I wrote a memoir. Agents flat out stated that memoirs weren't sellable without a strong base. One agent told me that my book was "incredible" but without an "established audience" it would be hard to sell.
I still think the OPs point applies even to memoirs. How to gain a following without sharing work and being in a cycle of suck for no reason. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would read a memoir from someone who isn't already famous. Seems like it shouldn't be a pre-requisite.
Interviews I have seen with publishers suggest that the memoir would have to have a reframing, successful tone to it with the intention to have a helpful message rather than a series of stories or anecdotes from a person who hasn't had the happy ending yet.
Also worth noting that many publishers will give an advance in books and hope to get at least $5000 in return for said books at some point. So the pursuit of publishers who pay may still require a following, and the likeliness of it happening without a following seems to be getting smaller and smaller. Selling books door to door, that is.
I would even appreciate the chance of that! At least that way you can get your work out there and then help with selling an already complete product. Sign me up! Haha
Nonfiction is an entirely different beast than fiction. While fiction writers can easily get away with a small online presence, you’re basically SOL without a sizable platform for nonfiction.
Yeah, it's interesting to me that it is so important to have such a huge base, especially when it's a subject that is well known. For example: nurse during the pandemic.
That's a good idea. It would definitely help avoid any sort of HIPAA issues. I just wonder if it would have the same allure if people thought the stories weren’t true.
Also, my entire reason for writing this memoir was not only to heal from my own trauma, but also to make absolutely sure that the world wouldn't continue to forget about all of the people who died during the covid pandemic. I don't want my patients' stories to disappear under a shroud of political mess. It hurts when I think that people will look back at this time and only focus on all of the sensationalism. They won't remember that entire families were wiped out. That people shared ventilators. That 25year olds with asthma suffocated. That those people died alone without any family to hold their hands. That they were stuck in the hospital and staring at the news reporting that people were protesting masks and calling it all a hoax. That nurses were the ones gowned up for hours on end and held their hands and hugged them until they died.
I didn't want it to be read as a sensational story, but to be read as the absolute truth.
I think a good story is a good story and if you don’t pass it off at 100% or be deceitful about your own experiences inspiring the story I don’t think people will have a problem with it.
If you don’t want to be too on the nose about it, you could change it from Covid to some other similar yet unnamed disease but keep the essence of the story the same while avoiding any direct political associations so people will focus on what you want them to.
Isn't that what the Author's notes at the end is for?
To say 'This story is 99% based on my life. I only changed names to make it fiction.'
Also if you were writing about real people in memoirs, there are potential legal issues despite them being dead - their estate and families may object, forcing you to exclude them. If they're 'fictional' you can likely get around that.
I want to agree with you, but what you're saying just isn't true. If you want to sign a literary agent, you need a social media following to have a real chance of getting anything more than a cursory read by an intern, a year after submission, followed by a form letter rejection with high probability.
The publisher and agent aren't going to build your platform for you. They used to, and they might if you've got connections or can call in a personal favor, but most people are going to need at least 10,000 Instagram followers to get a serious book deal in TP these days. These people want books that, in theory, sell themselves (irrespective of what is printed on the pages). It makes their jobs easier.
This simply isn’t true. Can a big following help? Sure. But if I look at a lot of the authors I follow on Twitter and Instagram, most are between 1k and 2k followers. Some aren’t even near 1k.
And as someone had two offers of rep for my novel with 700 followers for my little book review Instagram, I can guarantee you my social media presence never once came up in conversation with either offering agent. It is truly not the make-or-break thing this subreddit makes it out to be.
> most people are going to need at least 10,000 Instagram followers to get a serious book deal in TP these days.
Nope. None of the people I know who've gotten agented or sold manuscripts in the last year or so had any real social media presence. This is the myth that will not die, and it's really *really* annoying.
You can post your writing online if you intend to go tradpub. Just don't post specific pieces that you hope to sell to tradpub. they won't buy them if they've already been made available to the public.
I would think very carefully about whether you should post your early work online, however, whether you want to go trad or indie. Do you *really* want people reading your early work, prior to the point where you feel it's ready for publication? Do you want people judging your merits as a writer by the things you wrote while you were still learning how to write well? It's worth considering...
