25 Trends in Publishing: Large Platform

About the column: A handful of agents and interns who work with Cyle have learned the latest and (sometimes so, sometimes not so) greatest trends in publishing right now. Tune in each week to find out what’s trending, ranging from ABA to CBA, children’s to adult. The authors of these columns have included social media tags at the end to keep up with trends they are finding. They can also be found here. 

Trend #17 of 25: Large Platform

Contributor: Hope Bolinger

If you’ve heard the phrase, “Authors need platform,” and don’t quite know what it means . . . welcome to the club.

Platform: the thing all publishers and agents want but no one has a clear-cut definition for. Existence of a large platform, in any genre (nonfiction/fiction, general market/Christian) almost always guarantees a publisher or agent will likely take a longer look at your proposal. But where do we start if we don’t even have a definition for it?

Jane Friedman defines it as: “An ability to sell books because of who you are or who you can reach.”

Michael Larsen: “A built in audience ready to buy (an author’s) books.”

Cyle Young: Discoverability.

Existence of a large platform, in any genre (nonfiction/fiction, general market/Christian) almost always guarantees a publisher or agent will likely take a longer look at your proposal.

Essentially, it boils down to who can you reach and who can/will buy your book. Not just social media numbers. Or just speaking engagements. Or just email lists.

Author platform explains why you should write this story instead of someone else. If, for instance, you cover a topic in psychology in a nonfiction project, you need the credibility of a high degree in education in that field (not just one psych class you took in college).

Also, your platform needs relevance. Say you write sweet children’s fiction, but have 3,000 followers on your author Facebook page who enjoy reading high heat-level romance. That platform won’t translate.

All right, with all that in mind, I’ll attempt to form so sort of definition of platform. Keep in mind everyone defines platform differently.

Hope’s Platform Definition: Genre-relevant discoverability across all networks, social and physical, that can be translated into guaranteed, or a high probability of guaranteed, book sales. 

If you need to work on your author platform, welcome to the club. Even writers with millions of followers could always do with one more. So keep working at it. 

Some other resources include: Serious Writer Academy classes, these five free resources, and I frequently will post about discoveries I’ve made along the way about building platform such as this post.

Hope Bolinger works as a literary agent at C.Y.L.E. IlluminateYA contracted her YA novel Den while she still attended college (to be released June 3, 2019).

More than 200 of her works have been featured in various publications. She has received various writing awards from being a finalist in the Jerry B. Jenkins short story contest to her one-act earning second place in the Searchlight Playwriting Contest. She has served in various publishing capacities from working at newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses.

She can be found at hopebolinger.com.