Platform. There, I said it. Are you covering your ears? It’s become a word no writer wants to hear these days. At this site I network with lots of writers and hear this from them: “My publisher wants me to blog, so….” Or “My agent told me I should start writing about this subject, so can I post here?”

I hear lots of complaints about how busy writers are and how they don’t have time for social media. I get it. I was the same way once upon a time. A decade ago I published a little book of poetry just for me. I hadn’t planned on selling it. I’d never sent my poetry anywhere for consideration, so publishing the indie way was a new frontier.

But still, I marketed that book. And then a year later I took the profits from my sales of 1,000 books that first year (which I was totally amazed by – I mean, this was poetry after all) and published two more books the next year, another poetry book and a nonfiction book about relationships. And for the nonfiction book, I went all out with content marketing, although I didn’t realize that’s what it was at the time.

Slowly, by doing promotion and writing articles I was building a platform. It’s been a decade, and in looking back I can say that I built my writing career somewhat backward from everyone else. It started to promote a book and then the book helped bolster the career. But I do a lot of things backwards, so that shouldn’t surprise anyone.

(Read the rest of this post at the Thinking Thoughts blog.)