Ways To Boost Your Author Profile

Self-promotion doesn’t come naturally to many writers. We are shy and flighty creatures who spend much of our time trying to prepare ourselves for rejection, failure, and all-encompassing doom.

Why would we want to bring more attention to ourselves when doing so not only suggests we actually think our own work is good (God forbid) but also are therefore opening up the possibility of even more people being able to wade in and tell us how we are wasting our time and should definitely give up altogether, all with a heart-breaking, dream-crushing grin on their faces?

The problem is, however, that without the willingness to self-promote in this day and age, your chances of furthering your writing career are basically zero.

Luckily there is masses of information online and in books about the different ways we can promote ourselves as writers, it’s an art really, and one we must learn if we are to keep up, build an audience and actually sell our work.

Think of your author platform as your new book - take your time and think about each and every thing you do. You can’t expect to create a fantastic author platform overnight, it takes time to build this up, to perfect it. But if you put the effort in you will see a dramatic difference in the number of engagements you receive, and ultimately the number of readers who will become loyal fans of your work.

Firstly be very clear about who you are trying to target, learn what your readers want, what they are interested in, and how they like to receive information. Think about how you want your work to be viewed and make sure you influence your readers and direct them to this way of thinking. Your messages should be consistent, you should have a ‘voice’ and a style that people can recognise as yours.

Make sure you keep tabs on where you are being mentioned. Google Alerts is the simplest way to do this, you can easily set up several alerts such as your name and book titles and keep track of when and where you pop up online - this way you can see your author platform growing before you very eyes. Make sure you thank people/ respond to them when they mention you too!

Don’t just make it ‘all about me.’ This is the golden rule when it comes to social media. Use your platform to mostly share useful/ funny/ entertaining information, and only promote yourself and your work in between this. If you are writing a bunch of useful articles that will interest your audience then that’s fine, you are sharing this information for free so people will be glad of it - if every second tweet is a link to buy your book however, people will lose interest and see you as socially ‘selfish’ which is never a good thing!

There is nothing wrong with being a bit of a copycat. Take a look at your competition, writers in the same field as you, or authors you admire. How do they handle their author platform? You can learn so much this way, from what kind of content you should be posting to how frequently, to the tone and style that you should adopt.

Be engaging, responsive and most importantly yourself. People don’t like fake, whiny or those who try too hard. Authors are not brands, they are people and so should act like them.

Fans of your work will be interested in you and your life and what you like to do in your spare time, so make sure you keep it personal. Don’t assume that no one cares or wants to listen to what you have to say, spark conversations, be friendly and give something back. People are sure to respect you for that, and little by little this will help your author profile grow.

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

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