Homes in the Slush Pile

Author platform. You've heard the term, no doubt. But what the heck is an author platform?
It is not, unfortunately, a soapbox on which you stand to deliver your next reading and subsequent author speech. No, it is a way agents, editors, and publishers finally notice your work.

Let's think of this through a Texas state of mind. House number 100 in Texas is a giant castle with a moat and drawbridge. House 101 is a still large 3,000 square foot abode with a pool. House 102 is a little shack with a crumbling rooftop. And finally, house 103 is not a house at all, but an empty, overgrown plot.

If you had no budget from which to work with, and every house was up for grabs, which house would you take? Really. No restrictions. You can take any of them - they want you to buy them.

Easy, right? House 100. The giant castle. It's the biggest and the best. You might go for house 101, too, just to buy yourself a buffer zone, but they're the only two that draw your attention.

If you're an agent, this is what author platforms look like. House 100 is the big ticket author who has either published a bestseller or has enough online attention to do so soon. Even house 101 has done their marketing, sprucing the place up and making it the best house it can be on its own. Can it be bigger? Yes. It could be a castle. But only after major overhaul - which, in our case, is publication.

What about the other houses, you ask? Well house 102, our shack, is trying. It has maybe one poetry credit, a twitter feed, and maybe a short story about to be published in a friend's lit mag. It has something, but it needs a crap ton of work before anyone with an unlimited budget notices. And house 103, the empty plot, has nothing but a manuscript to its name. Nothing previously published, and no Facebook author page or blog.

Now, I'm not saying that no agent or publisher had ever chosen a really awesome empty plot based upon the manuscript alone, but isn't it better to have an eye-catching author platform so every agent that passes your query wants you as a client? Quite right.

So how do you make yourself into a giant agent snatching house? You have to work for it. How do you do that? You must commit to a few types of platforms. Create a Facebook author page, a Twitter feed, Instagram, blog, or website. Post from the POV of your protagonist, make sure everyone knows you're an expert on your novel's subject, and share your writing advice.

Then, you'll be the house 100 in the query slush pile and no one can stop you from publishing the next NYT bestseller.