There has been a bit of a brouhaha in publishing this week with Harlequin’s announcement of what looks a lot like a vanity publishing arm (as opposed to a true self-publishing arm). Author Jackie Kessler has a good analysis of the situation based on the company’s FAQ.
Ignoring for the purpose of this conversation that rejection letters in reply to manuscripts sent to Harlequin will mention their self/vanity-publishing arm, I wanted to focus instead on the need for anyone considering publishing to look long and hard at creating a platform first.
Let’s say you do self-publish a book. That guarantees you only one thing – a book. How would you be able to turn that into sales? Even if you get distribution… how would anyone learn about your book in order to buy it? If you haven’t spent time building up a platform, your book will languish.
The same is true to some extent with a book from a traditional publisher, of course, but there you’re more likely to get distribution, reviews, and maybe even some marketing.
Also, traditional publishers are trusted sources, to a great extent, so their marketing efforts at least have a shot of connecting. They’ve spent time building relationships with people who will listen, and they can leverage their reputation – one they’ve taken years to build. Using packaged, one-size-fits-all services rarely yields the same results.
For an author or illustrator who wants to help sell copies of their book, no matter how it’s published, having a network and platform makes it far more possible. It’s not something you HAVE to work on, of course, particularly if you’re only focusing on traditional publishing. Still, from my point of view, it’d be time well spent.
So, my question to all of you here is pretty simple: what are you doing to build a platform? And if you say “nothing” (a perfectly legitimate answer, by the way), my second question would be “Why?”
