Is a Well-Established Author “Platform” Always Required Before Releasing a Book?

I weighed in on a publishing forum post a few weeks back. One commenter said:

I know of an author whose book launches this summer with one of the top publishers, top editors in the industry. The book is truly phenomenal. The publisher is even putting money behind a tour (sounds antiquated). But the author has zero online presence and runs screaming at the thought of social media. I fear this important, amazingly well written and well-researched book will fade before it even launches.

Very possibly, but who knows for sure?

I released my first self-published book (The Well-Fed Writer; 2000) two years before I launched my ezine (and eight years before its related blog). Platform? What platform? I was an unknown commercial freelancer who’d written a book.

But, it was a good book. And not just one I (and my mother) thought was good. It was a big seller for both Writers Digest Book Club and Book-of-the-Month Club, and won a few awards as well. As a result, I was able to build some ongoing, enduring demand largely by word-of-mouth, though certainly not through any platform (which didn’t exist, or did it, in fact? See my question at the end…).

Just to be clear, let’s define what a platform is. Here’s my take:

It’s a reputation and a profile that one creates, and then garners followers for, based on some arena of knowledge and expertise of ongoing value to a certain group of people.

Obviously, non-fiction how-to books like mine lend themselves well to creating an enduring platform because you can bring up and discuss so many issues related to your subject that may not have been covered (or covered in as much detail) in your book. Those discussions provide ongoing opportunities to reaffirm that knowledge and expertise that drew followers to you in the first place.

Which is what I’ve done over the past 12 years. An ezine every month since May 2002, and a blog post 1-2 times a month since early 2008.

But, whether you’re writing your book first, and then building your platform (as I did it), or the other way around (a more conventional way), it still comes down to quality.

Say something worth hearing, and people will return to hear what else you have to say.

Which is definitely the case with fiction. With rare exceptions, a novelist with a strong platform and following builds both through writing really good books.

But, while we can safely assert that virtually every successful book is a good one (with a few mutant exceptions in the Kindle world), needless to say, every good one isn’t a successful one.

While it’s definitely possible to commercially succeed with a book in the absence of a platform, based on the book’s quality, it’s a risky proposition, if for no other reason than there’s exponentially more competition for eyeballs these days than there was a mere 10 to 12 years ago.

So, write that really good book, and start the platform-building process well in advance of a book’s release, through a blog, ezine, social media, or ideally, a combination of several.

Just know that, if you’re planning on writing the book first, then it better be good, because, 1) without a platform, the book’s quality is the only thing that’ll give it traction; and 2) if it’s not, all the platform-building and marketing initiatives in the world that follow it will fail. Like castles on sand, etc.

Is writing a quality book enough to launch a book to commercial success without a platform?

Might, in fact, my Writers Digest and Book-of-the-Month successes have been a defacto platform (i.e., that explained a lot of my initial success) in the absence of an actual one?

Must platforms be built over time (as I did with my ezine/blog since 2002), or can they be built far faster today, thanks to social media? Will those built that way be, by definition, shallower and less loyal than ones built over time?

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