Author Platform Is Not a Requirement to Sell Your Novel or Children’s Book

Recently an article was published at Vox titled “Everyone’s a sellout now.” The subtitle: “So you want to be an artist. Do you have to start a TikTok?”

The dour conclusion, probably the writer’s predetermined conclusion when she began her research: more or less.

This article makes the classic mistake of conflating all kinds of artists and creative industries and painting them all with the same brush. But specifically, for writers and book publishing, it spreads so many myths and misconceptions about the business of authorship that I’ll be undoing the damage for years. (My inbox last week: Did you see this article!) However, I hope this post helps reduce the length of that battle. So let’s get straight to it.

Vox: With any book, but especially nonfiction ones, publishers want a guarantee that a writer comes with a built-in audience of people who already read and support their work…

Agents and big publishers seek authors with platform for adult nonfiction work.

If a debut novelist or debut children’s author seeks a book deal with a big New York publisher, then agents and editors make their decision based on the story premise, the manuscript, and/or whether the project fits with their theory of what sells in today’s market. That theory may be driven by pop culture, by what else is selling well among their clients or at their publishing house, by trends on TikTok—you get the idea.

If you’re a debut novelist with a platform, great! But it’s not going to make up for a lackluster story or premise that’s unappealing to today’s readers. The agent or publisher has to have genuine enthusiasm for the story or writing itself. They tend to trust their instincts on story quality or story marketability, and if they don’t love it, they’ll have trouble convincing anyone else of the same. The general hope is that word of mouth and consistent recommendations by readers and influencers will fuel the book’s success—not the debut author’s platform/following. Most bestsellers occur because of readers saying to their friends and family: you must read this.

Let me be absolutely clear: Agents and publishers don’t fall in love with a novel or children’s manuscript, then check to see if it’s safe to represent or acquire based on the author’s online following. (However, I have seen such a thing happen with nonfiction. I’ve also seen it happen when an author has a poor sales track record.)

Side note: I’m adding children’s authors into the mix here because, I hope for obvious reasons, it can be problematic to expect children’s writers to build an online following among children (their readers), although some children’s writers do have strong connections in the children’s community—with librarians, educators, teachers, and so on. Children’s books often must meet considerable requirements related to format, word count, education level, curriculum expectations or standards, etc—and platform is usually low on the list of concerns even for nonfiction.

Having an online presence or following is mostly a bonus for the agent or publisher if you’re an unpublished or untested fiction writer. Think it through: if you’re an unpublished novelist who’s building a following, why are others following you exactly? It’s not for your novel, because that’s not published yet. Is it for your short fiction in literary journals? Congratulations! You have a rarefied audience of people who actually read short fiction in literary journals.

Certainly publishing credentials that impress or show you’ve been selected/vetted or validated can help you get the consideration you deserve, or make you more visible to agents or decision makers at publishing houses. And social media will do wonders for building relationships with others in the writing and publishing community. To the extent that being on social media helps you be seen by gatekeepers, sure—this is part of platform, and it can lower some barriers and lead to more connections that help you get published. But we’re not talking about a following of existing readers on social media. We’re talking about relationships and visibility to specific, influential people. You can be visible to such people with a tiny following.

None of this is to say social media doesn’t sell books—it can and it does—but it’s rarely in the way that any writer thinks. It’s not going to sell a novel that readers aren’t motivated to go and tell all their friends about, whether that’s online or offline. And that’s the quality that agents/publishers are looking for when they receive your submission. Authors will find it challenging to support word of mouth on social without having readers’ own enthusiasm for their work present at the same time.

Now, if you’re a TikTok sensation or a self-published author who’s driving tons of views and conversation about your work, that’s when agents and editors approach you. You don’t even have to query. But if your following isn’t enough to proactively attract agent or publisher attention to your door, then I don’t think it plays a meaningful role when you’re going on submission or submitting a query. Does it hurt? No.

In the debut novel deal announcements at Publishers Marketplace, it’s rare to see any mention of platform. But occasionally writing/publishing credentials or occupations are mentioned. Here are some descriptors in early 2024, if any are given at all—the majority have no credentials listed.

• Software engineer and contributor to the Drunken Canal and Hobart
• Pushcart Prize winning
• Elizabeth George grantee and Warren Wilson MFA graduate
• Managing editor of fiction for Foglifter Journal and creative writing teacher
• 2023 Reese’s Book Club LitUp Fellow
• Yaddo and Macdowell fellow
• Previously published in Slate and The Bellevue Literary Review and heard on NPR
• Lambda Literary fellow
• Book critic
• Rona Jaffe Scholar and Oregon Literary Fellow

These credentials mainly testify to the quality of existing writing or involvement in the writing community. This is a critical part of platform that doesn’t require social media activity or self-promotion. Unfortunately, the writer at Vox seems fairly obsessed with TikTok, which is understandable—it’s driving book sales for the likes of Colleen Hoover. But that doesn’t mean debut novelists must now launch themselves into a short-form video career. And it doesn’t mean that for nonfiction authors either.

