Day 20: 2012 Writer Mama Every-Day-In-May Book Giveaway: Christina Katz

Me again! And I’ll be back two more times in the final ten days.

I decided to get creative and answer the same questions but with a focus on the topic of each book. So my responses to these questions focus on my history as a platform builder.

I also took advantage of the opportunity to update my bio, since it’s almost June, which is traditionally the month I update any of my website copy that needs updating.

What do you think?

About Christina Katz

Christina Katz, The Writer Mama, is the author of three books from Writer’s Digest: The Writer’s Workout, Get Known Before the Book Deal, and Writer Mama. Her writing career tips and parenting advice appear regularly in national, regional, and online publications. A “gentle taskmaster” over the past decade to hundreds of writers, Christina’s students go from unpublished to published, build professional writing career skills, and increase their creative confidence over time.

Christina holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago and a BA in English from Dartmouth College. A popular speaker on creative career growth, Christina keynotes for writing conferences, literary events, MFA writing programs, and libraries. She lives just across the Willamette River from Wilsonville, Oregon in an old farmhouse with her husband, Jason, her daughter, Samantha, and far too many pets.

Learn more about upcoming classes and training groups with Christina this fall. Scholarships will be available for each session of Writing & Publishing the Short Stuff. The application period is one month prior to the start date of each class right here in this blog.

[Please note that my mailing address is still the same as always: Christina Katz, PO Box 1354, Wilsonville, Oregon  97070]

Get Known Before the Book Deal by Christina Katz is the first comprehensive book on growing an author platform from scratch.

About Get Known Before the Book Deal, Use Your Personal Strengths To Grow Your Author Platform

Before you can land a book deal–before you can even attract the interest of agents and editors–you need to be visible. How do you become visible? You develop a platform, or a way of reaching your readers. Everybody can develop a platform, and this book shows you how to do it while you’re still writing.

This book offers:

• A step-by-step approach to creating, growing, and nurturing a platform
• An economical approach to self-promotion (no need to spend thousands)
• A clear way to uncover your strengths and weaknesses as an author
• The strategies that are essential (or not) to online promotion
• A philosophy of authorship that leaves you confident, empowered, and equally partnered with agents, editors, and publishers (instead of waiting to be discovered)
• A diverse set of tools and methods for getting known (not just web-based tools or ideas for extroverts)

After you read this book, you’ll be able to answer the inevitable question: “What’s your platform?” You’ll learn the hows and whys of becoming visible and how to cultivate visibility from scratch. Best of all, you won’t need any previous knowledge or experience to get started.

Growing a writing career isn’t just about landing one book deal and then scrambling like crazy. There is a more strategic and steady way to lay the groundwork so you can avoid scrambling altogether–and Get Known Before the Book Deal is the FIRST comprehensive book that shows you how.

[When it came out, Get Known was the ONLY comprehensive book on platform building. Now it has graduated to becoming the FIRST comprehensive book, which is still a pretty big honor.]

The Very Short Interview

When did you know for sure that you were a platform-builder and that platform building would be a major energy focus in your life?

I have intuitively understood that a writer needs to be a self-promoter since I was in graduate school in my twenties and co-founded and co-hosted a graduate student literary series at Columbia College Chicago called Readings in the Raw (I also came up with the name, which I still think is pretty clever). The undergrads had a reading series of their own and it seemed unfair that the graduate students were excluded. So we started our own. It was great practice in creating and hosting an event, which is something I discuss how to do in detail in Get Known.

Who has always been behind your platform and who helped pull you up the ladder of visibility?

Something I have always found to be true about platform is that if you act like your work is important (as opposed to acting like you are important), folks will gravitate to it and eventually appreciate your work. They may even appreciate you eventually, but first you have to pay your dues. It’s not like you write an e-book or a book and can expect instant authority in your field. You either already have authority in your field before you write your e-book/book, as many do, or you have to take what you have created and demonstrate that it is credible and effective by championing it into the world.

I was a second-time author when Get Known came out (and I’m only a three-time author now). Nobody was going to hand me authority. But I worked hard on that book, and I had a lot of help from Jane Friedman, who has become one of the most trusted authorities in publishing today. I have not only earned my authority, I keep earning it every day.

What is the most frequent comment you hear about your book (or books) from readers? Tell us a little story about the response to your work.

Writer’s Digest was in a bit of upheaval just prior to the launch of Get Known. I can’t remember the details exactly, except that my then editor, Jane Friedman was super apologetic that this book was not getting the same royal treatment that my first book, Writer Mama, got when it launched. To make matters worse, I was completely fried from writing Get Known on a fairly quick turnaround right on the heels of Writer Mama.

I don’t care what anyone says, writing a book a year and making sure you only put out high-quality books  you can be proud of in the long run is exhausting mentally and emotionally. So, I was fried, the whole internal structure of my publisher was shuffling (it’s all coming back to me now) and nobody had time or energy to put any oomph behind my new book.

I knew I had two choices: I could act like a diva and have a big pity-party for my book and all of my hard work, or I could try and come up with some fresh marketing ideas for Get Known.

Shortly after the publication of Get Known, I’d attended the Tools of Change Conference and the attitudes of such industry visionaries as Tim O’Reilly and Cory Doctorow had made a big impression on me. I decided, What the heck, why not try out one of their theories about giving away your work for free as a marketing tool.

So, I talked to Jane and we decided to go ahead and give away Get Known to the one group of people, who would likely be the most excited about it. That group was literary agents and the company had a fresh list of active agents from their recent Writer’s Digest Conference in New York.

So we sent off a PDF of Get Known as a thank you to them for attending the conference. At first…nothing. A couple of agents said, “Hey, thanks for the book.” Other than that there was no visible immediate return on the idea.

I thought, Oh well, it was worth a try.

But over the years, what is the one comment I continue to hear about Get Known from fans?

I went to the [fill in the name of any writing conference] and heard that I need a platform. Agent XYZ was a speaker, panelist, keynoter and he/she highly recommended Get Known Before the Book Deal. I bought a copy and read it cover to cover. Thank you so much for writing exactly the book I needed to help me build my platform!

So, next time things don’t go exactly the way you had hoped, don’t pout. Get creative and collaborate with the folks who are just as invested in your book succeeding as you are and see what you can come up with. It just might be an idea that keeps your book selling for many years.

(And in the long run, my publisher has come up with lots of fresh ways to bring attention to Get Known, including original packaging ideas, including the book in special promotions, and featuring the book in online and print ads–as well as things I’m sure I’m not even aware of.)

And Now, Your Turn

Now it’s your turn. You remember how this works right?

I ask you a question. You answer in the comments for your chance to win a book each day.

Please just respond once, even if you make a typo.

Answer in the comments in 50-200 words (no less and no more to qualify to win one of today’s books). Please read the complete rules at least once!

Thanks for participating in the Writer Mama Every-Day-In-May Book Giveaway! I hope to see you here every day this month. Bring your friends!

When is the last time you came up with a creative idea that created more success for your writing career? And if you haven’t come up with one yet, come up with one now and share it with us. You don’t have to have a book deal to always be coming up with fresh ideas for promoting yourself. I’ve been doing it from the get-go, and it’s not only refreshing for my readers; it energizes me, too.

Ready, set, comment!