Guest Author - Bob Mayer

This month's guest author is NY Times best selling author Bob Mayer. Bob's written over 45 books - both fiction and non-fiction and this piece is about evaluating yourself as a writer:

Where Do You Stand As An Author: 3 Variables to Figure It Out:

A writer can easily be overwhelmed by all the well-meaning advice given by experts, industry professionals and even other authors.  The reason for this is that every single writer is in a different place and has to figure out their own position and point of view with which to boil down all the information into intelligence (useable information).

Closely monitoring the publishing business I see many different paths and approaches suggested to aspiring authors regarding everything from writing the book to publishing the book to promoting and building platform and brand.  It’s a very confusing time for publishing in general and many authors are finding themselves caught in the crossfire.

There’s a lot of advice out there, much of it contradicting other advice.  My Write It Forward program focuses on the author.  As part of that, I’m going to sort this out for you with a template you can use to determine your own personal career path.

There’s a simple reason for all the conflicting advice:  no two authors are exactly the same.  We all approach our careers with different goals. How we define those goals play a key role in the questions we need to ask ourselves up front. Do I want traditional publishing? Is self-publishing a viable option for me personally? What other options are there? Or should I pack up and go home?  Making an educated decision on our publishing path leads the author into this mass confusion of varying opinions on the subject. In an effort to bring some clarity to the issue, I offer up three variables and examine how they affect the way a writer should view getting published and, more importantly, their writing career.

The variables are:

• Platform
• Product
• Promotion

Quick definitions:

Platform:  Name recognition is what people think of, but there’s more to platform than that.  Are you an expert in your field?  Do you have a special background that makes you unique?  Everyone has some sort of platform, even if it’s just your emotions, exemplified by Johnny Cash in Walk The Line, mining his anger into art.  I use the film clip of his audition at the beginning of my Write It Forward workshop, book and presentation, and show how quickly he changed from being completely rejected, mined his ‘platform’, changed and was on his way to becoming a star.  All within three minutes.

So don’t get close-minded on platform.  However, for traditional publishers, they immediately are looking at name recognition (brand) and ability to reach a market (which ties into promoting).

However, with the explosion of eBooks, there are other paths to take.  After 20 years in traditional publishing I went 100% indie at the beginning of this year.  I sold 347 eBooks in January.  I’m currently selling over 100,000 eBooks a month.  In September I hit #2 overall bestseller on Nook with a brand new title, The Jefferson Allegiance. I’ve really changed my views on how to approach getting published and blog about it consistently at Write It Forward.

Product:  The book.  Yes, you need a book.  This is your content.  Most authors become totally fixated on content, while ignoring platform and promotion.  Do so at your peril.  My Area 51 books sold over a million copies in mass market paperback.  What I’ve found is eBook sales are almost opposite traditional sales.  In print, you have to explode out the gate.  With eBooks you can start slow, and slowly build as more readers find you and the eBook is always available.

Promotion:  The ability to do it.  The access to promotional outlets.  Unique hook or angle that gets attention.  The ability to be consistent which is the #1 trait I’ve learned counts in promoting.

If you consider three variables, with a sliding scale from ‘none’ to ‘the best’, you end up with an infinite variety of authors.  To simplify matters, let’s go with ‘weak’ and ‘strong’.  This gets us down to eight possible types of writers.

• Strong Platform            Strong Product            Strong Promotion
• Strong Platform            Strong Product            Weak Promotion
• Strong Platform            Weak Product              Strong Promotion
• Strong Platform            Weak Product              Weak Promotion
• Weak Platform              Strong Product            Strong Promotion
• Weak Platform              Strong Product            Weak Promotion
• Weak Platform             Weak Product              Strong Promotion
• Weak Platform             Weak Product              Weak Promotion

If you’re in the latter line, fughhedaboutit as we used to say in the Bronx. But for all the other combination of the three P’s, we can all see a type of writer.  Where do you belong? Where do you want to belong?  What do you need to work on, because your entire package as an author is only as strong as your weakest area.

These are not discrete entities.  They all rely on each other.  You have to consider that promotion is based on platform and product.

Product is often based on the platform.  If you have a platform you will most likely write a book mining that platform.

There’s a degree of luck involved in promotion.  Going viral.  But luck goes to the person who climbs the mountain to wave the lightning rod about.  It’s called hard work.  One key lesson we’ve learned at Who Dares Wins Publishing is consistency and repetition of message is key.  Slack off for a week, and fughhedaboutit.

Product is the one you can improve the most by working on your craft.  However, you can improve both platform and promotion, which many authors ignore.  Become known as THE writer of that type of book.  That’s platform. 

Promotion is often hard as the Myers-Brigg INFJ is labeled ‘author’ while the exact opposite, ESTP, is labeled ‘promoter’.  We HAVE to get out of our comfort zones as authors.  In Write It Forward I emphasize doing the opposite of your Myers-Brigs personality type.  Get out of your comfort zone and into your courage zone.

Ultimately the best promotion is a good book.  Better promotion is more good books.

The advent of social media is a boon to writers.  We can actually do promoting from the safety of our offices.  We Are Not Alone: The Writer’s Guide To Social Media lays out an excellent plan for that, but, as the author, Kristen Lamb, clearly writes, figure out your platform and your product (content) first.  Too many authors leap blindly into social media and I watch 95% of them wasting their time and energy flailing about inefficiently.  Small point she makes:  do you have your book cover as your avatar on twitter?  A picture of your cat? Fughhedaboutit.  Read the book.  Your head shot is your avatar because you are your brand.

The bottom line is, as a writer, you have to evaluate yourself on the three P variables and figure out what type you are.  Then approach the business accordingly, while at the same time, working hard to improve in those areas where you are weak.

Write It Forward!