Building a Platform - Day 3

Day #3

Get yourself plastered…all over the Internet. Create a Web presence with a website, blog, My Space, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin – so people can find you. Even before you send out your first manuscript, create a website, preferably with your name in the title. http://www.agathapenwrite.com/ will draw more people to you than http://www.im-a-greatwriter.com/. Unless “Great Writer” will be your pen name, use your real name. You are selling “you” out there. You are the product. And you want people to buy “you.” You want people to pick up a book with your name on it, recognize your name, and pay real money for that book. You want people to say, “Oh, Agatha Penwrite wrote this. It will be good.”





Sign on to Twitter, find people you know, other writers, old classmates, old boyfriends, ask them to follow you. Then map your writing quest. Using those 140 characters, let people know that you finished the first draft of your new book, you joined a writer’s group, you sent query letters, that you got some bites. Put a few notes on My Space about who you are. Remember you already discovered the “real you” in the first bullet point in this series. Now it’s time to get your name out there.





While you are signing up for all the websites, get someone to take a good picture of you to post on the site. People want to know what you look like. The generic silhouette they use when you have “no picture available” says you don’t know who you are yet. If you are nervous about having a picture taken, rent a nice looking dog and hold him up next to you. You are putting your name and face out there so people will know who you are. Get that picture on your website and all those other sites. No time for being shy. And your publisher will love you for advertising the product (you) out there in cyberspace.