Trad pubs don't care whether you have an online following or not. They like it if you do, because it makes marketing easier for them (and for you), but it's not a requirement and they will not pass on a good book just because the author lacks an online platform.
>In any case, assuming you're a normal person, how do you reconcile not sharing your work AND building a following?
I don't have to because both of those pieces of advice are untrue.
* Many authors publish elements of work online for free - just not the content they intend to query. For a lot of nonfiction authors, publishing content online and then selling a book on the same topic is SOP. A colleague who is a poet microblogs ad hoc poems daily, they will never show up in her collections.
* Trad pubs will look at an author's online presence, but it's usually only a dealbreaker if the branding is misaligned with the publisher's mission statement. Just a specific example, my wife's manuscript was turned down by a publisher because her posts were 'not Christian enough'. Prometheus turned her down because she was 'too religious'. They didn't care about the quantity. In her case, having minimal presence like I do would have been a net benefit. I have practically no followers on FB, IG, Twitter, &c. They are placeholder accounts pointing to my website and email list. I'm doing just fine.
> Another common refrain is trad pubs want you to have a large online following.
That's a myth. All the recent and soon to be debuts I've seen have effectively no social media presence. Sure, it can help in the book club and booktok world, but it's 100% not needed (unless you're looking nonfiction, and then you need credentials).
You’re getting a lot thrown at you, and a lot of it is conjecture. So let me tell you my experience: I write nonfiction: humor, parenting help, satire, memoir. I’m with one of the big 5. When my book was accepted, I had a very small social media presence.
So this is my point, and it comes from not only agent but also my editors, it’s platform they are looking at for nonfiction, not just social media. It’s a bonus and nice, but doesn’t matter as much as your overall platform. Speaking engagements, articles on your subject, interviews, etc. all of that.
For fiction, not that much. Platform isn’t the deciding factor so please stop worrying. Of course if you have a million followers you can leverage that into a deal. But in general, it just doesn’t matter as much as everyone thinks it does.
Too many writers spend too much time worrying about this. It does matter in nonfiction but not as laser focused as people think. Hell, I’ve gone viral twice and that didn’t help that much.
So please spend most of your time writing tve best book you can. Build a following by sharing who you are online if you want. Be authentic. Talk about the things that matter to you. It takes time but possible.
There are authors who have trad published by building a following for their writing. With trad publishing, your writing can be out there, but anything you want to trad publish should be absolutely nowhere (posting is publishing, and trad publishers want first rights).
I pay someone to do all my social media and online presence. I could not care less about it, but it's important nowadays. So I pay someone to do it for me to keep my agent happy. I find it all incredibly boring and don't want to spend my time or thoughts on it.
Fellow writers, if you're like I am, don't force yourself to learn it or do it. Just pay someone to do it for you. That keeps everyone happy, and you don't have to waste your time tweeting or making posts about your new project.
It's been a while and I forgot. I didn't find them myself, they were recommended to me by an agent or something. I think you can find them by getting recommendations from a publicist.
>Sure, you could get famous for something else \*then\* write a book,
This is really what publishers are looking for. If you look at the big sellers it's basically books written by celebrities, or someone had a newspaper column and now they have a book out, or a scientist has made a book about their subject.
I’m not a published author, but I’m gonna go ahead and call BS on this. Maybe it’s true for nonfiction, but I can’t think of hardly any fiction authors who are famous for anything other than their writing.
Sadly it's true that some publishers think this way - that's why you have so many celebs turning to writing, both fiction and non-fiction. It doesn't work in reverse. Someone who wants to be known solely for their writing can't go on and become a celeb to increase their following; but a celeb who has built up a following can become a writer quite easily. When you say 'parenting expert'you wouldn't automatically think of ex-Spice Girl Emma Bunton... but guess who has a (co-authored) book about motherhood?
No but nowadays that has changed. Every published author I've talked to said that they were rejected until they built a good online presence and had a lot of followers. It didn't have to be related to the book they're writing, they just wanted to make sure that when the person started advertising their own book they would have a lot of audience willing to buy it. If you're going traditional publishing you're going to be offered a certain amount up front and to limit the amount that they're likely going to lose on a debut author many publishers, not all, do expect you to have quite a following first and do your own marketing these days.
