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.

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…

• Be sure to visit the book site at BuildAuthorPlatform.com. You can buy online from there too (paper or eBook).
• Go see Carole’s blog, The Platform.
• When you’ve read Build Your Author Platform, please tell Amazon readers what you think of it.

Related articles

• The Countdown Begins for Build Your Author Platform
• Creating Your Author Platform off to Copy Editor
• Welcome to The Platform Blog
• The Platform Quiz