Update (2/12/24): When I originally published this post, I debated whether to mention the Christian market. Christian agents and publishers sometimes have business practices that don’t align with mainstream publishing, whether it’s related to submissions and acquisitions, author platform, paying to publish, and more. Christian publishers may cite platform as a reason for rejecting fiction and/or children’s books and have submission guidelines that say they require platform.

You can still get a book deal for nonfiction without a platform.

Platform is most often a concern for literary agents who are looking for the easiest path to a big deal with one of the conglomerate New York publishers. Telling an author “you don’t have a platform” is one of the easiest and most non-offensive ways to get rid of a project they don’t want to represent. But reasons for rejection tend to be multi-faceted and writers rarely receive the real reasons behind it—especially not “your trauma memoir is derivative and boring” or “your writing lacks anything fresh or exciting.”

Small and independent publishers—who can be equivalent to or better than the biggest New York houses—accept books all the time where the author does not have a platform. (Here’s how to research them.) Authors can approach such publishers directly without an agent. Here’s how to evaluate publishers on your own without the help of an agent.

You can get a book deal for memoir without a platform.

Memoir gets acquired all the time without the author having a platform. At the same time, the number-one reason memoir gets rejected is because the author does not have a platform. There’s a lot of memoir being submitted these days, and very little of it is deserving of a nationwide audience. Sometimes, the agent is outright lying about why they’re rejecting the project; it’s easier to say “no platform” than “bad writing” or “boring story” or “won’t sell.” Other times, the agent or publisher is only interested in memoirs by authors with platforms. So how can you tell which is which? One clue is what the agent or publisher asks authors to submit. If they want a proposal, they’re definitely interested in your platform and probably sell memoir based on platform (at least in part). If they want a query and the full manuscript, they probably acquire memoir on the basis of the story and the quality of the writing. But in the end, they may still reject on the basis of platform because they think that’s the kinder way out. Too often, it’s an unkind rejection, because authors get misled into trying to build platform when that’s not really the problem.

In 2022, I researched memoir book deals and found that about 25% were with authors who did not have any identifiable platform.

OK, moving on to the next problematic claim in the Vox article.

Vox: We like to think of it as the work of singular geniuses whose motivations are purely creative and untainted by the market — this, despite the fact that music, publishing, and film have always been for-profit industries where formulaic, churned-out work is what often sells best. These days, the jig is up.

… Even when corporations did enter the picture, artists working with publishing houses or record companies, for example, had little contact with the business side of things.

There has been no time in publishing history when writers were unaffected by the market—or didn’t have to think about it.

In the literary community especially, there’s a persistent and dangerous myth of the starving artist, and the belief that “real art” doesn’t earn money or that “real artists” don’t consider commerce. In fact, art and business can inform each other, and successful writers throughout history have proven themselves savvy at making their art pay.

Mark Twain’s work was sold direct to reader by door-to-door salesmen, which was not considered high status at the time. (Respectable people sold their book in bookstores.) But it was direct to reader that led to the best success and sales for Twain. Little Women was borne out of the financial desperation of Louisa May Alcott, who wrote it on assignment, for the market. George Eliot, the great moral novelist, left the publisher she had been loyal to for many years, to work with a publisher offering a higher advance. Etc. The examples are legion. What’s insufferable are the scolds who continually try to make artists and writers feel lesser than if they consider the market or avidly market and promote. T.S. Eliot was such a scold; he called poet Amy Lowell a demon saleswoman of poetry.

I believe there is a productive tension to be found between art and commerce. Richard Nash, who has written eloquently about the business of literature, once told me, “Business and marketing are about understanding networks and patterns of influence and behavior. Writers can handle that.” Meaning: This is not some catastrophe that writers need to be rescued from. See Make Art Make Money by Elizabeth Stevens, which is essentially a biography of Jim Henson, showing how he played art and commerce off each other to magnificent success. (She also wrote about Borges and his day job, and why working a day job was good for his creativity.)

I’m on Andy Warhol’s side when he said, “Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

Next:

Vox: Self-promotion sucks. It is actually very boring and not that fun to produce TikTok videos or to learn email marketing for this purpose. Hardly anyone wants to “build a platform;” we want to just have one. 

Yes, it does suck if you define self-promotion or platform building as selling out or being on TikTok/social media. This is a simplistic and follow-the-trends perspective that writers get sucked into all the time, to their detriment. Tara McMullin has already written a terrific response about self-promotion that everyone should go and read: Sorry (Not Sorry): Self-Promotion Doesn’t Work.

In this post, I’d like to expand on the idea of platform.

Platform should not be conflated with “social media following” or self-promotion.

Platform building is an unwieldy topic to address for authors; no two platforms are alike and building an effective one depends on your resources, strengths, connections. What I can say is that platform should not be equated to “social media following” or self-promotion. It’s just as much about showing that you have connections and belong to networks that can help spread the word about what you do. You might have a sufficient enough platform already to land a book deal, especially if you’re regularly publishing in outlets that your target audience reads. For further inspiration, read this post.