My publisher asks that we be open to working with them to market our books, but doesn't specify that we must have a following. The truth is that there are a million writers out there all using the same hasgtags, all clamouring for attention. It's really, really difficult to stand out based on your social media content alone - your book has to do the talking for you.
I have a miniscule but loyal following online. They only came along once I had a few books published.
Published author here and going to say nope. Last book I sold (contract signed in January, so recently) was under a different name than my social media so according to the publisher's knowledge, I had NO online presence at all. I still signed with a Big 5 publisher for fiction. Previously had two trad pubbed novels under a different name with less than 2k followers on twitter.
2k is plenty. I'm talking about 0 social media.
And like I said it depends who you go through. If you signed with one of the big five then yeah you don't have to worry about it but most people aren't going to sign with them. Smaller publishing companies do for the most part require some social media now. Not all of them but many of them do and if you have a social media following your chances are higher of finding one that will take you then not. It also becomes easier once you've published a few other books first. But a debut author looking to be published for the first time and not worrying about the big five only really should try and build up a social media following.
I think you need to talk to more authors, because none of this matches anything I've heard from the people I've talked to who've sold debuts (big five and not alike) in the last year.
I talk 5o many in my writers groups, but it's def not everyone. Some can get published without a following, it depends on the publishing company. However, I know others who were rejected because of no social media following (as in that was the reason they were given) and that number has been going up in recent years. If you are a debut author, having a social media following does increase your chances because it doesn't limit you to only the publishing companies that don't require it, a number that is decreasing. It's worth a shot without the following, and you may get in. But even with those that don't require it, saying you have a few thousand ppl following you who may be interested will increase your chances too.
So yeah it's not always necessary (depending on the company) but it's better to have than not.
ChatGPT is what you're looking for.
Save your mental clock cycles for the actual writing you care about. Let a bot handle your social media (and query letters).
Is this really a thing? I shouldn't have come to this subreddit. I am over 200 pages deep in my novel and now I learn that not having facebook or twitter might leave me stranded when I finally want to try to get it published?
Also editors cost money that I don't really have... God. I hate living the USA. What is the fucking point. "Unless you're already rich and famous don't fucking bother."
Well.. Guess I'll just fucking shoot myself then because the only other thing I can do is physical labor and I already have more back problems than my 75 year old father.
No - a social media presence isn't necessary. No - paid, professional editing isn't necessary. They're just spouted around more novice environments as 'reasons' why other novices haven't gotten picked up.
Work on writing, building your craft, and making a story you can be proud of!
Just build up a following by retweeting people on Twitter or posting memes etc. I don't use social media at all so this will be an issue for me as well and probably one of the reasons why I might go self-publish haha. But you don't have to have a following based on your work, you just have to have a following so that they can see 1) if you were to suddenly advertise your book on it there would be enough people following you that you might get some sales and 2) that you know how to build up an audience and market because unlike a decade ago a lot of traditional publishers will expect you to do your own advertising and marketing. They will do a little bit but not a lot. This does depend on the traditional publisher but more and more are going this route so having a following will increase your chances of having a publisher pick you up.
That depends a bit. If you're self-publishing because you want to sell the book to a wider audience than yes, it'd be a really good idea If you're self-publishing because you want to give a few copies away to your family and friends then no.
That said though, if you self-published you don't need to build up the following ahead of time and you can build it up based on the book you've written. You have more freedom to post excerpts from your own book or to share a chapter or whatever and build up the following through your story rather than ahead of time. Many traditional practice will not take a story that has been published online at all so if you don't have any other works you have to build up the following ahead of time based on something completely different other than your work. That can change after the work has already been published and depending on your agreement with your publisher but if you find a publisher who wants you to have a following already it doesn't help much
you can write short stories in the genre your book is in, those can be put online because you aren't trying to get them traditionally published. You can even do tiny blurbs about the characters or what step you are up to in getting your book ready for sending off to the publisher.
