a winning proposition. Why?

The unmet needs of that niche market are what will propel that book to regular, healthy sales. The people who are just waiting for a book that’s been written recently on this topic make up the platform for the author.

I could go on, but I think you can see the meaning and importance of this idea.

Certainly you have to do all the marketing practices you are doing, without them you won’t be able to use the platform you identify.

But look around, it’s a different world. People in all niches and interest groups and genres have these unmet needs, whether they realize it or not.

It’s up to us to find them and fill those needs. Welcome to the new author platform—it’s not about you at all.

Article by Joel Friedlander

Joel Friedlander is a self-published author and book designer who blogs about book design, self-publishing and the indie publishing life at TheBookDesigner.com. He's also the proprietor of Marin Bookworks, where he helps publishers and authors who decide to publish get to market on time and on budget with books that are both properly constructed and beautiful to read.

Why Wait? The Baby Boomers' Guide to Preparing Emotionally, Financially and Legally for a Parent’s Death

Today I have the great pleasure of being the host on Day 10 of the Virtual Blog Tour of author Carolyn A. Brent whose book Why Wait? The Baby Boomers' Guide to Preparing Emotionally, Financially and Legally for a Parent’s Death launches on Amazon on Tuesday November 15, 2011.

Author Carolyn A. Brent, M.B.A. is a former clinical educational manager in the pharmaceutical industry. She is an avid activist and advocate working with the U.S. Congress for the purpose of creating change to protect seniors and veterans from financial and medical abuse. She has appeared on many local and national TV and radio shows, and is a sought-after keynote speaker.

Yesterday, Carolyn visited Joyce Joneschiet at http://aginginplaceoptions.com/2011/11/how-to-protect-your-parents-and-make-caregiving-a-family-affair , where they talked about Carolyn writing the book and couple on smoothing certain emotional conversations.

Today, I'd like to share with you a recent podcast interview I had with Carolyn. I hope you enjoy it.

I hope you enjoyed this interview with Carolyn A. Brent and that you’ll check out her book Why Wait? The Baby Boomers' Guide to Preparing Emotionally, Financially and Legally for a Parent’s Death at http://www.babyboomersguide.org/book-launch/pre-launch.html

Here Are Two Reasons Why:

FREE 3-DAY PASS

When you visit the page at the link above and request a "launch reminder", you will automatically receive a FREE pass to Carolyn's 3-day "Why Wait? Telesummit", with a panel leading experts preparing emotionally, financially and legally for the death of a parent.  You can listen to the telesummit online in the comfort of your own home, and even ask questions during the broadcast.

This telesummit is a completely free
"no purchase necessary" gift from Carolyn

To register, go to

http://www.babyboomersguide.org/book-launch/telesummit.html

FREE GIFTS

When you buy Carolyn's book on Tuesday November 15, 2011, you can ALSO receive a complete library of beautiful personal development gifts from authors, speakers, coaches and other enlightened professionals from around the globe including one from me:

MP3 audio book of More Than Meets the Eye ~

True Stories about Death, Dying, and Afterlife

To claim your 3-Day Pass and read about the free gifts, go to: http://www.babyboomersguide.org/book-launch/pre-launch.html

Thanks for reading! As usual, please feel free to share your comments and thoughts below. I love reading your feedback.

AND… be sure to follow Carolyn tomorrow when the next stop on the Virtual Blog Tour is Shelagh Jones, who will be podcast interviewing Carolyn on her show.  To visit that "stop" on the tour, go to http://SpiritualMarketing-Blog.com/books-by-spiritus-members/carolyn-a-brent-why-wait/  

Should You Design Your Own Book? Pro and Con

by Joel Friedlander

Digital printing and print on demand have allowed authors to take control of the production of their own books. Thousands of self-publishers have flourished as a result, ushering in a new era of self-publishing, and many of them want to design their own book.

When authors decide to publish their own books they are thrown into a world that was always hidden behind the doors of large book publishing firms. They’re responsible for editing, proofreading, fact checking, indexing, marketing, public relations and more.

Not only that, but the conventions, vendors, and other standard ways book publishing works are new and foreign to most authors. The learning curve can be steep. Some authors throw up their hands and abandon their projects before they’re finished. That’s a shame.

