The 3 Biggest Lessons from My First 3 Months of Building My Author Platform That Can Help You Start Your Own
Pretty much all you need is you.
I received an email recently from a friend and fellow author preparing to publish her first novel. She expressed feeling “daunted” and “overwhelmed” as she thought about the marketing of her book, in particular the social media end of it.
Her concerns set me thinking: “What advice could I give her?” I haven’t been building my own online presence very long—just over three months—and so I’m myself still very much in early days.
But then I recalled something I learned from writer and brand advisor, Dan Koe:
Even though you’re only a few steps ahead of someone else on the journey, those few steps contain knowledge and a perspective that are useful to the person behind you.
At least I think it was Dan Koe who said this. I’ve been reading a lot lately about online writing, and it’s easy to forget who said what. Which brings me to my first lesson…
Read and Study Those Who Are Successful Writing Online
I am an academic and spend a lot of my time researching. It comes naturally to me to dig around for sources of expertise when I need to get up to speed on something. So, when I wanted to learn how to build an online presence around my novel, The Good Death of Kate Montclair, I started researching, and found two sources that have been especially helpful to me.
But before I mention them, let me say a word about why I’m talking about “writing online” when the theme we started with was “marketing.”
Marketing means a lot of things. It can mean paid advertising, live events, giveaways, word-of-mouth. But marketing in the 21st century also involves, crucially involves, having an online presence.
And for writers, having an online presence means writing online.
When I started three months ago, “having an online presence,” for me, meant putting together a website with a blog attached, combined with building an email list via Substack. I remember late last year puzzling over how I was going to be able to maintain a blog on my website as well as write this regular newsletter. I didn’t realize how out-of-step this thinking was.
I didn’t realize how difficult it is these days to attract people to a website, even one with a blog. It’s like sitting in the cheap seats in the middle of a rock concert, whispering “Listen to me.” No one knows you’re there.
What to do? Not have a website? Not have a blog? I could hardly imagine it.
Around this same time, I was reading the work of a group of online writers and marketers (Nicolas Cole, Dickie Bush, Christopher Lochhead, and I believe others in their group) who have formed what they call a “rock band” devoted to the idea of category design: Category Pirates. The work of Category Pirates is the first of the two sources I want to mention. It was their work that inspired me to stop thinking in my old online-presence paradigm of website-with-blog and think more about heading over to online platforms where readers are already hanging out: platforms such as Substack and social media.
To borrow one of their metaphors: why stand outside in the driveway, calling out to people to join your party, when there’s already a party going on inside?
I changed my thinking. I starting taking Substack as my online homebase, the place where I could talk about my work and my interests and build an email list of supporters. (Hiring the incomparable Ted Schluenderfritz to illustrate The Comic Muse is a key part of my efforts to make this newsletter the centerpiece of my online presence. Aren’t his illustrations fantastic? You can also find them on the covers of my humorous Kingdom of Patria books for middle grade readers.)
I also built a website. You can check it out at danielmcinerny.studio. I think it’s important to have a website—though I’ve ditched the idea of having a blog there. A website is like the sign in front of your store. But like a sign, it’s inert (unless you have the kind of business that sells merchandise from a website). It’s not a place to have conversations—and conversations with readers is what any writers wants.
I particularly recommend Nicolas Cole’s book, The Art and Business of Online Writing, as well as the book, Snow Leopard: How Legendary Writers Create a Category of One, which is written by the whole band of Category Pirates.
You Are Your Category
My second biggest lesson is also inspired in large part by Category Pirates, and that is the idea that you want to “own” your niche.
What does this mean?
To own a niche means that you are offering something to the world that cannot be found anywhere else. You’re not just trying to do “better” what millions of others are already doing. You’re trying to do something that no one else is doing—so that the readers come to you.
How is this possible? If you are a thriller writer, or a mystery writer, or, like me, a writer of comic novels set in the contemporary world, how can you possibly own your niche when there are hundreds if not thousands of other writers doing the same thing?
The Category Pirates are helpful in addressing this objection. They’re also on Substack, so start with their free article, “A Beginner’s Guide to Category Design: How to Create a Category for Yourself And Your Business.”
But I’ve also found Dan Koe helpful. Especially his free article, “The Most Profitable Niche is You (How to Create Your Own Niche).” (Dan Koe’s work is the other key source I want to share with you).
The basic point is that you want to be, not just a writer of comic fiction set in the contemporary world, but such a writer who is also a philosopher with an interest in questions at the intersection of art and the ethical life, who also has interests in health and fitness, productivity, deep focus and the deep life, as well as the nest of issues related to mindfulness, curiosity, and growth mindset.
Wait—you don’t want to be a writer of comic fiction with that set of interests! Because that writer is me! You want to do you.
But notice how, in that long description of myself as a writer, how specific my niche, my category, is. I daresay there is no other writer of comic fiction in the world who answers to that description. The mere fact that I’m a philosopher is enough to separate me from just about everyone else.
So how do you find your own category?
This is where Dan Koe’s advice is helpful. You simply be yourself online. Being yourself is the surest path to finding the niche that only you can own.
That doesn’t mean that you have to start posting about things that are very personal to you. In fact, it’s probably best that you don’t. But it does mean that you post things that, appropriate to a business setting, reveal who you are to the world.
As I talked about last week, there are three pillars to my writing here on The Comic Muse:
The Practice: on the craft and business of being a writer
The Philosophy of Story: on the deeper philosophical issues related to imagining a renaissance in popular entertainment
The Quest for the Good Life: how fiction, entertainment, health and fitness, productivity, etc. help us achieve the end, the good life, we are made for
These are the pillars of my business. Together they make up the “category”: Daniel McInerny.
Your Core Offering, Your Initial Offering
When I first decided to build my online presence in anticipation of the release of The Good Death of Kate Montclair, which is my current core offering to readers, my first thought was to only post things that were entertaining to the reader.
On the internet you basically find two kinds of writing: the educational and the entertaining, and I opted for the latter.
It made a certain amount of sense. I’m a writer of fiction. I wanted to attract readers to my fictional worlds. Ergo, I’ll attract readers with fictional content.
While I haven’t abandoned the idea of posting fictional content, at least occasionally, I have abandoned the idea of making fiction my initial, as opposed to my core, offering to the world.
I realized very early that online readers don’t yet have enough context with me, enough of a connection, to trust that a piece of fiction I post online is going to be entertaining, and thus worth their time.
J.K. Rowling can post a short story online and draw millions of eyeballs, but that is because she’s already earned the trust of millions of readers.
With the release of The Good Death of Kate Montclair next week, I hope to start building that kind of trust—okay, maybe, hopefully, a fraction of that kind of trust. But I know it will take some time before readers are ready, in numbers, to enjoy my entertainment content online—whether that conent be a short story published here on Substack or a scenario or joke on Instagram.
What to do in the meantime?
Build trust by working on other aspects of my category.
This article is a case in point. Today I’m working on The Practice pillar of my business. I’m writing an actionable piece, giving advice, teaching, trying to help others who want to do the same kind of thing I am.
This article is one example of my initial offering to readers. It is the sort of writing readers will often see first from me, and which, if all goes well and I build trust, will lead them to my core offering.
That distinction between initial and core offering is the third biggest lesson I’ve learned so far.
So, what is your core offering? And what sort of initial offering will you make to draw readers to it?
What If This Doesn’t Make Me Feel Like an Artist?
I get it.
All this talk of initial and core offerings, categories, and online presence is making your teeth itch. You want to be an artist, and I’m asking you to become an online hack.
That’s a little harsh.
But it’s okay. I know how you’re feeling.
The romantic vision of the artist as someone who does nothing all day but answer to the callings of the Muse (see the cartoon at the head of this article) is a hard one to shake. We feel somehow that we are letting that image down if we stoop to the demands of the commercial world.
But let’s get real. Read biographies of great writers and you will find them doing all sorts of things to make their businesses go.
Shakespeare loved to make a buck. You don’t think he did whatever had to be done to get those groundlings to put their penny (a full day’s wage) in the till to see King Lear?
James Joyce. The artist’s artist, right? He cajoled his friends (including Samuel Beckett) to write an entire book of essays explicating (i.e. marketing) the novel he hadn’t even finished yet, Finnegans Wake.
Evelyn Waugh. A best-selling novelist but also one who throughout his life wrote all types of journalism, including travel books, to support himself and his family.
Flannery O’Connor. Even while suffering with lupus, she flew around the country to give talks on writing because she needed to earn her living.
Writing is a business. A few writers, very few, are able to make their core offering to the world the sole focus of the business side of their work. P.G. Wodehouse is one. Rowling is another.
For the rest of us, we have to take care of business in more varied ways.
In the 21st century, so much of business is carried out online. The digital world presents a marvelous opportunity for a solopreneur to create a business with laughably small overhead.
I intend to make the most of this opportunity.
Are you with me?
P.S. There are so many topics I haven’t touched on in this article. How to get followers on Instagram (still working on it), Twitter (still working on it), how to make a Reel on Instagram, how to organize an author website, how to make a podcast, how to find a publisher, how to self-publish, etc. etc. There is so much to talk about. But the three lessons I wrote about today are the lessons I suggest you begin thinking about.
Please let me know if you have any questions, either in the Comments here or at danielmcinerny@proton.me.
P.P.S. The Good Death of Kate Montclair releases next Wednesday, March 15. Pre-order your copy here.
P.P.P.S. So very proud that the school where I teach, Christendom College, issued this news story on the book earlier this week.
The 3 Biggest Lessons from My First 3 Months of Building My Author Platform That Can Help You Start Your Own
Super helpful advice!