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You are receiving Jane Friedman’s self-study class, How to Earn a Living as a Writer. New lessons release every Friday through April 18, 2025. Browse the archive.
Week 8: Platform makes it easier to earn a living
Mention “author platform” to a group of writers, and most likely you’ll hear frustration and annoyance that platform is necessary these days to land a book deal.
However, the truth is you don’t need a platform to land a book deal, not if you’re a debut novelist or children’s writer. (I explain here.) And some nonfiction writers are off the hook, too, particularly authors of scholarly or academic works.
But here’s the rub: While you might not need a platform to land a book deal, author platform plays a significant role in how well your books sell over time, especially when your publisher is missing in action. And long term, authors who have a platform are in a better position to keep securing book deals and other money-making opportunities. Readers, editors, businesses, organizations, and other potential benefactors will be more likely to consider you if they’ve heard of you, seen evidence of your work in the market, or otherwise become familiar with you through online or offline interactions.
Platform has become more important over the years for all types of writers because publishing something in the digital era is not in itself an impressive or meaningful act. Many of us now publish and distribute with the click of a button on a daily basis—on social media especially, but also on all kinds of platforms. The difficult work lies in getting attention. A writer today is competing against many more would-be writers (and many more options for media consumption) than would have been the case even ten years ago.
Thus, you ignore platform at your peril if you seek either a long-term career or a living as a writer.
What is platform anyway?
It’s not an online following, although platform is often conflated with social media success. For agents and publishers, platform is about your visibility and ability to sell books to your target readership. But for you (and I consider this far more important), it’s about your ability to consistently reach people who appreciate your work (in many forms), who will pay for your work (in many forms), and/or who will spread the word about it. If you can reach such people without relying on a third party, then you get to decide how (and from whom) you want to earn your living.
How do you build a platform?
One of the best ways of building a strong platform is to produce work, and get it out there, regularly. The explanation for why is simple: the more work you have visible, the more opportunities there are for people to encounter it or share it. You’re building more impressions over time, and it typically takes numerous impressions for your name to stick in people’s heads—and to create demand, which is what you want.
When writers conflate platform building with social media, they can suffer burnout and question whether it’s really a useful practice—especially if it hampers their writing. For long-term mental health (and for a more robust platform), consider how you might cultivate stronger relationships and partner with other organizations, businesses, and individuals to extend your visibility. Or, sometimes you might focus on creating and pushing out more work—being prolific—which may be preferable for writers who don’t believe that their strength is in building relationships. Other times, by experimenting with new media or distribution channels, you can reach an audience who hasn’t encountered you before.
When writers ask me if they can’t just hire someone to build their platform, they’re often missing the point. Building a readership and networking in the community requires just one thing for success: you. You have to be aware and present to gain any real benefit. If a third party pretends to be you, you’ll miss important insights into how people engage with your work—which can provide inspiration for new work as well as improve your marketing and promotion efforts.
Ultimately, your platform-building process will become as much a creative exercise as the work you produce. I often advise writers: start with your strengths and don’t worry about what you don’t have. Most of us excel in one or two areas of platform building and leverage them repeatedly to develop our careers. Speaking for myself, I excel at email newsletters and have used that medium for my entire freelance career to fuel my business. (The evidence is right in front of you!)
Platform does not develop overnight. No two writers’ platforms are developed in the same way or have exactly the same components. Think of your platform as a fingerprint; your background, education, and network affect what your platform looks like in the beginning. Serendipity also plays a role. For most writers, platform builds organically over many years of writing and publishing.
Exercise
Many authors don’t know how to start building platform. The first step is to identify your assets, in what direction you want to grow, and what strengths will help you get there. Create a five-column grid with these headers: Writing, Social Media, Email, Communities, and VIPs.
- Under Writing, list your body of work, whether in print or online, published or unpublished. If you have a long publishing history, stick to a high-level summary—for example, “3 published books, 1 unpublished manuscript, 13 published essays, 37 blog posts.” If you have a podcast or regularly write and produce multimedia content for online consumption (like videos on YouTube or serials on Wattpad), put it in this column.
- Under Social Media, list the platforms where you actively participate and note your follower count. This includes places like Instagram or TikTok.
- Under Email, if you have an email newsletter, list it with the subscriber number.
- Under Communities, list the groups that you identify with, belong to, or have some visibility in. Examples include your alma mater, the city/state/region you live in, and the writing organizations you belong to. Especially for nonfiction writers, think about associations, nonprofits, and businesses that you already work or partner with.
- Under VIPs, list important people you know who have the potential to bring visibility to you or your writing career—or represent a source of opportunity. This could be an editor at a journal that’s published you, a professor, an author who has mentored you, and so on.
Now take look at your completed grid. What appear to be your platform strengths? Which columns are bursting and which are bare? What appears to be your most valuable asset—something you could build on for greater visibility? What areas of this grid excite you and lend themselves to more ideas or opportunities? What areas feel like gaps you want to fill?
This exercise is especially helpful when done with a writer friend or two, as you’ll see that no two platforms are exactly alike, and we all have distinct strengths to build on. No two careers progress in the same way because we each have unique starting points and relationships to draw on.
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The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (releasing April 2025)
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