Creating an Author Platform?

I believe it's YES. Based on my previous clients I've worked for, who most are authors, they didn't mind to pay me higher to design their kindle/book cover, even video promotion for the book. So, I'm sure they have made good money with their books.

I see having an author website (or platform as you call it) as one of the most important branding decisions you can make.

It can help with the emotional connection with your readers, it would make you recognizable (as an authority) in your niche and give you a marketing platform to build a list to spike your earnings.

If done in a professional matter, there are only advantages, especially if it's paired with a good social media presence. We've had a few self publishing customers and they've all been impressed with how many little things can be done to improve book sales and further earnings.

So yeah, I think an author website/platform is a real asset for writers.

Alexandra

If you're RELYING on sales of Kindle books as your sole source of revenue, I think you're in trouble.

IMO Kindle books should be tripwire products, to start the conversation with qualified prospects.

They buy because they have a problem you can fix. Now the book positions you as the expert, and starts the conversation and gets them used to you.

That should lead to the next step in the qualifying & sales conversation, which leads to a larger order from you for a product or service (commonly called the "back end" of the funnel.)

I have authority sites. They're helpful. But sending paid pre-qualified traffic to a book offer page would be just as good--if your customer is in the uncomfortable situation and wants out, and your book gives them that out, they'll buy now. They don't need further proof. The book's existence, plus reviews, is the proof.

If I needed money now, I'd put my effort elsewhere. An authority site is a "nice to have", not a "need to have."

Take a look at Joanna Penn's website. She talks a lot about how to build a successful author platform.

The Creative Penn

uhmmmmm... nope

I've never really understood the concept of a "platform", so I've never tried to do it. I just write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish... you get the idea.

My experience in this is every time I publish a new book, it gets a burst of sales for the for few weeks, maybe as long as 3 months, but usually less. The first day it'll get maybe 10 downloads, then the next day maybe 30, then the next day maybe 5, then the next day 2, and then 1 or 2 or 3 a day for 3 months. Then after 3 months it's 1 or 2 a month. We'll call this one Book A.

When I publish another book. It does the same thing. After Book B comes out, Book A will get a few more sales...like this:

Book B sells 30 copies day 1, Book A sells 10 copies each one same time as one of Book B leaving me to believe one buyer bought both books.

So, next I publish Book C and it does the same thing, only this time it's like this: Book C sells 30 copies day 1 and Book B sells 10 copies and Book A sells 3 copies.

Do you see what is happening?

Every time I release a new book, a few buyers, buy every book in the set. So releasing a new book each week/month/season/year (whatever time frame works for you) boosts sales of the old books. It's a sort of long tail to book sales.

Once in a while I'll have a book, jump out the gates running and BOOM 100+ copies go out the first day. But that's rare (it's only happened twice in 170+ books; and only because I had fans of a previous volume waiting for the next volume.)

Okay, so because of this, I was originally publishing a new short story each week and a new novel each month (across multiple pennames), but then life happened and my health went bad, and suddenly I'm so busy with doctors and stuff that I've got several months between publishing a book.

What happened? Sales of ALL books stopped!

Yie!

Why?

Well, for starters I'm writing a tiny, niche, genre that most of the planet has never even heard of (Yaoi) so not much demand for it equals not many sales. What this means is, my buyers are repeat buyers, not mass market buyers. In other words: I have a tiny audience interested in these books and they've all, already bought the books, so to get new sales, I have to write new books (because the genre simply doesn't have enough appeal to attract new readers.)

And so the solution to this problem is of course... write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish...

I'm not sure what genre you write, so this type of problem may or may not be what you are facing.

The average author (including self-pubbed and trade pubbed) earns $10,000 or LESS from their books. Most authors also have a part time job.

A Harlequin Romance Novelist has to publish 4 novels a year to earn $24,000 and most have part time jobs in addition to working for Harlequin.

In spite of the hype, Amazon themselves, have only 3 Kindle authors listed at EVER earning a $million, and fewer then a 1,000 listed as ever making $300k per year, and around 700,000 listed at earning under $5k a year. (This was according to the public release of their IRS tax records, which they are required to release to the public due to selling stock shares.)

87% of the "How to get rich writing Erotica" books are written by people who NEVER WROTE ANY FICTION, not even Erotica.

73% of the "How to get rich writing Erotica" books are just 12 page bot respinnings of each other. (I have bought and read all of the ones on Amazon, that's how I know.) And are the ONLY book by the author that published them.

I survive on my author's income because my cost of living expenses are low (I have no electricity, no running water, and no brick & mortar house; I boondock - tent). I've had my 30 year old car for 8 years. What is my income? The most I've ever made in a single year - EVER - in the five decades of my life was $6,000. Most years my income is around $2,000. No. I have no trouble living on a $200 a month income.

Interesting thing to note: In my genre, I'm considered one of the top "best sellers" with my books staying in the top 10 of their categories, often hitting #1, in spite of each book averaging 1 to 3 sales per month. One of my books, reached #1 in it's category after just 1, single, solitary sale. It's ONLY sale in 6 months. It's still listed at #1. That means nobody else on that particular top 100 list has had ANY sales in the PAST 6 MONTHS! (Told you it was a hard sell genre!)