It’s Always Been This Way for Self-Publishers

Of course, savvy self-publishers have been confronting this situation for many years, well before print on demand. And in this era of downsizing and outsourcing, there’s a lot of freelance publishing talent available. Self-publishers who aim to create a commercial product usually hire the help they need rather than trying to learn every job in the publishing process. This makes good business sense.

But one area in which authors vary quite a bit is in how they deal with the design of their books.

Some want to hire the best designers they can afford and leave it to a professional to take care of all the details that go into creating a professional-looking book. They want a book that will gain the respect of book industry buyers, distributors, and which will be able to sell head-to-head against books from major publishers.

Others decide that if you’re a self-publisher, you can design your own book. They either use the tools they have—usually a word processor—or buy complex layout software that comes with its own learning curve.

Before you decide whether or not to design your own book, you might want to consider the pros and cons of each approach.

5 Reasons to Design Your Own Book

1. You want to keep complete control of the project—You’ve dreamed of holding your book in your hand and you’re excited about the opportunity to decide on margins, typefaces, widows and orphans and all the other decisions that go into a book design.

2. You have a clear idea of how you want your book to look—Perhaps you’ve been admiring the books of a certain writer, or from a particular publisher. You know exactly how you want your book to look and see no need to pay someone to do it for you.

3. Your budget just doesn’t include anything for book design—Book designers, like other professionals, cost money, and books with complex formatting, lots of extra-text elements, anchored graphics, charts, graphs, tables and so on take quite a bit of time to assemble.

4. You don’t think anyone else will get it—You feel your book is so unique that only you can correctly interpret it for the rest of the world, and you are dedicated to seeing it through, no matter how long it takes.

5. You need to experiment—Your creativity requires lots of experimentation, trying different things and pulling them apart, then doing completely different designs. For a professional designer, this could end up costing you quite a bit of money. It may be better to do this experimentation on your own.

5 Reasons NOT to Design Your Own Book

1. You simply don’t want to learn every aspect of publishing—Unless you have a passion for typefaces, running heads, chapter openings and the other minutia of book design, you might find it unproductive to study the entire field just to create one book.

2. Your time is very limited—Most self-publishers have a “day job” and publish in their spare time. In addition to everything else they take on, becoming their own book designer may demand just too much time, slowing the production of their book.

3. You want a book that looks just like one from a big publishing company—Let’s face it, the books we buy from traditional publishers usually look pretty good because they are the product of professionals at every step of the process. Unless you want to devote the time to acquire their expertise, the way to get a professional-looking book is to hire professionals.

4. Your book is very complex—In the case of heavily-illustrated, extensively annotated or graphically complex books, the difficulty involved in creating these books yourself may be overwhelming, creating frustration where you should have enjoyment in the process.

5. You’re publishing an art or photography book—Unless you have experience dealing with color correction, offset printing, RGB-to-CMYK color conversion and the advantages and disadvantages of various paper stocks, the production demands of these kinds of books pretty much require that you have a professional book designer involved somewhere along the line.

Whichever way you decide to produce your book, the best advice I can offer you is to spend a lot of time looking at books to see what the conventions are and how the books are put together. You’ll also get ideas that you can use in your own book.

The design of books hasn’t changed much in 500 years. Because of that, readers have clear (even if unconscious) expectations of what a book should look like. Follow these conventions and use good models for your own design, or hire a pro.

Either way, you’ll be doing what a lot of writers have only dreamed of: You’ll be a published author.

Joel Friedlander is a self-published author, a book designer and blogs about book design, self-publishing and the indie publishing life at TheBookDesigner.com. He's also the proprietor of Marin Bookworks, where he helps publishers and authors who decide to publish get to market on time and on budget with books that are both properly constructed and beautiful to read.

This Week's Podcast Guest: Hilderbrand Pelzer III

Award-winning educator Hildebrand Pelzer III joined us today for a discussion of his book, Unlocking Potential: Organizing a School Inside a Prison. This is inspiring book highlights Pelzer's 23 years in the service of Pennsylvania's students, including those often forgotten: incarcerated youth.

