With enormous pride (and a little relief), I can finally say that Build Your Author Platform: The New Rules should be sitting on a shelf at a bookstore near you any day now.  This guide to finding and growing an audience for your writing was more than a year in the making, and Carole Jelen and I are thrilled to offer it to you. Our friends at BenBella Books have been exceptionally helpful in bringing the book to fruition as well.

Cover: Build Your Author Platform
Cover: Build Your Author Platform: The New Rules

So what is Build Your Author Platform? In this book, we share a 14-step program for connecting with your present and future fans.  My literary agent, Carole Jelen, shares her experience marketing books and authors. I help you get comfortable with creating websites, accessing and participating in the Big Four social media sites (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+).

Not Just Social

While you already know that the Internet has changed book marketing forever, we don’t just talk about the online world. We’ll help you create audio and video clips, or just connect with traditional radio and TV. Nervous about speaking in public? We’ll help you get practice just speaking into your webcam and reviewing the results.

We help with writing and circulating articles for both online and offline markets, teaching mini-courses, and other wonderful ways to connect.

Expanding Your Comfort Zone

The 14 step program will make sure that you will cast the widest net possible in search of your audience. I will guarantee you, however, that at least one step in the book will make you a little queasy about getting into this writing business in the first place. For me it’s public speaking, for you it might be making a website, or figuring out Twitter.

Now the advantage of having so many steps is that you can pick your spots. Doing only the obviously fun parts of the program may well get you the audience you want, but here’s my challenge: After you read the book, try the one thing that scares you.

When you expand that zone even a little, the worst that can happen is you might embarrass yourself a little bit (and if that really scares you, do the thing with friends, or by yourself). At best, your confidence will expand with every inch of that comfort zone.

Speaking of Fun Things…

If you happen to be in New York for Book Expo America, Carole and I will be signing books on Thursday, May 29 at 11 AM.

Also, BenBella is giving away two copies of Build Your Author Platform at Goodreads. Enter here.

I’ll have more about the book and building your platform in the coming days. Let me know if you’ve got specific interests or questions.

While you’re waiting…

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Cover: Build Your Author PlatformIf you’ve ever wanted to make a career as a book author, or simply want to improve your social-media savvy, mark the date: May 13, 2014. This is when BenBella Books releases Build Your Author Platform: The New Rules, by my marvelous agent and collaborator, Carole Jelen and yours truly.

What is Build Your Author Platform, you ask? A 14-step guide to finding an audience for your writing, nurturing that audience, and selling your books to them when the time comes. Among other things, we’ll tell you how to make Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn work for you.

Welcome to BuildAuthorPlatform.com

Friday, the book’s website went live! On the site, you can:

Can’t wait to see the trailer? Oh, alright, here it is:

Carole and I firmly believe this book will help any writer — published or not, Interested in traditional publishing or the indie/self-publishing route — establish authority, build an audience, and ideally sell a lot of books (paper or electrons) in the process.

Counting Down to May 13

Perhaps you noticed the countdown ticker over on the right side of the page. As time keeps flowing, you’ll see more stuff happening around here. I’ll be adding more information about the book over on the Books page in the coming days. Watch this site and BuildAuthorPlatform.com for events, giveaways and other fun stuff.

Please visit the site, and share widely! Thanks!

If you have questions about the book, getting started with your author platform or social media in general, feel free to comment here, or drop me a line.

Creating Your Author Platform: The New Rules
Creating Your Author Platform: The New Rules, by Carole Jelen & Michael McCallister

It’s been quite a busy month! Carole Jelen and I finished the latest round of edits of our BenBella Book Creating Your Author Platform: The New Rules last week, and that’s off to our copy editor. I’m working on a site (WordPress, of course) where you can learn more about the book; watch this space for launch information. You’ll be seeing the book itself at your favorite brick-and-mortar bookstore on May 13, 2014, but you can pre-order it online at this very moment!

My wonderful literary agent and co-author, Carole Jelen also gave an “Agent Advice” interview to WritersDigest.com on author platform topics and other tips of the publishing trade.

Still Writing Though…

Now I can refocus energy on the next project, my guide to the Ubuntu Touch phone and tablet operating system. While still not pre-installed on any device, you’ll be able to run Touch on a whole raft of phones when the platform is released on October 17. See the Ubuntu Phone site for details. I’ll be ramping up the “Notes from the Ubuntuverse” section of this site soon too.

But Not Least…

BarCamp Milwaukee 8 is this Saturday, October 5 in the historic John Plankinton Building in downtown Milwaukee. Go register now, and I’ll see you there! If you need to know more, our fearless leader explains it to you here.

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