Now, every genre is different of course, so you have to compare your book to others in it's category, but just be careful not to get swooped up in the "Kindle Millionaire" hype and think you'll be an over night millionaire from just 1 book. Amazon's ta records proved that there is no such thing as the mythical "Kindle millionaire".

So, long way around answering your question...

My experience with earning money as an author is, that the money is there, IF you work for it. IF you write a genre that is a 'hot topic" (like Romance or Thriller)... but, if you're like me and write because you love your genre, then you have a long, hard road ahead of you, because writing small unpopular genres means fewer sales, less often, and the need to write many more books, much more often.

As for "author platform"... I've never done that. I published my first book in 1978 and just went from there. Other then using HootSuite to publish hourly (automated) tweets (1 book link posted each hour, every day - with tweets written up 6 months in advance), I don't do any marketing. In fact, I do way more marketing of other authors' books then I do my own, with my Twitter account automated to post 10 book promo tweets (not my own books) every hour, 24 hours a day.

I do have my author website (started in 1997) and was on 300+ forums, before my accounts were hacked in 2013/14/15 while I was hospitalized and offline. (oooooh what a mess - here I was dying in the hospital, offline, and no clue that someone had taken over my accounts and was impersonating me for nearly 3 years! Yei-yie-yie ) Now I'm out of the hospital, out of the wheelchair, off crutches, finally walking again (with a cane) and I come back online to find my accounts have spent the past 3 years as a trolls playground. It's very depressing. I spent 20 years building my online reputation, just to have someone try to destroy it while I was offline dying. I was so upset that I just went through and deleted all of my forum accounts and most of my social networks, took all 32 of my blogs offline, shut down nearly all of my 200+ websites, closed down the 12 forums I ran... only kept my homepage, WF, AW, Google+, Pinterest, FB, Twitter, Tumblr, & MySpace. Shut down over 600 accounts and profiles, some that I had had for 20 years, because of what this hacker did while I was offline.

So, what "author platform" I used to have and had online since 1997 is gone now. Basically, I only use WF and Twitter now and not anything else. My health is just too poor for me to try to spend months chasing down this stalker/hacker/troll.

So other then Twitter and my author website, I've got no "author platform" any more.

But, other then my tweets, I've never used my online accounts and profiles as a way to make money, so I never did any tracking to see if any of my income was a result of my online presence or not. I do know that after my Kboards & NaNoWriMo accounts were hijacked in 2013/2014 I did see 75% drop in my Amazon sales, so I think I must have been getting a lot of my sales from followers of my forum posts on Kboards & NaNoWriMo. (I wish I knew who the hacker was, and why they did it - what the heck was their motive? I don't know if it was a prank that got out of control or if it was someone who maliciously tried to destroy my career. I simply don't know who did it or why. It's so upsetting to have had something like this happen. I feel like: who can I trust now? i don't know who did it so no idea if it was a stranger or someone I know - who ever it was - we did trace the ISPN and it was a public library computer just 4 miles from my driveway! And some of their posts DID have photos of me and my family - which is absolutely terrifying because it means this person came up in my yard to take those pictures!!! )

I've barely dared to use any forum or social network at all since coming out of the hospital. I still don't know how far the stalker's reach went or if I'll discover even more stuff they did I'm not aware of yet. It's been a complete nightmare. Three years of medical hell to come back online and find this?!?!?! So sad. It looks like someone out there really, really, REALLY hates me and I don't know who it is or why. It terrifying to have to live with that knowledge.

It took me 20 years to build the online following I had (in 2012 I had 20,000 followers on Twitter - when I got back online afer 3 years of medical hell, I had 1,800 left!... the hacker did A LOT of damage to my online reputation and I don't know how to fix it, or if I even want to take the time to try. It's just so discouraging to have finally got out of the hospital and be so excited to come back online to see all my online friends again, and discover this happened while I was away. It almost makes me not want to use the internet at all any more. You have no idea how depressed this whole situation has made me. Who would do this to me? And why? Why did they do it? I wish I knew.

Should I try to recreate my author platform? It took me 20 years to build it and only a few months for a hacker to destroy it and my health is not good, I don't even know if I have enough time left to rebuild. It makes me so sad that someone hated me enough to do this. I don't know if I'll rebuild my author platform or not, I'm just too upset and depressed over the hacker at this point to even try to bounce back.

Me too.

Part of why I like being an author is my fans. My fans write to me or meet me in person and they'll tell me some story of how something I wrote helped them, inspired them, changed their life, whatever... I love that. I love being able to help people.

Yes. Yes I do. I know it is. I know it would be very easy for me to increase my income, simply by writing a more popular genre. I don't switch genres, because I'm just totally, completely, insanely, in love with the genre I write. Writing this genre is my passion and I was writing it for years on fanfiction.net for free before I found out I could get paid to publish it on Amazon. So, it's a case of me doing what I love and getting paid to do it, rather then me doing something for the money.

I know if money was my motive, it'd be very easy, as a writer, for me to simple write in a hot selling topic instead. Yes, writing is hard work, but it's good work, and it does bring in an income.

Good luck to you with your books! Happy writing!

~Hugs from EK

Thank you all for the good responses. You reminded me of the book Write,Publish,Repeat, EelCat.

I think that self publishing can be a way to earn a significant amount of money. One just has to be consistent and persistent.