The first piece of writing I remember doing for myself was a Sailor Moon fanfiction. I had a Lisa Frank, puffy journal/diary I kept hidden under my bed. Tuxedo Mask and Prince Dimond were fighting for Sailor Moon. Tuxedo Mask won, of course. 

I didn’t think I could become a writer, because the chances of success were few. I tried to become a teacher instead. 

Well, here I am almost 30, and fondly remembering that girl who started writing fanfiction. I was born a storyteller. I’ve leveled up enough in my life to see that I was an author all along. I just didn’t know enough to support myself. 

You don’t have to though. The internet has tons of resources available to you to help you. 

Thankfully, when I started dipping my toes into the #author world, I had my co-author and best friend, Katelynn, with me. And I learned a lot. 

So when my writing coach, Karena Akhavein, told me I needed to build my individual writing platform besides my co-author writing platform, I reluctantly charged ahead. 

Why Build an Author Platform? 

If you’re an author, building an author platform can be a crucial step in establishing and growing your career. Having a platform can help you connect with readers, build your brand, and promote your work. It can also provide opportunities to network with other writers, agents, and publishers. 

By establishing a presence on social media, creating a website, and engaging with your audience, you can start to develop a loyal following and increase your visibility in the publishing world. 

In today’s digital age, having a strong author platform is often seen as an essential component of success as a writer, and can help you stand out from the crowd and achieve your writing goals. 

The First Steps Towards Success.

Your author platform is like your author brand. You are promoting yourself, your story, and your journey with your projects, so by the time you get a book published, you have a fully invested audience waiting to buy it. 

It is overwhelming and most websites want you to pay them more money to get access to more features. My step-by-step process below can be done for free. However, I will note when it might be worth it to spend a little money. 

I also will note here, and several more times, that I am not sponsored by any of these brands. 

Step 1: Research Your Author Name

First, you need to decide what your author’s name will be. This could be your government name or a pen name. Either way, you need to do research into your chosen name to see if any other authors or public figures have the same or a similar name. You protect your reputation by making sure nobody else is associated with that name.

Your entire brand will also be centered on your author’s name. Imagine writing an entire book assuming you will publish under a name to realize it is taken. Not all the branding and promotion you’ve done until that point has to change because you cannot use your intended name. 

Researching your author name can help you optimize your online presence. By using a unique and memorable author name, you can increase your visibility on search engines and make it easier to reach your audience. I want to note that one should also do research into how other authors structure their names in the same genre that you would like to write. 

Using me for an example, When I looked up my first name, Kelsey, along with my married name, there was already another author using that name. From my research, other authors in the romance genre seem to use a two-syllable first name followed by a one or two-syllable last name. 

I wanted to keep Kelsey, so I could recognize the name when people talk to me–if they would want to talk to me. I asked my parents and grandparents about matrilineal names within my family tree. I was not having much luck. Names like Cooper and Jones were also taken. 

In the end, I settled on using my maiden name–Winton. It’s a comfortable name I’m familiar with and fits with the two syllables from my genre research. 

And that is the origin story of Author Kelsey Winton. 

Step 2: Set Up Your Accounts

Research email and social media handle availability. Keep everything as consistent across all your platforms. Once you’ve decided on your handle, first, set up your email account. Then set up your social accounts.  

Personally, I use Gmail because of the suite of tools that comes along with it. Ultimately, the choice is yours. Also, I did not set up my social accounts just yet. I know the handles are free, but there were other pieces of content I wanted to set in place before I did anything else with social media. Because once your profile is out there, the algorithms move fast. 

Step 3: Design Your Brand Identity

Keep this part simple. K.I.S.S.

Brand consistency is the most important element here. Canva, and its app, make branding and consistency easy. I can design on my computer then open the app and download something to the phone. 

Consider the following, and do some more research. Who is your target audience? What genre are you writing in? All of this can influence your brand identity.

Go to Canva and create a free account. Pay for the premium if you want, but you don’t have to. Use their Brand Hub to choose 3 to 5 colors for your brand colors and 1-3 different fonts for your typography. Print documents use serif fonts, but Sans-serif fonts are easier to read on screens. 

Canva also has ready-made templates for logos, social media posts, video developments, and more, that can be customized with your brand colors and typography. 

I should probably say that this post is NOT sponsored by Canva. If there is another program that can do what Canva does and is free, go for it. If you have Adobe? Even better. 

Step 4: Build Your Website

I consider myself technologically savvy, but this part came with a little learning curve, even for me. Building your own website is the most important part of this process. It is the most important part because you want to drive your audience to your website. It is the representation of you that you put out there to the world. Therefore, you needed to establish your brand before you build your website. 

It is possible to just let your website builder establish your brand and colors. But where is the fun in that? 

When Katelynn and I first started, I had zero experience with designing a website. As always do some research into other authors’ websites. I also looked at beginner-friendly website designers. This is my experience, and again, not sponsored. 

Wix was recommended to me and has a generous, free start point if you have a Gmail email address. Katelynn and I could build a great website for free. It features a drag-and-drop interface and SEO analytics.  

The downside is you don’t get the domain name exactly the way you would like it. Because you have to 

If there is one place where I would encourage you to spend money, it would be when building your website. You don’t have to. But buying your domain name is nice. When building my personal author website, I went with WordPress because it was less expensive than Wix. For reference, here are WordPress plans, and here are the Wix plans. 

I think I prefer Wix overall after experiencing both. That could be because I learned how to use it first. 

Step 5: Choose a Lead Magnet

When marketing, the goal is to have as direct contact with your target audience. Social Media gives you access, but what happens when that platform goes away? What if TikTok gets banned or has to change?

Ideally, you want to drive your audience to your website so they can sign up or subscribe to your content. This usually includes a newsletter. You can use Canva to make those too. Collect those emails. Reach directly out to your audience. 

Most of the website builders will have a form submission where you can collect emails. But then there are cool websites like MailChimp that connect with the website builders and help you manage the content that goes out to your subscription list. There is a free tier to MailChimp that will support a user with up to 1k subscribers. Plenty enough for someone starting out. 

Using a campaign manager like MailChimp can do things like creating a landing page or pop-up encouraging individuals to subscribe. Or it could automatically send a follow-up thank you email to someone when they subscribe. You could load up your monthly newsletter to send at the same time each month. Or send a blast email when you have good news!

Back to the lead magnet. A lead magnet is a marketing tool that offers a free incentive to potential readers or customers for their contact information. This is what will help you attract and capture leads (potential customers), and build a relationship with them.

Choose Your Social Platforms and Create Your Profile

You have your author name, your brand identity, your email, your website, and your lead magnet all set up and ready to go. 

Now you can set up those social profiles if you have not done so already. Choose where you spend your energy wisely.

I would recommend TikTok to build your author community. Instagram to advertise and sell products. A discord to find some supportive writing groups, and a Twitter if you feel like it. There is a lot of published information still on Twitter. I don’t have the energy for Twitter. 

Research the trends. Make videos in bulk. Use apps like Snap Tik to remove watermarks to reuse content on other platforms. 

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