Build It and They Will Come

I understand I need to build my platform but . . . [enter bullshit here]

Whether you want to write the book first, think building a platform is hard work, or want to pay someone to do the work for you — I’m here to say that there’s no one who will care more about your book (or your business) than you will.

That might sound harsh but I’ve worked in publishing long enough to know that writing a book is the easiest part of the whole damn process. That’s part of the reason why self-publishing has boomed. According to Bowker, over 1.6 million books were self-published in 2018 (and that’s after 1.2 million in 2017).

That’s an increase of nearly 40%.

If we speculate even half that growth year over year, then the number of books self-published in 2020 would be 2.2 million books.

Which is a lot of freaking competition if you ask me.

The stats I just shared don’t even scratch the surface, really, because these numbers don’t include all the self-published books that don’t have an ISBN (International Standard Book Number). And that includes the majority of books published through Kindle Direct Publishing (Amazon).

Discoverability is the biggest problem in book publishing.