Last Monday I wrote a post regarding the importance of writers, particularly aspiring writers, building a strong media presence. I thought this week would be a good time to review Chuck Sambuchino’s new book, Create Your Writer Platform: The Key to Building an Audience, Selling More Books, and Finding Success as an Author. An overview of this book is the perfect complement to last week’s post, as its content covers this very concept in great detail.
Create Your Writer Platform is broken down into three helpful sections. The first section of the book deals with what exactly a platform is and why writers need one. He covers twelve core principles of successful platforms and points out the importance of finding and honing your niche. He ends that section by devoting a special segment to fiction and memoir writers, and explaining the whys and hows of platforming for their particular genres.
The second section of Sambuchino’s book contains vital information regarding the mechanics of platforms. He introduces the many different options available to writers, and then delves into each in greater detail. Topics covered include websites, blogs, newsletters, articles and columns, public speaking, social media (Twitter, Facebook and more), and what he calls four side doors to platform (four shorter paths that may help you circumvent the traditional routes, but are risky and aren’t necessarily any easier).
The third section of Create Your Writer Platform offers twelve case studies from authors in various genres who have built successful platforms. Sambuchino shows the different and successful paths these authors have taken in building their platforms from the ground up. There are lengthy interviews with probing questions and informative tips from non-fiction, fiction, memoir, and inspirational writers.
In addition to the wealth of technical information Sambuchino provides throughout the book, he went one step further. Sprinkled throughout the text are quotes from various experts in the publishing industry—opinions which are extremely valuable regarding author platforms. This book offers the perfect combination of author knowledge and expert contribution.
In short, I highly recommend Chuck Sambuchino’s Create Your Writer Platform: The Key to Building an Audience, Selling More Books, and Finding Success as an Author to any writers with questions regarding platforming, branding, or social media presence. This book is a must-have reference for an author’s bookshelf.
I’m told all writers need platforms these days, a way to get noticed in a world-wide crowd of individuals selling, more or less, the same thing we’re hawking–entertainment and escape. My good friend, Linda Apple, uses the image of a field of sunflowers, one especially long-stemmed flower growing up into the blue sky, waving its sunny face above the other beautiful yellow blooms. A platform lifts us up so we are noticed. Now if our writing isn’t spectacular, folks are going to quickly look for another sunny face, but without the platform, no matter how good our writing, we’ll not be read, never get the chance to show how good we are.
The trick to building any solid base is to build it with similar planks. My first book, Redneck Goddess, is set in rural Georgia and my second, Bigfoot Blues, takes place in northern California. Redneck Goddess is about a southern gal who falls in love with a Latin aristocrat and brings him home to her little bitty town. The novel uses humor to poke and prod at the subject of racism and intolerance and don’t think all that intolerance came from her side of the family either. So, while the book takes a hard look at a serious matter, it does so with a lot of fun and acceptance and understanding of both cultures. Southern redneck and Latin aristocrat.
My second novel, Bigfoot Blues, is due out in October. There’s humor in the quirky world of Samantha Jean, the daughter of a Bigfoot hunter, but the book is more layered, more complex than Redneck Goddess. And it’s set in the Pacific Northwest, not the American south.