Fortunately, a meaningful and sustainable platform flourishes out of the work itself and is not divorced from what you as an author want to talk about, ordinarily and enthusiastically. However, if you want to sit in a remote garret for the rest of your life and bestow your genius unto the world without ever interacting with a single soul, well, yes—that is going to be quite problematic for your future as a bestselling author.

It’s foolhardy to expect you can just write and publish, and that good things will happen without you playing a proactive role in somehow being visible. And that’s what platform is all about: visibility. You want your work to be seen and most writers want to grow their readership, which typically leads to more earnings or earnings opportunities. Platform is important to the extent that you want or expect to earn a living from your writing and publishing activities. But treating platform as a series of self-promotional tasks, isolated from your own values and strengths, will be a waste of your time and energy.

While platform gives you the power to market effectively, it’s not something you develop by engaging in self-promotional activities. It is not about hard selling, being an extrovert, or pleading “Look at me!” Platform isn’t about who yells the loudest or markets the best. It’s about putting in consistent effort over the course of a career, and making incremental improvements in how you reach readers and extend your network. It’s about making waves that attract other people to you. Ultimately, your platform-building process will become as much a creative exercise as the work you produce.

Author platform has become more important over the years because it is not impressive or meaningful to publish something in the digital era. Many of us now publish and distribute with the click of a button on a daily basis—on social media especially, but also on all kinds of platforms. The difficult work lies in getting attention in an era of “cognitive surplus.” Cognitive surplus is a term coined by author Clay Shirky that refers to the societal phenomenon where we now have free time to pursue all sorts of creative and collaborative activities, including writing. Arianna Huffington once said, “Self-expression is the new form of entertainment,” and author George Packer wrote in 1991, “Writing has become one of the higher forms of recreation in a leisure society.” And even more so now. A writer today is competing against many more would-be writers than even a couple of decades ago. 

Still, committed writers succeed in the industry every single day, especially those who can adopt a long-term view and recognize that most careers are launched, not with a single fabulous manuscript, but through a series of small successes that builds the writer’s network and visibility, step by step.

Some people have an easier time building platform than others. If you hold a high-profile position or have a powerful network; if you have friends in high places or are associated with powerful communities; if you have prestigious degrees or posts, then you play the field at an advantage. This is why it’s so easy for celebrities to get book deals. They have built-in platform. That doesn’t always equate to sales, though; plenty of celebrity books have bombed.

I often advise writers: start with your strengths and don’t worry about what you don’t have. Most of us excel in one or two areas of platform-building and leverage that repeatedly to grow our careers. Speaking for myself, I excel at email newsletters and blogging and have used these mediums for my entire freelance career to fuel my business. The hardest and also most exciting thing about any creative life is figuring out your own path. Don’t get tricked into thinking there’s a formula or some platform that you absolutely must use or otherwise you’ll get left behind. It has never been true.

Last but not least:

Vox: Fewer publishers means heavier competition for well-paying advances, and fewer booksellers thanks to consolidation by Amazon and big box stores means that authors aren’t making what they used to on royalties, despite the fact that book sales are relatively strong. The problem isn’t that people aren’t buying books, it’s that less of the money is going to writers.

There is no evidence to suggest publishers are paying authors less than before.

There are, of course, author earnings surveys conducted by the Authors Guild and other organizations that try to show that author income is declining, but these reports are seriously problematic and moreover they do not prove that publishers are paying less than before. Consider:

• Advances from Penguin Random House (PRH) for the average author (not a top-earning author, which is someone in the top 2%) either stayed the same or increased in the decade after the 2013 merger between Penguin and Random House. This was revealed during the Dept. of Justice antitrust trial against PRH in 2022.
• During that same trial, PRH CEO Markus Dohle said that PRH in the US committed an “all-time high” of around $650 million in author advances in 2021.
• In 2021, here’s the CEO of HarperCollins on the publisher’s performance: “Outgoing funds to authors and advances and royalties is continuing to grow, growing faster than revenues.”
• If the sizes of book deals were declining, Publishers Marketplace deal reports would likely reflect that. No alarm has been raised.

Do publishers have unfavorable terms for authors? Of course they do. Ebook royalty payments are too low and it can be impossible for authors to retain ebook or audiobook rights when working with big houses, just to name a couple areas of frustration. But to say publishers are paying less than before would really require advances or royalty rates to be declining, and I have not seen evidence of that. (Anecdotal evidence from a single author does not count; I’m talking about actual industry data.)

I did have the good fortune to look at the granular data collected by the Authors Guild from its latest author income survey. Authors most likely to report their income decreasing over the last five years? Traditionally published authors and those age 65 and up, which isn’t all that surprising if they’re producing fewer works or coasting on backlist. And who is most likely to report their income increasing? Authors publishing serializations and authors 25–44 years old. Overall, self-published authors were slightly more likely to report increased rather than decreased earnings; they were also far more likely to have published a book in the last year.

And this points to a very important dynamic for every author’s income and whether you can make a living from book sales alone: It matters how much you write and publish, not least what category or genre you’re publishing into. It does not matter how much you use TikTok. Publishers and literary agents know this, even if they pretend otherwise to conveniently reject you and your work.

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Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to serving on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, she works with organizations such as The Authors Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing.