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I know a pastor who was given a 3-book contract, a previously unpublished pastor, had no idea what he wanted to write about, but was told “We’ll take care of that by listening to your sermons.”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?
Two thoughts.
One: Considering the cost of bringing a book to market can easily run between $10,000 up to $50,000, publishers know they need to sell several thousand copies to cover the initial investment. The easy way to do that is to sign up authors who already have several thousand followers. Solomon said that “of the writing of books there will be no end.” The work it takes to distinguish one book among so many when the author is unknown is a far greater task than most publishers want to undertake as long as there are easier fish to fry.
Two: On the other hand, I think they shoot themselves in the foot with multi-book contracts where the author has pretty much said what he had to say in the first book. I remember enjoying the first book from a pastor telling the story of building a small congregation that was just limping along into a nationally recognized fellowship of believers. I found it very insightful. But by his third book I realized that he was just re-packaging the same ideas from the first book. There was no new content His fourth book has been sitting on my nightstand for nearly ten years, never quite rising high enough in the stack to get read. I found the same thing reading the books of a well known church growth researcher. After looking forward to his followup books, I finally quit buying them as they were merely rehashing the same dataset.
Yeah, I dislike Joel Osteen’s books too.
I get what you’ve said. If a publisher can make money on pointless books, why not do it? Someone told me a rep from Broadman & Holman (I think) told them they sell the books both men agreed were garbage in order to have the money to publish the good books which didn’t sell well. I’m sure Jesus would do the same thing.
*cough* I choked on a bit of snark.
When I mentioned this post on Google+, commenters began praising a recent book called “Write. Publish. Repeat.” which is a self-publishing guide, I think.
Sorry, I wasn’t referencing Rev. Osteen. I was thinking of someone who is a bit more mainstream.
No, no. I was joking. I don’t know who you’re talking about.