When Hildebrand Pelzer III became a teacher after graduating from college, he had no idea that education would become his life's mission. After several years at the School District of Philadelphia, he went on to lead the Penny Pack House School, located in the fifth-largest urban jail system in the United States. There, Pelzer directed the School District of Philadelphia's participation in the prison system and created the Juvenile-Focused Correctional Educational School Model, which has received national accolades and is the standard of success in educating school-age incarcerated youth.

In Unlocking Potential, Hildebrand shares both his passion for his work and his goal of bringing his Model to other prison systems across the nation. He serves as a source of inspiration, not only to America's students and educators, but to all aspiring writers who want to share their message.


To listen to the podcast, click here:

To buy the book or learn more about Hilderbrand Pelzer III's work, visit http://www.hp3-unlockingpotential.com (Also available at Amazon, Barnes&Noble, and Outskirts Press)

Follow Hilderbrand Pelzer III on Twitter: @unlkpotential

Self-Published Books: What Does it Take to Really “Make It”?

by Joel Friedlander

Do you read blog comments? Sometimes that’s the most interesting part of the post. Recently I read an interesting comment on the article Literary agents open the door to self-published writers by Alan Rinzler and published on his blog, The Book Deal.

The comment was from literary agent Kristina Holmes, and she talked about what she was looking for in books—self-published or not—for her agency. Here’s a part of what she had to say:

I still must see a significant platform and a well-written book with a compelling premise. The extra consideration self-published authors will have is showing substantial book sales. To a degree, a really unique hook or premise to the book can make up for low book sales, as can recent platform developments that may take sales to another level.

Whether you’re trying to attract a contract from a traditional publisher or not, there’s some powerful advice in this comment.

Consider at the three things Holmes is looking for in all books and authors:

1. a significant platform

2. a well-written book

3. a compelling premise

Aren’t those the same things we should be aiming for, as self-published authors?

A significant platform—In the online world, your book may have just as good a chance to be discovered as a book from a major publisher. That can happen when the people who are touched by your author platform efforts become cheerleaders for your book or program or cause and amplify your message into their own networks.

A well-written book—One of the messages we’re trying to send readers is that self-published books, when they are produced with professionalism and care, are the equal of books from traditional publishers. This starts with a well-written and edited manuscript, and there’s simply no replacement.

A compelling premise—Like all publishers, we have to answer the question, “Why publish this book?” We need to aim to fill a need in the market, or solve it better, faster, cheaper, or with more flair than anyone else. Present your unique perspective, give people a reason to want or need your book.

The Self-Publishing Conundrum

Holmes specializes in nonfiction, and nonfiction is where it’s easiest to profitably publish a book yourself. Her extra requirement for self-published books, “showing substantial sales,” is where a dilemma arises.

Most self-published books have negligible sales. That’s bad for the publisher and for any hope of selling to a bigger publisher, no matter what. But even if you sell 5,000 copies—a significant achievement for many self-published authors—you may only succeed in convincing a potential publisher that that’s all your platform will support.

In that case, why should they acquire your book and try to open up a larger distribution channel? You may have already exhausted the sales potential for your book.

And while a 5,000 copy sale is well short of what a big publisher with national distribution needs if it hopes to make a profit, the same book can be a cash bonanza for a self-published author. Once the costs of developing the manuscript and producing the book have been covered, the profits would be substantial.

A $15.95, 200-page trade paperback in print-on-demand distribution and sold on a short 20% discount will show a profit of $9.25 per book, or $46,000 for 5,000 books.

But the lesson in all this is simple: Books, to be successful, need to be well-written; to have a compelling reason for being; and they can be helped immeasurably by an author’s efforts to build a receptive audience. And that’s a lesson we should all remember.

Joel Friedlander is a self-published author, a book designer and blogs about book design, self-publishing and the indie publishing life at TheBookDesigner.com. He's also the proprietor of Marin Bookworks, where he helps publishers and authors who decide to publish get to market on time and on budget with books that are both properly constructed and beautiful to read.

An Interview with Angie Printup and Kelley Dollar, authors of He Blew Her a Kiss

Welcome to Writers in the Sky Podcast. Today's interview will be with author's assistant Vonnie Faroqui and co-authors of He Blew Her a Kiss, Angie Pechak Printup and Kelley Stewart Dollar.



