Platforms and Fanbase

I'm not seeing where else this goes so, beg pardon if I've fauxed pas.

In the discussion about Ridan Publishing, Victoria Strauss made a comment about platform and fan base which LMiller111 amplified.

The recap is that it's not the author's job to create the fanbase or platform, but rather that this was something that a publisher would develop. The implication was that the publisher would get the work in front of the consumer and that the author's role there was ... I don't know what. Collect royalties, maybe.

I may be reading too much into it or have completely missed the point, but that idea is so completely backwards from what I've run into while working with publishers and agents, I wanted to explore it a little more.

I've been told by more than one publisher (ok, only three) that having a good book is a good start but won't actually cut it in the market place. If you can't bring evidence that you have an audience with you, you should stay home until you can. More and more of them are talking about the "author's platform" ... a presence that goes beyond a work and includes things like presence in the web and social media, a marketing awareness if not a formal plan, a fan base, and evidence that the author can actually sell the work, not just write it.

Logically that made sense to me. I guess because I assumed that, when looking at two relatively comparable properties, the publisher will pick the one that's easier to sell -- that is, the one with a fanbase and marketing presence already established -- over the one where they have to start from scratch to just get the word out there at all.

But what I'm hearing from VictoriaStrauss and LMiller111 is that this is not the typical publisher response -- or at least not the usually author attitude.

What I'm seeing in the marketplace seems to support my view, but I can't help wonder if perhaps I'm looking in the wrong marketplace.

Thoughts?

The crux

I don't know that I agree that basic promotion is not the author's job, but that point aside, your point number 2 seems to be the crux.

I'm being told by publishers that a good book is not enough. That they expect to see a fanbase before they'll consider a deal. What they're looking for is a good book by an author with an established platform who isn't afraid of getting his or her hands dirty by dealing with the marketing.

If you can't get a publisher, then the rest of the equation is null.

You're working with publishers that *don't* have that requirement?

As for publishers promoting whatever the author does, I haven't seen that publishers are famous for sinking marketing dollars into new/unknown authors. What I have seen is a lot of authors who can't earn their advances back because the publisher hasn't invested in marketing and then they get into trouble on subsequent works.

Sure, putting books in bookstores is great--when it happens and when the books sell but returns are killers.

And I guess I'm puzzled by why *wouldn't* you want to make your work as salable as possible by developing your platform?

Thanks!

Yes, I *am* living in an indie, micropress world. After seeing what happened with some of my peers with deals at Random House and St. Martins, I decided that I really didn't want to follow in their footsteps.

Of course, it's entirely likely that I couldn't, even if I wanted to, because I write crap and I needed to find a publisher who was willing to leverage my fanbase for their own profit. Since maximizing my paycheck happens to be my purpose in publishing, that's a sort of win-win for me while it might not suit others.

One of the problems with living in a kind of silo is that you become isolated from anything happening outside of it. This is exactly the kind of information I was looking for. Much appreciated.