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Don’t Let Nostalgia Kill Your Platform

March 6, 2022 //  by Mary DeMuth//  7 Comments

The glory days were fun, weren’t they? The heydays too. But they’ve both attempted to sideline me in my quest to build a reader platform.

Why?

Because if we stay back in the days when authors had the luxury of writing books, then watching their sales rise, then writing more books, we will be utterly frustrated.

Today is not then.

The reality is this: in today’s overcrowded publishing climate, an author wears two important hats.

  1. There’s the writing hat (with a feather in it for panache)
  2. and the platform hat (accompanied by a catchy tiktok soundtrack).

We can spend a great deal of emotional energy stomping on the platform hat, silencing the soundtrack, declaring we are writings-not-marketers, and lamenting that things are not as they used to be. This kind of grief is important initially, but it must not be wallowed in. The past is gone. The heyday is over. Be sad about it, then grieve, but move on. Pick up your platform hat, even if it doesn’t fit right, and see how you can bring creativity to it. Instead of viewing it as a foe, see it as a friend who will help you find readers.

The way to (possibly) don the platform hat with renewed joy is to understand it through the lens of ministry. Yes, our words are a ministry, to be sure. But there are many ways to wield words:

  • In a newsletter.
  • On Instagram.
  • In a tweet.
  • Through public speaking.
  • In a freebie we give to our people.

If we can view platform building as shepherding, the angst has a chance to die down a bit. Building a platform, then, becomes anticipatory because it simply means we reach more people with our words.

Perhaps another analogy will help. Used to be in my halcyon days of youth, I could eat anything and everything, and it did not affect the weight on the scale. But something happened (life!) over the decades. My body no longer burns my food to oblivion; instead it hoards it. I can either pine for the days of yore and lament that I can’t eat that bag of chips, or I can face the reality of today. I can no longer eat that way. The sooner I make peace with that, the more proactive I become about changing my behavior, and the more I welcome new, adapted habits.

Authors, similarly, need to make peace with the inevitability of change. Publishers are looking at platforms (almost primarily). So we need to discern this existing climate and make adjustments. We have to change our habits in order to reach our audience.

If you’re slowly pulling on that platform hat, and it feels ill-fitting or itchy, I’ve written a couple of posts about starting. You can read them here or here or here. I hope they give you a new way of looking at the task ahead of you.

I happen to believe that if we stay stuck in nostalgia, we miss the beautiful “next” God has for us. It’s an adventure, writer friend!

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Category: Business of writing, Marketing & Publicity, Writing LifeTag: author platform, platform

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  1. Kristen Joy Wilks

    March 6, 2022 at 7:42 am

    Ah … good thoughts, Mary. I too, have spent much time enjoying the writer hat and being concerned that the platform hat might have lice or something as it is quite itchy! I happily posted photos of the mountains, Bible camp fun, my big and slobbery dog, and my rowdy sons. Then, slowly my stories have begun to incorporate these very things that I love to post about. So, oddly, my accidental platform focus ended up leading my writing. I love camp ministry, living on a remote mountain meadow, and Newfoundland dogs and how they are so attuned to the emotional needs of campers as well as their family. Such beautiful things that I am happy to post about. Actually, this weekend we were doing a game with campers where they shouted “Mooo!” and our Princess Leia Freyja was deeply upset by all of that mooing. She galloped over in concern every time the room burst into moos. Very funny! I should have photographed it, ha!

    Reply
    • Mary DeMuth

      March 6, 2022 at 1:08 pm

      LOL about the lice comment. No one wants that! 🙂

      Reply
      • Kristen Joy Wilks

        March 6, 2022 at 2:52 pm

        Nope, nope, nope!

  2. Andrew Budek-Schmeisser

    March 6, 2022 at 4:30 pm

    Change is never a surprise,
    gotta know that’s what life means,
    but I still wear my cool tie-dyes
    and my boss bell-bottom jeans.
    Sure, I have a platform,
    that’s not really news,
    and I’m sure you’ll show no scorn
    on hearing it’s my shoes,
    for groovy’s always been my game,
    and I’m far out too;
    more changes, more comes out the same
    and coming back to you
    is a Bug from Sixties lore
    with a peace sign on the door.

    Reply
    • Mary DeMuth

      March 7, 2022 at 8:28 am

      True: change is never a surprise.

      Reply
  3. Robin W. Pearson

    March 7, 2022 at 6:09 am

    As the preacher used to say, “If you can’t say ‘Amen,’ say ‘Ouch!’” I’m one who laments the old days, and I wasn’t even published then. Point made and taken!

    Reply
    • Mary DeMuth

      March 7, 2022 at 8:29 am

      So very true, Robin.

      Reply

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