Angie Pechak Printup and Kelley Stewart Dollar, have teamed up to put together a compilation of true stories with the express desire of helping others in the healing process after losing a loved one. Being lifelong friends for 35 years, it was only natural for Angie and Kelley to work together, combining their talents to bring this healing book for the soul to the world. The idea for this book was born out of a heartwarming experience that Angie’s good friend, Tom, had after losing his beloved wife, Judy, to cancer in 2008. The first story in the book, He Blew Her a Kiss, retells Tom and Judy's amazing love affair in a third person narrative and provides the inspiration for the title.

Angie and Kelly will share details of how they collected the many accounts of after death communication[ADC,] how they turned these accounts into story, their editing choices, and recount their journey to publish and market their book. Included in the interview is a reading by Angie Pechak Printup from the book.


Click play to listen . . .

15 Famous Authors With Surprising College Majors

Carrie Oakley sent us the following article that I found interesting. My degree is in metaphysics and I use the knowledge I gained from my education to help my clients who write in the spiritual/science (mind-body-spirit) genre. Please leave a comment below and share with us how your education or major is used (or NOT) in your work as an author or writer.

You may have been told that it doesn’t really matter what you major in, because you may not ever get a job that pertains to your major. Case in point: These famous authors didn’t major in writing, or literature, or even journalism. Instead, they enriched their minds taking other, equally challenging classes, and used their experiences to become successful writers. In fact, several of them have won the Pulitzer Prize, considered one of the world’s greatest honors in literature.

1. After growing up in several different Quaker communities as a child, Anne Tyler, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Accidental Tourist and Breathing Lessons, graduated from Duke at the young age of 19 and completed graduate work in Russian Studies at Columbia.

2. Larry Niven, author of “hard,” or extremely technical, science fiction novels set in the “Known Space” universe, is famed for his creation of the “Ringworld” concept. This is the idea of a band approximately the diameter of Earth’s orbit rotating around a star, and has been used in several other science fiction works, including the video game Halo. He has been a prolific writer since the 1960s but didn’t study writing in college. He was a mathematics major at Washburn University in Kansas and also did graduate work in math at UCLA.

3. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. majored in chemistry and engineering before being sent to fight in World War II. His experience as a POW in a German camp gave him the inspiration for Slaughterhouse-Five, his most famous work. His books and short stories included elements of science fiction and satire.

4. Elizabeth Peters got a degree that you might not expect from a writer; in fact, she earned a Ph. D. in Egyptology from the University of Chicago. This makes perfect sense, though, if you’re familiar with her eighteen Amelia Peabody books, novels that track an early 20th century archaeologist as she solves the mysteries of ancient Egypt. She was named Grand Master at the first Anthony Awards in 1986 and Grand Master at the Edgar Awards in 1998.

5. Barbara Kingsolver, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of The Poisonwood Bible, earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona.

6.Michael Crichton, bestselling author of thrillers such as The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, and Rising Sun, studied anthropology, and later, medicine at Harvard Medical School. However, he never actually practiced medicine, but spent most of his time teaching and writing until his 2008 death.

7. Ursula K. LeGuin graduated as a Phi Beta Kappan from Radcliffe College, where she studied anthropology. Interestingly, her father was a leading anthropologist of the time, and social themes inform most of her works about the world of Earthsea. She has become recently notorious for her resignation from the Authors’ Guild over their settlement with Google Books.

8. J.K. Rowling studied French at the University of Exeter, giving in to her parents’ wishes despite wanting to major in English. She was on a train in Scotland when the inspiration for the Harry Potter series came to her. Her study of a foreign language may have helped her concoct many of the magic spells that Harry learns in his own studies at Hogwarts.

9. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the author of The Gulag Archipelago, studied mathematics and physics at the University of Rostov before becoming a writer. His main work exposed the horror of the Soviet forced labor camps that he experienced from 1947 to 1953.

10. Norman Mailer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such famous works as The Naked and the Dead, An American Dream, and The Executioner’s Song, majored in aeronautical engineering at Harvard before serving in the U.S. Army during World War II.

11. Robin Cook, writer of medical thrillers such as Outbreak, Vital Signs, and Foreign Body, got a medical degree from the Columbia University School of Medicine. He has continued to practice medicine through the years, and has remained a prolific author into his seventies.