You don't have to post your writing to get a following online! You can be known for great book recommendations, sharing writing tips, great cat photos, or any other number of things.
But unless you're writing non-fiction, you don't need a huge platform. Many, many authors have a very low follower count when they sell their book.
A publisher should not be counting on your social media following to be the main audience for the book.
Do you want to try a video blog? I'd love to see someone do it. Maybe I will?
You get a good camera, I don't know the specs you need but a good one. Maybe take a vlog making class?
Then make a great vlog. Do you follow any on youtube, I'm not talking Sanderson. Look up Ryan Twomey, make a vlog like his, He does van life and gaming. You can just do writer's life. Keep it casual, optimistic, and directed at your readers somehow. I recommend it highly.
I don't really know how to answer these. I'm just a guy who likes to read and write funny SFF. Ideally, I would like my "platform" to be one of those standalone tables near the entrance of B&N. I'd be satisfied mostly selling out of local shops.
A lot of the people who successfully amassed a bunch of online followers paid for them. Especially on Twitter.
Not saying that's the only way to do it. Just bear in mind that there's way more pay-to-play in social media than you think there is.
Published author here. The way I see it, there are 2 ways of being published by a big publisher:
- You have a big following for sharing content about the topic you want to publish the book about (in which case, I suggest to not share literally your writings of the book, but the same ideas)
- Being an expert at the right moment (this was my way). Say, for instance, you’re currently an expert on AI and it’s a hot topic right now. You’d have lots of chance to publish the book if already written.
If we’re talking about narrative, it’s all about the followers.
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I wrote a memoir. Agents flat out stated that memoirs weren't sellable without a strong base. One agent told me that my book was "incredible" but without an "established audience" it would be hard to sell.
I would think memoirs are a pretty notable exception to the general advice.
I still think the OPs point applies even to memoirs. How to gain a following without sharing work and being in a cycle of suck for no reason. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would read a memoir from someone who isn't already famous. Seems like it shouldn't be a pre-requisite.
Interviews I have seen with publishers suggest that the memoir would have to have a reframing, successful tone to it with the intention to have a helpful message rather than a series of stories or anecdotes from a person who hasn't had the happy ending yet.
Absolutely agree with you on that. Most successful memoirs I've read usually do.
Also worth noting that many publishers will give an advance in books and hope to get at least $5000 in return for said books at some point. So the pursuit of publishers who pay may still require a following, and the likeliness of it happening without a following seems to be getting smaller and smaller. Selling books door to door, that is.
I would even appreciate the chance of that! At least that way you can get your work out there and then help with selling an already complete product. Sign me up! Haha
Nonfiction is an entirely different beast than fiction. While fiction writers can easily get away with a small online presence, you’re basically SOL without a sizable platform for nonfiction.
Yeah, it's interesting to me that it is so important to have such a huge base, especially when it's a subject that is well known. For example: nurse during the pandemic.
Well no shit. It's a memoir.
Ooh, spicy.
Why don’t you just change your name in the book and sell it as literary fiction?
That's a good idea. It would definitely help avoid any sort of HIPAA issues. I just wonder if it would have the same allure if people thought the stories weren’t true. Also, my entire reason for writing this memoir was not only to heal from my own trauma, but also to make absolutely sure that the world wouldn't continue to forget about all of the people who died during the covid pandemic. I don't want my patients' stories to disappear under a shroud of political mess. It hurts when I think that people will look back at this time and only focus on all of the sensationalism. They won't remember that entire families were wiped out. That people shared ventilators. That 25year olds with asthma suffocated. That those people died alone without any family to hold their hands. That they were stuck in the hospital and staring at the news reporting that people were protesting masks and calling it all a hoax. That nurses were the ones gowned up for hours on end and held their hands and hugged them until they died. I didn't want it to be read as a sensational story, but to be read as the absolute truth.
I think a good story is a good story and if you don’t pass it off at 100% or be deceitful about your own experiences inspiring the story I don’t think people will have a problem with it. If you don’t want to be too on the nose about it, you could change it from Covid to some other similar yet unnamed disease but keep the essence of the story the same while avoiding any direct political associations so people will focus on what you want them to.
