Wednesday’s promoting tip for authors

The publication date for Seth Godin’s latest book, Tribes, We Need You to Lead Us, is October 16th. Yet, already, Tribes has been one of Amazon.com’s most successful books, ranked in the top 1000 best-selling books, for a long time. (Note: for comparison, Amazon.com displays over 400,000 titles.)

The strong pre-publication orders for Seth Godin’s Tribes brings up an interesting question: How can pre-orders for Seth’s book exceed sales of the vast majority of already-published books on Amazon.com?

The reason, of course, is that Seth Godin has one of publishing’s strongest platforms in the marketing and business categories.

What is a platform?
A platform refers to the number of potential book buyers that an author communicates with on a consistent basis. Platforms can take many desired forms, including articles, blogs, columns, newsletters, podcasts, or YouTube videos. Common to all successful platforms, however, is author’s ability to control the content of their message plus the ability to consistently and efficiently keep in touch.

Seth’s blog, accessed by clicking his head at www.sethgodin.com, is considered “required reading” each day by marketing professionals, business owners, and fellow bloggers around the world. Through them, Seth’s reach extends throughout the marketing world to millions of potential book buyers. So, when Seth Godin promotes a new book, his blog readers take note…and so do other bloggers who know hey can trust Seth.

It’s all about platforms and promotion
Trade publishers, i.e., those who publish books for sale through retail channels like Barnes & Noble, Borders.com, or Amazon.com, view an author’s platform as important as the contents of the proposed book or the author’s qualifications for writing a book.

Authors who have an established platform are far more attractive than authors who have a great book idea and proven credentials–but little or no way to promote their book.

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Do you have a platform?
The success of Seth Godin’s platform, and other examples like David Meerman Scott’s Web Ink Now, brings up the status of your platform. Ask yourself questions like this:

• Do you have an existing platform?
• How long has it been around?
• How many readers have signed-up for your RSS feeds or e-mail notification?
• How frequently do you contribute to it?

How to learn more about the power of author platforms
To learn more about author platforms, and how to create one for yourself, plan to attend my upcoming interview with Stephanie Chandler, author of The Author’s Guide to Building an Online Platform: Leveraging the Internet to Sell More Books.

I’ll be interviewing Stephanie Chandler on Tuesday, October 28, at 11:00 PM EST. All Published & Profitable friends and members are invited to attend and ask Stephanie questions. To attend, call dial 1-218-486-1616 and use PIN #51339. The call will be recorded for later access by Published & Profitable members. Submit questions in advance as comments, below, or e-mail Roger C. Parker.

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