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    The Bestselling Author: Attract Your Fans, Gain Instant Influence, Get the Sales You Deserve
    The Bestselling Author: Attract Your Fans, Gain Instant Influence, Get the Sales You Deserve
    The Bestselling Author: Attract Your Fans, Gain Instant Influence, Get the Sales You Deserve
    Ebook161 pages2 hours

    The Bestselling Author: Attract Your Fans, Gain Instant Influence, Get the Sales You Deserve

    By Amy Collins, Daniel Hall and John S. Rhodes

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    About this ebook

    Have you ever wondered what best-selling authors have that you don't?  What are they doing to get their books on the bestseller lists? What is their secret? 

    The answer is, in one simple little word: PLATFORM. 

    THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR will show you step-by-step how to successfully construct a platform that works for you. What is a platform? Platform has very little to do with the actual book or books you have written. It has everything to do with: How many people you can offer your book to. It also is a good indication of how many people have read your work, bought your books, subscribed to your emails, read your blog post, or followed you on social media. A platform is a group of people; it is your reader fan base. Finding and influencing as many of them as possible as often as possible is the key to building your platform. It's real work and it's not easy, but once you dedicate some time and effort to building your platform, you will reap the benefits. 

    THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR features 19 tips on building a lasting platform, including: 

    • Establishing a platform-building habit
    • Setting up your author's blog and your email list
    • Taking advantage of social media
    • Putting your fellow authors and readers to work for you 

    In essence, an author platform is a relationship you build with your readers over a lifetime. And an author platform is what separates truly successful authors from merely talented ones. THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR is the road map on how to get there.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAmy Collins
    Release dateNov 26, 2019
    ISBN9781935355267
    The Bestselling Author: Attract Your Fans, Gain Instant Influence, Get the Sales You Deserve
    Author

    Amy Collins

    Amy Collins is a writer and editor who lives in Northern California. She and Michael Law previously updated Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop 10.8.

    Read more from Amy Collins

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      Book preview

      The Bestselling Author - Amy Collins

      Introduction

      There are talented authors and there are successful authors. Many talented authors have found out the hard way that talent is not enough to guarantee success. If you want longevity and prosperity in a career as an author, it all comes down to one word: platform!

      That is, how many people do you, as an author, hold sway over?

      How many people have read your work?

      How many people can you influence?

      How many people have bought your books, subscribed to your emails, read your blog post, or followed you on social media?

      That group of people is your reader or fan base.

      And, importantly, if you wanted to send a message to these people, how would you send it and how many of them could you reach? That reach is your platform.

      Of course, you are probably already sold on the importance of having a platform, otherwise you would not have this book in your hands.

      But perhaps what you don’t yet realize is that building a platform is a DAILY process that should span the entirety of your career. Successful authors do not start building a platform when they release a book and stop while they are working on the next book. It’s consistent effort and attention, and yes, (I’m about to use a 4-letter word) it is work. But it is also fun and rewarding and life-affirming.

      At its core, it is the source of your ongoing and potential wealth as an author.

      Now, before going on, I want to make sure we are on the same page with regard to what having a platform actually entails.

      In the publishing industry, many people think of a platform as an email list or social media following. Others believe that their platform is the consistent readers of their blog or subscribers to their podcast.

      But these are just vehicles. They are a way to communicate but they are NOT your platform.

      So, what is a platform?

      Henceforth and evermore, I want you to think of your platform as the RELATIONSHIP you have with people who resonate with you, your message, and your style of writing.

      Your goal as an author is to have a good relationship with as many people as possible. And the ONLY WAY to do this is to, in some small or large way, positively impact the lives of your readers. That is, your work and your words must actually move the needle for good in their lives.

      When you do that…when your readers’ lives are consistently enriched by and through your contact and writing, then you start building a lasting relationship with them. That is when you start building a great platform.

      The reason you want these relationships, in fact, the reason to have a platform at all, is that people on your platform will want to buy your current work, your past work, and more importantly, your future work.

      Once you build these relationships, you will have not only fans and readers, you will have the one thing publishers and successful authors know to be the most important. A true platform will elevate you and your work above the rest of the authors and books with which you are competing for attention.