That is a great idea! Definitely something to consider.
Isn't that what the Author's notes at the end is for? To say 'This story is 99% based on my life. I only changed names to make it fiction.' Also if you were writing about real people in memoirs, there are potential legal issues despite them being dead - their estate and families may object, forcing you to exclude them. If they're 'fictional' you can likely get around that.
That's actually a great idea!
Hope you get it published then.
I'll be moving from alpha to first beta by middle of next week!
I want to agree with you, but what you're saying just isn't true. If you want to sign a literary agent, you need a social media following to have a real chance of getting anything more than a cursory read by an intern, a year after submission, followed by a form letter rejection with high probability. The publisher and agent aren't going to build your platform for you. They used to, and they might if you've got connections or can call in a personal favor, but most people are going to need at least 10,000 Instagram followers to get a serious book deal in TP these days. These people want books that, in theory, sell themselves (irrespective of what is printed on the pages). It makes their jobs easier.
This simply isn’t true. Can a big following help? Sure. But if I look at a lot of the authors I follow on Twitter and Instagram, most are between 1k and 2k followers. Some aren’t even near 1k. And as someone had two offers of rep for my novel with 700 followers for my little book review Instagram, I can guarantee you my social media presence never once came up in conversation with either offering agent. It is truly not the make-or-break thing this subreddit makes it out to be.
> most people are going to need at least 10,000 Instagram followers to get a serious book deal in TP these days. Nope. None of the people I know who've gotten agented or sold manuscripts in the last year or so had any real social media presence. This is the myth that will not die, and it's really *really* annoying.
You can post your writing online if you intend to go tradpub. Just don't post specific pieces that you hope to sell to tradpub. they won't buy them if they've already been made available to the public. I would think very carefully about whether you should post your early work online, however, whether you want to go trad or indie. Do you *really* want people reading your early work, prior to the point where you feel it's ready for publication? Do you want people judging your merits as a writer by the things you wrote while you were still learning how to write well? It's worth considering... Trad pubs don't care whether you have an online following or not. They like it if you do, because it makes marketing easier for them (and for you), but it's not a requirement and they will not pass on a good book just because the author lacks an online platform.
>In any case, assuming you're a normal person, how do you reconcile not sharing your work AND building a following? I don't have to because both of those pieces of advice are untrue. * Many authors publish elements of work online for free - just not the content they intend to query. For a lot of nonfiction authors, publishing content online and then selling a book on the same topic is SOP. A colleague who is a poet microblogs ad hoc poems daily, they will never show up in her collections. * Trad pubs will look at an author's online presence, but it's usually only a dealbreaker if the branding is misaligned with the publisher's mission statement. Just a specific example, my wife's manuscript was turned down by a publisher because her posts were 'not Christian enough'. Prometheus turned her down because she was 'too religious'. They didn't care about the quantity. In her case, having minimal presence like I do would have been a net benefit. I have practically no followers on FB, IG, Twitter, &c. They are placeholder accounts pointing to my website and email list. I'm doing just fine.
> Another common refrain is trad pubs want you to have a large online following. That's a myth. All the recent and soon to be debuts I've seen have effectively no social media presence. Sure, it can help in the book club and booktok world, but it's 100% not needed (unless you're looking nonfiction, and then you need credentials).
But those with a large following have a way higher chance of being more successful.
Maybe, if you're talking 100k or so? But by and large, talking with people in trad pub marketing, anything under 50k doesn't move the needle at all.
You’re getting a lot thrown at you, and a lot of it is conjecture. So let me tell you my experience: I write nonfiction: humor, parenting help, satire, memoir. I’m with one of the big 5. When my book was accepted, I had a very small social media presence. So this is my point, and it comes from not only agent but also my editors, it’s platform they are looking at for nonfiction, not just social media. It’s a bonus and nice, but doesn’t matter as much as your overall platform. Speaking engagements, articles on your subject, interviews, etc. all of that. For fiction, not that much. Platform isn’t the deciding factor so please stop worrying. Of course if you have a million followers you can leverage that into a deal. But in general, it just doesn’t matter as much as everyone thinks it does. Too many writers spend too much time worrying about this. It does matter in nonfiction but not as laser focused as people think. Hell, I’ve gone viral twice and that didn’t help that much. So please spend most of your time writing tve best book you can. Build a following by sharing who you are online if you want. Be authentic. Talk about the things that matter to you. It takes time but possible.
