Learning: You have to have how many twitter followers to publish a book?
In 2019 I made the commitment to become a writer. I was well into writing my first book - about 80,000 words in. I was also part of an incubator group, called Bliss Champions that was helping me identify by passions and develop the belief and behaviors to get me there.
In August, I finished the first draft of my book, gave myself a pat on the back and launched into the next step: figuring out how to get it published. I signed up for an online course on getting your book published and started doing research. Through that process, I learned that you aren’t supposed to finish a nonfiction book; you’re not even supposed to write it before you submit your book proposal to agents. Oops.
I registered for my first writers’ conference - the San Francisco Writing for Change Workshop. What I experienced and learned at that one-day conference empowered me, validated my writing efforts, gave me confidence that my book would sell, introduced me to inspiring agents and other writers, and completely and utterly overwhelmed me.
“I love your idea. Now go out and get 10,000 names on an email list, well, 10,000 to 50,000, but at least 10,000, and then contact me,” I was told by a top agent.
“How many Twitter followers do you have?” another agent asked.
“Not enough,” I answered, ashamed that I had only tweeted a few times in my life and had perhaps 15 followers.
“Only 2,000 followers between Facebook and LinkedIn? Well, you’ll have to do better than that if you ever want to be published.”
It was time to suck it up, go home and lick my wounds, and then figure out how to build the required “Author Platform” that was essential for anyone to even consider me as an investment risk. (That’s what getting a book deal really means.)
I also decided I was going to give traditional publishing a try before going the self-publishing route. Why? Self-publishers also need a robust author platform if they want to sell anything, the average self-published author sells less than 100 books, and the average cost of self-publishing is just under $10,000. My book was not a vanity project, I said to myself, and I have a much broader vision for distribution than 100 copies. I see worldwide appeal, multiple languages, meetups and conferences devoted to the topic, and perhaps even a future company. Oh, and fun swag and “merch,” as my kids would say. I am outgoing. I am smart. I have come this far. I must invest in myself and do this.
I put together an Author Platform Plan and gave myself 12 months to carry it out - and this is just to get it started. It really does take years to make it “robust.” An author platform is, at its core, an insurance policy for the publisher that your book will sell due to your own marketing and promotion efforts. A great resource for this is https://thewritelife.com/author-platform/ by Brooke Warner. I also hired a Twitter coach to help me navigate the world of tweeting strategically, registered for a digital marketing course at learn.forbes.com, bought several books on the topic, and set some goals for myself: develop a professional website that features my writing and blogging, start to love Twitter (agents and publishers love Twitter, I was told), re-brand my linked in efforts, get on a speaking circuit, start a YouTube channel, continue honing my query and book proposal writing skills, promote myself as a writer, and, of course, to to keep writing.
I put dreams of publishing my nonfiction book empowering professional women on hold temporarily, turned my efforts to developing my author platform, and joined NaNoWrimo to keep my passion for writing going and not lose touch with the reason I write.
Yes, writing has to be treated and approached like a business, because it is a business, and a challenging one at that, but, I’ve told myself I have made the commitment to write, and now I have to make the investment in seeing it through. Note to self and other future authors out there: writing is the easy part.
As I tweeted just today, I love this quote in the November 8, 2019 San Francisco Business Times feature on the CEO of Cerego, an software startup that uses artificial intelligence to help students and professionals be more productive and learn faster: "...I have learned firsthand persistence and patience, which are totally related, are really important traits if you want to build something meaningful for the long-term." -- Paul Mumma, CEO. I love the concept of his company, by the way. Paul has it right about persistence and patience. Let’s see how I’m doing with my author platform in 12 months.