      Picture Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Thousands of people are milling about. There is NO way to pick out one specific person in that crowd. BUT, those who are on a PLATFORM are easy to spot and get much more attention. The relationships you develop will build the platform that will raise you up from the crowd.

      That’s what it’s all about!

      This book provides methods, strategies, and tactics to build your platform quickly and reliably. The tactics provided here work well WHEN you use them.

      But before we jump into these methods and layout the how-to’s, I want to cover what I consider the most important message in this book. It’s a message that underlies your ability to create value in your readers’ lives.

      It is important because your entire platform and, by extension, your career as an author, is built on this one thing (or should be) and that one thing is…

      Quality.

      In other words, whatever you put out must be the absolute best quality you can muster.

      All the biggest and most lasting platforms ever built are based on quality works. Consider folks like Seth Godin, John Grisham, Malcolm Gladwell, Stephen King, and Anthony Robbins. They all always bring consistent quality to their work and to the marketplace.

      They all provide value that in some way enriches the lives of their readers.

      I am certainly not going to belabor this point because showing you how to produce quality work in your genre is outside the scope of this book. However, I can provide this one piece of advice:

      The path to quality is almost always paved by having a great editor or editors.

      So for the love of all that is good and holy, get an editor for your writing projects and listen to them. More often than not, they will help you produce something truly superlative.

      Need another reason to commit to producing quality work? The higher the quality, the easier it is to sell and promote.

      Quality has a direct causative effect on your ability to grow your platform too. When you know that what you’ve put out is really good, it is much easier for you to market it. You’ve cleared your mental runway to unleash your enthusiasm in disseminating your message. And you feel enthusiastic about marketing the work.

      And guess what?

      If you’re enthusiastic about your work, it is much easier for your readers and potential readers to become enthusiastic about it as well. This is when your platform building can spread like wildfire.

      On the other hand, if you know that your work could be better, if you realize that the work represents less than your best effort, then something strange happens in the machinations of your mind and you develop a kind of cognitive dissonance. Time and again, I have seen authors who skipped steps in their publishing process lose momentum. I watched as they struggled with the knowledge that their work could be better and start subtly pumping the brakes. They don’t try as hard after the first wave and in many cases, they sabotage their own efforts.

      So YES, putting out quality work is advantageous on many levels and all successful platforms are built on it. Accordingly, you should consider it foundational in your quest to build a platform for yourself.

      With that said, let’s jump into what’s in this book and how to use it…

      In the pages that follow there are 19 tips to build your platform. With the exception of the first tip relating to your platform-building habits (which is vitally important for everyone), the rest are intended to be a smorgasbord. That is, take and implement those that resonate with you and your writing projects. Take what you need and leave the rest, BUT please revisit these ideas now and again to see if there is something new you might want to try.

      You are free to pick and choose those you like. You don’t have to do all of them…in fact, you probably could not do all of them at the same time. At least not without a team of people helping you.

      However, as with everything else, if you want results you MUST do some of them and do them consistently. But we’ll discuss more about that in Tip #1.

      Additionally, we are offering a group of tips here in this book as a starting point. These suggestions are not exhaustive; they are included because we know they represent the lowest hanging fruit. That is, most of these platform-building activities can be implemented even by new authors and neophyte marketers. Once you master these activities, you are ready to move on to our other tools and programs.

      Another important point: Many of the tips relate to the use of specific tools, software and/or websites. The problem is tools, software, and websites change or shut down. This is inevitable. Realizing that, we’ve tried to teach the underlying platform-building PRINCIPLES within each tip so that even if you’re reading an earlier edition of this book and a referenced tool has changed (or no longer exists) you’ll know what to look for alternatively. We will work to update the tools frequently.

      Because the wild changes in technology are difficult to keep pace with, especially with regard to updates and revisions to this book, we have decided that it is far better for you to get the most up-to-date changes online.

      Accordingly, your first bit of homework is to subscribe to the update list, which will provide you with the most current news and changes as they relate to the tips in this book.

      You should do that now here:

      https://bestsellerbuilders.com/bookupdates

      We are committed to helping you grow your platform and success. We have written these tips to help you move from where you are to where you deserve to be. Want to be a successful author? Let’s get started.

      I’m going to say something that I’m sure will not surprise you and you may even agree with it. Nonetheless, you probably will not like this statement because you realize how challenging it can be. Here is the truth…

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