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@fctait You should check out this article: https://thewritepractice.com/fiction-platform/

a newly published author said she didn’t tell her publishers about her platform until after she had her book contract and was judged on writing alone.

I don’t think this writer had it right. The platform is not the author’s blog; the platform is the author’s writing itself and the trust he/she gets from their audience. It’s not something you can “tell” people about, really. It’s just something you do or don’t have. Writing alone, however, IS bad. Connections in one form or another, like agents, successful authors, other aspiring authors, heck, this website, are necessary. In one form or another.

So, how important is platforming compared with writing? Could I just focus on polishing my writing rather then spending time on platforming, or is that a bad idea?

Your platform IS your writing. If you are writing and showing that writing to people, you are platforming. You don’t have to spend time writing a blog post to build your platform; you don’t have to spend time putting together emails to build your platform, because if no one knows about you or reads/likes your stories, email lists and blogs are useless. Without people actually reading your writing, no one will read your blog, follow you on social, subscribe to your email list…Without READERS, first and foremost, you have no platform. You could have every form of social media, three blogs, two different email lists and thirty novels sitting on your computer, but if no one reads your writing, it doesn’t matter. You will have no platform, because those things are not your platform.

The BEST thing you could ever do to build a platform is to WRITE, WRITE, and KEEP WRITING. Submit to magazines, submit articles to blogs, start your own blog (of stories), do book signings with your already published books, give away books (VERY important), maybe talk at libraries or other events, heck, read your stories to little kids at church or a library…Any form of writing, and getting out there in into the public, is what builds your platforms. I don’t think many people will go to an author’s social media page if they don’t know the author exists. Building a platform is building more than a social media following; you have to build an audience, and trust from that audience, before they would ever follow you on social or something like that. Besides, if you have an audience that likes your stories and trusts you to tell a good one, you won’t really need social media anyway.

And this is SOOO important, and the article above touches on it as well: Writing about writing is not the same as writing stories. I’m not sure if you were going for this or not, but it’s just a warning. If you want to build your platform with a blog, doing a K.M. Weiland-type blog is NOT the way to go. If you want readers, write your writing, because attracting readers is what will build a platform. The difference between the two is like people looking to buy houses (readers, the important part) and people looking to buy tools (the writers). You are trying to attract readers, so WRITE YOUR STORIES. And DON’T STOP.

Also, if you do want a new email address, you can go to this link: https://outlook.live.com/mail/?authRedirect=true

Just click “Create New Account” and you’ll be good to go.

Warning: PLEASE write down your password somewhere…I learned that the hard way. Clicking “Forgot Password on a Microsoft account isn’t like clicking it here. I learned that the hard way…I lost two accounts forever XD

You can basically go back and create as many accounts as you want, so have at it.