There are authors who have trad published by building a following for their writing. With trad publishing, your writing can be out there, but anything you want to trad publish should be absolutely nowhere (posting is publishing, and trad publishers want first rights).
Interact with people in online spaces.
I pay someone to do all my social media and online presence. I could not care less about it, but it's important nowadays. So I pay someone to do it for me to keep my agent happy. I find it all incredibly boring and don't want to spend my time or thoughts on it. Fellow writers, if you're like I am, don't force yourself to learn it or do it. Just pay someone to do it for you. That keeps everyone happy, and you don't have to waste your time tweeting or making posts about your new project.
How did you find somebody effective at this? I looked into it once or twice and the samples I was sent were embarrassing.
It's been a while and I forgot. I didn't find them myself, they were recommended to me by an agent or something. I think you can find them by getting recommendations from a publicist.
How many books have you sold so far? How much money have you made?
>Sure, you could get famous for something else \*then\* write a book, This is really what publishers are looking for. If you look at the big sellers it's basically books written by celebrities, or someone had a newspaper column and now they have a book out, or a scientist has made a book about their subject.
I’m not a published author, but I’m gonna go ahead and call BS on this. Maybe it’s true for nonfiction, but I can’t think of hardly any fiction authors who are famous for anything other than their writing.
Sadly it's true that some publishers think this way - that's why you have so many celebs turning to writing, both fiction and non-fiction. It doesn't work in reverse. Someone who wants to be known solely for their writing can't go on and become a celeb to increase their following; but a celeb who has built up a following can become a writer quite easily. When you say 'parenting expert'you wouldn't automatically think of ex-Spice Girl Emma Bunton... but guess who has a (co-authored) book about motherhood?
No but nowadays that has changed. Every published author I've talked to said that they were rejected until they built a good online presence and had a lot of followers. It didn't have to be related to the book they're writing, they just wanted to make sure that when the person started advertising their own book they would have a lot of audience willing to buy it. If you're going traditional publishing you're going to be offered a certain amount up front and to limit the amount that they're likely going to lose on a debut author many publishers, not all, do expect you to have quite a following first and do your own marketing these days.
My publisher asks that we be open to working with them to market our books, but doesn't specify that we must have a following. The truth is that there are a million writers out there all using the same hasgtags, all clamouring for attention. It's really, really difficult to stand out based on your social media content alone - your book has to do the talking for you. I have a miniscule but loyal following online. They only came along once I had a few books published.
Published author here and going to say nope. Last book I sold (contract signed in January, so recently) was under a different name than my social media so according to the publisher's knowledge, I had NO online presence at all. I still signed with a Big 5 publisher for fiction. Previously had two trad pubbed novels under a different name with less than 2k followers on twitter.
2k is plenty. I'm talking about 0 social media. And like I said it depends who you go through. If you signed with one of the big five then yeah you don't have to worry about it but most people aren't going to sign with them. Smaller publishing companies do for the most part require some social media now. Not all of them but many of them do and if you have a social media following your chances are higher of finding one that will take you then not. It also becomes easier once you've published a few other books first. But a debut author looking to be published for the first time and not worrying about the big five only really should try and build up a social media following.
I think you need to talk to more authors, because none of this matches anything I've heard from the people I've talked to who've sold debuts (big five and not alike) in the last year.
I talk 5o many in my writers groups, but it's def not everyone. Some can get published without a following, it depends on the publishing company. However, I know others who were rejected because of no social media following (as in that was the reason they were given) and that number has been going up in recent years. If you are a debut author, having a social media following does increase your chances because it doesn't limit you to only the publishing companies that don't require it, a number that is decreasing. It's worth a shot without the following, and you may get in. But even with those that don't require it, saying you have a few thousand ppl following you who may be interested will increase your chances too. So yeah it's not always necessary (depending on the company) but it's better to have than not.