12. John Grisham majored in accounting at Mississippi State University after deciding his future did not lie in professional baseball. The author of legal thrillers such as The Firm and The Chamber then graduated from The University of Mississippi Law School.

13. Danielle Steel studied literature and fashion design at the Parsons School of Design and New York University before beginning her writing career. Her romance novels have been filmed multiple times, and during the 1980s and 1990s she became the epitome of the “successful, glamorous romance novelist” that many writers wished to emulate.

14. Noted author of dozens of Western-themed novels, Zane Grey, majored in dentistry, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania in 1898. He practiced for several years before devoting himself to full-time writing. Six of his books were produced as films.

15. Jean M. Auel, the celebrated author of the Earth’s Children series that began with Clan of the Cave Bear and has sold over 45 million copies worldwide, got a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Portland. While a student, she worked as a circuit board designer, a credit manager, and a technical writer.

Spirian Series Author Interview: Rowena Portch

Author Brings New Dimension to 'Blind Seer' Heroine.

One wrong step will tip the balance between redemption and destruction.

Join Writers in the Sky Podcast host Vonnie Faroqui with for an exciting author interview with Spirian Series author Rowena Portch.

When author Rowena Portch lost her vision to retinitis pigmentosa, she retired from her successful career as an editor at Microsoft, and with husband Gregg opened a wellness clinic on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. Portch had already been writing professionally for over 30 years, across different genres and for various publications, using a conventional publisher. Portch chose to self publish her most recent work and released The Protected, the first volume in her Spirian Series, on May 11, 2010, with book two, The Union to follow in October this year.

The two will discuss Portch's plans for the series as well as her choice to self publish the series, marketing, social networking ideas, and strategies for using virtual blog tours to promote the series.

Learn more about Rowena Portch and the Spirian Series from her website at http://rowenaportch.com/ or by following her on http://twitter.com/RowenaPortch and at http://bit.ly/Facebook-RowenaPortch. The author will meet and sign books for the public with events to be announced through BookTour.com.

 Author Rowena Portch and husband Greg.

Frugal and Focused Tweeting

Book title: Frugal and Focused Tweeting for Retailers: Tweaking Your Tweets and Other Tips for Integrating Your Social Media
Author: Carolyn Howard-Johnson
ISBN: 1451546149
Publisher: CreateSpace (April 1, 2010)
Reviewed by Yvonne Perry, owner of Writers in the Sky Creative Writing Services


Twitts• pir• a• tion • n. What Frugal and Focused Tweeting Gives You

I always get inspiration and ideas when I read something Carolyn Howard-Johnson has written about book marketing. However, when I got hold of her latest book, Frugal and Focused Tweeting for Retailers: Tweaking Your Tweets and Other Tips for Integrating Your Social Media, I wasn’t too sure I would learn something I didn’t already know. After all, there’s only so much you can say about Twitter—like most social networking sites, it takes up valuable time and distracts people from getting other things done.

But, I was pleasantly surprised and realized I was in for an interesting read when I opened the section before the first chapter and found, “Twitter was designed to be a simple communication device. I propose to keep it as simple as possible, or at least as simple as you want it to be.” I’m all about simplifying my life, so I kept reading.

She promised to reveal how to use Twitter as a business tool by tailoring your Tweets to your goals. I’ve been doing that.

“. . . easy schmeazy, free way to garner a few online sales” she says.


“Hmmmm . . .,” Says I. “I’ll keep reading.”

Did you say wallpaper? Excuse me while I open the Internet and see what I can do to improve my Twitter backdrop. Distracted? Oh, yes. But you should see my new wallpaper @writersinthesky! Or you can snag one from MyTweetSpace.com as Carolyn suggests in chapter three.

Moving right along. Next, the author says we should appreciate our customers and let them know we are thinking of them. By, George, she’s right and it’s #FollowFriday. I’ll be right back . . .

Sorry it took so long, I had to update my lists, follow some new people, and try out SocialOomph.com. But, hold on; I’m going back in to create hastags!

As you can see, this book has a lot to offer business owners. It contains a lot of useful information that can help you use Twitter more effectively and make better use of your time—frugally!

Purchase Frugal and Focused Tweeting on Amazon.com