A platform is a way to “get noticed in a noisy world,” to borrow from Michael Hyatt’s book of the same subtitle. Hunter Baker has a helpful critique of this idea.
“Stop badgering would-be authors with applications designed to tease out how large their platforms are and spend more time locating the best manuscripts,” he writes. In the near future, he suggests a big platform will be the very reason speakers and authors will not submit their document to a traditional publisher. They will self-publish.
Scot McKnight also has several questions about platform and current publishing tactics:
I get hundreds of books sent to me each year, many of them by people with a sizable platform, and I can say without reservation that the bigger the platform the less the author has to say (not always, but often). Big platform authors are guaranteed sales. They’re not guaranteed good content. I get books on my desk from no-name authors that have much better content than big-name authors. …
I know a pastor who was given a 3-book contract, a previously unpublished pastor, had no idea what he wanted to write about, but was told “We’ll take care of that by listening to your sermons.” At about the same time a young author sent me a manuscript that was rejected by the same publisher because he had no platform, but they did agree he had very good content.
All of this is troubling, but I don’t know what to recommend as a sane alternative. Aren’t there publishers who print what they believe to be the best manuscripts they receive? What success are they having? Should litblogs, like this one, have cutthroat review competitions to compare good vs. big platform books?