Today is the first day of the Willamette Writers Conference & How To Create A One-pager

Today is the first day of the Willamette Writers Conference in Portland. This is the place where I was inducted, by Elaura Niles and Julie Fast, into the frenetic world of rubbing elbows with agents and editors and making a verbal pitch to sell a book.

With some coaching, I was able to take my five years of professional writing, teaching, and platform-building experience up to that point, and leverage it into my first book deal with Writer’s Digest Books. The complete story of how I did it is included in my new e-book, “Author Mama, How I Became a Published Author & How You Can Too.”

That first book, which I spent a year and a half researching and writing, became Writer Mama, How To Raise A Writing Career Alongside Your Kids, which came out in March 2007. I recently did a podcast of the introduction from the book, “A Pep Talk,” here. (The podcast will begin immediately, so don’t be startled when you hear my voice.)

I pitched a second book to my editor, Jane Friedman, when we were both attending a different conference. That second book became, Get Known Before the Book Deal, How To Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow An Author Platform, which was published in October 2008. (You can learn more about both of my books here.)

Get Known contains key information that every conference attendee needs to know before pitching a book. But sometimes folks don’t find out about the book until they are already at the conference and that’s okay, too. I’ve  received e-mails from from attendees saying that they grabbed it from the conference bookstore to speed-read before their first pitch.

However, ideally writers will take some time to reflect on their platform before they get to a writer’s conference. Hopefully they will gather up all of their accomplishments into a simple yet classy one-pager. Mental health author Julie Fast showed me her one-pager five years ago and I have been using my own version and teaching it to my students ever since.

When I consolidated my websites into one website, I took down my Get Known and Writer Mama websites, and brought the material over here. But I forgot to bring the sample one-pager with me so everyone could have an example of what a basic one should look like.

I’m going to use the one-pager of one of my long-time students, Cindy Hudson, who was generous enough to share hers. This one-pager is now outdated, of course. Cindy has a lot more credits to her name that she has produced since she created this one-pager. But this is the one-pager that accompanied her book proposal, a couple of years ago.

If you are at the conference this weekend, you might see Cindy there. She has her first book out that was published this past October by Seal Press, Book By Book, The Complete Guide to Creating Mother-Daughter Book Clubs. As part of her platform, Cindy has a great blog and does a ton to serve her mother-daughter community.

Cindy Hudson’s Old One-pager

What’s the power of the one pager?

Let’s take that information straight out of my second book, Get Known Before the Book Deal, where I go into depth about how writers can use a one-pager as a tool for their own platform edification and also to communicate their platform accomplishments concisely to agents and editors:

The benefit of listing everything on one sheet is that agents and editors can take it all in at a glance—and so can you. Once the truth is on the page, there really isn’t any denying whether or not you have a strong platform. It’s going to be obvious from your accomplishments.

Just to be clear, a one-pager is not magic. It’s not going to take what you have or haven’t done and make you saleable unless what’s on the page backs up that offer. But if you are saleable already, in other words, if you have already worked long and hard on your platform, then once you get all your platform info down on the page, your saleability, and therefore your book’s saleability, is going to be obvious for everyone to see at a glance.

A one-pager is the cumulative product of many years work, and there really is no way to skirt that reality. No one-pager in the world is going to make you look good, if you don’t have the platform to back it up.

So, take heart, even if your one-pager isn’t where you’d like it to be on the day of a conference. You can get to work on your platform, grow it steadily over time, and eventually have the kind of platform that will help you land the book deal you desire.

For more on what you can do to build a solid platform, here’s my article in Writer’s Digest magazine, “How To Build A Marketing Platform.” I have another self-promotion article, this time for fiction writers forthcoming in the Nov/Dec issue of Writer’s Digest this year.

Remember, platform building is an art, just like writing. Therefore, it takes learning and practice, just like writing. Don’t feel badly if you are not as far along as you would like to be today. Once you allow it to become a natural part of your career, you will increase your professional power and increase your chances for success. I wish you the best of luck in all of your writing and platform-building endeavors!