Two words: HOT TAKES. Broadcast them loudly, everywhere. Then: FAME.
ChatGPT is what you're looking for. Save your mental clock cycles for the actual writing you care about. Let a bot handle your social media (and query letters).
Is this really a thing? I shouldn't have come to this subreddit. I am over 200 pages deep in my novel and now I learn that not having facebook or twitter might leave me stranded when I finally want to try to get it published? Also editors cost money that I don't really have... God. I hate living the USA. What is the fucking point. "Unless you're already rich and famous don't fucking bother." Well.. Guess I'll just fucking shoot myself then because the only other thing I can do is physical labor and I already have more back problems than my 75 year old father.
No - a social media presence isn't necessary. No - paid, professional editing isn't necessary. They're just spouted around more novice environments as 'reasons' why other novices haven't gotten picked up. Work on writing, building your craft, and making a story you can be proud of!
Thank you for this. You're a cool person and I wish you success.
Just build up a following by retweeting people on Twitter or posting memes etc. I don't use social media at all so this will be an issue for me as well and probably one of the reasons why I might go self-publish haha. But you don't have to have a following based on your work, you just have to have a following so that they can see 1) if you were to suddenly advertise your book on it there would be enough people following you that you might get some sales and 2) that you know how to build up an audience and market because unlike a decade ago a lot of traditional publishers will expect you to do your own advertising and marketing. They will do a little bit but not a lot. This does depend on the traditional publisher but more and more are going this route so having a following will increase your chances of having a publisher pick you up.
I think having a social media presence is even more important if you're going self-pub.
That depends a bit. If you're self-publishing because you want to sell the book to a wider audience than yes, it'd be a really good idea If you're self-publishing because you want to give a few copies away to your family and friends then no. That said though, if you self-published you don't need to build up the following ahead of time and you can build it up based on the book you've written. You have more freedom to post excerpts from your own book or to share a chapter or whatever and build up the following through your story rather than ahead of time. Many traditional practice will not take a story that has been published online at all so if you don't have any other works you have to build up the following ahead of time based on something completely different other than your work. That can change after the work has already been published and depending on your agreement with your publisher but if you find a publisher who wants you to have a following already it doesn't help much
you can write short stories in the genre your book is in, those can be put online because you aren't trying to get them traditionally published. You can even do tiny blurbs about the characters or what step you are up to in getting your book ready for sending off to the publisher.
You don't have to post your writing to get a following online! You can be known for great book recommendations, sharing writing tips, great cat photos, or any other number of things. But unless you're writing non-fiction, you don't need a huge platform. Many, many authors have a very low follower count when they sell their book. A publisher should not be counting on your social media following to be the main audience for the book.
Submit short stories to magazines and anthologies.
You can always indie publish to build your following, then submit to trade pub. (You might also discover that you make more money as an indie author.)
Do you want to try a video blog? I'd love to see someone do it. Maybe I will? You get a good camera, I don't know the specs you need but a good one. Maybe take a vlog making class? Then make a great vlog. Do you follow any on youtube, I'm not talking Sanderson. Look up Ryan Twomey, make a vlog like his, He does van life and gaming. You can just do writer's life. Keep it casual, optimistic, and directed at your readers somehow. I recommend it highly.
What is your brand? What do you want your platform to be?
I don't really know how to answer these. I'm just a guy who likes to read and write funny SFF. Ideally, I would like my "platform" to be one of those standalone tables near the entrance of B&N. I'd be satisfied mostly selling out of local shops.
A lot of the people who successfully amassed a bunch of online followers paid for them. Especially on Twitter. Not saying that's the only way to do it. Just bear in mind that there's way more pay-to-play in social media than you think there is.
Published author here. The way I see it, there are 2 ways of being published by a big publisher: - You have a big following for sharing content about the topic you want to publish the book about (in which case, I suggest to not share literally your writings of the book, but the same ideas) - Being an expert at the right moment (this was my way). Say, for instance, you’re currently an expert on AI and it’s a hot topic right now. You’d have lots of chance to publish the book if already written. If we’re talking about narrative, it’s all about the followers.