The Platform Curse

Build a “platform,” they tell you. It’s vital for a successful author to have a “platform”…
 
When I first started writing and did bits of research into how to be a successful author, one of the themes that came up time and time again was the notion of having an author platform. At first, I didn’t quite understand what a platform was. So if you’re in the same boat as I was in those early days, here’s my understanding.
 
An author platform is basically an online presence. It usually involves having a website and a decent following on various social media platforms.
 
The different platforms
 
A few years back, I tried to build this presence on a range of platforms, including Twitter/X, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. The only one I had any success on was Twitter. As for the other ones:

• YouTube: I made a load of videos for YouTube a couple of years back. Some got a bit of traction, and I collected a few followers. But making videos is time consuming and building a presence on any platform requires regular posts and determination.

 

• TikTok: Like YouTube, making videos requires a fair bit of effort, even if they are just the amateurish type vids that a lot of people post on TikTok.

 

• Instagram: I never really got this platform. At 40, I’m probably a bit too old to get it—what’s the point of a platform just full of pictures? But regardless, writing is not really a visual sport in my opinion (unless you write picture books), so I’m not certain this is the best place to build an author platform.

 

• Facebook: I get this platform—it took off during my uni days, and I’ve been using it for a long time. But I’m not sure I ever really gave my Facebook author platform the attention it needed to get going. So without success I sort of abandoned it.

 
Twitter/X
 
Now, Twitter…I’ve had some success there. I started posting regularly in autumn 2021, around the same time that I started writing The Queen of Vorn. And on this platform, I had some success. Writing a short post is quick and easy. I could do it in the morning while I drank my first coffee of the day. I soon found posting questions was a great way to invite interaction and hence followers, and I realised that if you followed people, lots of them would follow you back.
 
For the last four years, I’ve been posting almost daily, and commenting on other posts besides. In the early days, I kept tabs on how my following was increasing. I just looked at that data and realised I last updated it in March 2023. I’ve just added in my latest follower count, which stands at 43,036. I made the graph below so you can see the trend.

​You can see at first, the count rose quickly. I think this was in part due to luck. I jumped on the platform at a good time when the algorithm gods favoured me. In the early days, I could write posts that would regularly get tens of thousands of hits. That died away with time, but I had a good base and so the numbers continued to climb.
 
I have tons of followers, so what?
 
There have been plenty of people who have posted on my comments flagging this in a way that sounds a tad envious. You have loads of followers; stop whining about… that kind of thing. But:
 
What is the benefit of having loads of followers?
 
Err??? Six days ago, I wrote the following post:

​What was behind my sudden negativity?
 
Primarily, it was the result of one particular follower who I had allowed to live rent free in my head. But how did he get there in the first place?
 
I’m trying to move on from the horrific experience I had soon after I published The Queen of Vorn this summer. I’ve removed the blog post I wrote about it and some of the tweets relating to it too, as I don’t want it to sit as a stain on my author platform. But as a brief summary, I wrote a post about a mediocre review, got loads of attention, and as a result someone set out to destroy me; and I ended up review-bombed.
 
Six books that I’d been crafting for four years were bombed with one-star reviews, including three that were unpublished 18 months prior and two that were not even out yet. As well as the one in question.
 
Needless to say, that little debacle somewhat knocked me sideways.
 
I’ve been trying to recover ever since. Goodreads took down some of the more hateful reviews and some of the one-star ratings, but they refuse to take down the bulk of them. Hence, a scar remains on my author platform that I can’t remove.
 
All I can do is try to move on from that.
 
So after picking myself up from the heap on the floor I’d ended up in after this horrible experience, I set about trying to rescue my books.
 
The book that got the mediocre review that I commented on did go out with flaws. I talk about how this happened in a blog post I wrote in September. Here’s a handy link if you’re interested. 

But despite its flaws, it didn’t deserve to be destroyed the way it was.
 
Regardless, it was tarnished beyond redemption in my opinion, so I pulled it from the shelves and resolved to do some work on it to fix the flaws. I would also give it a new title so it could get a fresh start.
 
Keen to get as much feedback as I could to make improvements, I sought the opinions of beta readers.
 
Twitter helped me find some. Yay! The platform has some positives: a bunch of people read my novel and gave feedback. Now, if you ever do this yourself, I have one piece of advice:
 
If you disagree with feedback, only ignore it if it’s an outlier.
 
What I mean by this is that when you get feedback, lots of people will say lots of different things. Some you may read and think, “yeah, I thought as much”, other comments you may disagree with. I suggest you ignore these unless they are a common theme from different beta readers, or you will start changing your novel into something completely different and maybe even make it worse.
 
Now, getting back to the point of the article—I got lots of feedback and, as a result, decided what changes I would make to my story. One particular reader, however, was particularly critical. He made a lot of comments that I disagreed with that hadn’t been raised by others. That’s fine—everyone likes different stuff and has different opinions.
 
I thanked him for his feedback, which was rather detailed, and asked if he would be interested in reading my revised version.
 
I revised it, and he read it, and he came back with a load more rather critical feedback.
 
Now, here’s the thing. When someone takes the time to read my work and provide details as to what they think of it, I’m very grateful. They give up their time for free to do this, so whether or not the feedback is good, I still hold them in high regard for doing this.
 
When I got the second batch of critical feedback, I thought this reader deserved some of my time to explain how although the comments were useful, and that there were a few points I would take on board, I also wanted to explain why I wouldn’t be completely re-writing my novel to turn it into a different story, as he’d basically suggested.
 
Reply written, let’s move on.
 
Except this particular person didn’t want to move on. He seemed to be somewhat offended that I didn’t take all his points onboard. He kept dripping comments into my Twitter feed. Every time I referenced the Twitter storm of the summer, I was a whining victim. Every time I referred to my book, he liked to have a dig about how I couldn’t take feedback. This went on and on. I would have blocked him a while ago, except that I only usually block people who are hateful, and he wasn’t hateful. He always phrased his comments in a reasonable, respectful way, despite their negative connotations.
 
The Queen of Vorn was revised further and rebranded, and I asked for advance readers on Twitter. The lovely human being I referred to decided to create a pseudonym and sneak his way onto my ARC list. He got his free copy and then proceeded to slate it on Goodreads. His review is easy to spot; it’s the one that goes on about The Queen of Vorn in a review about Path to Power.
 
He also decided to write a blog about it on his website, going into great detail about how awful my book is.
 
I don’t know why this person became so obsessed with me. But I’m angry with myself for feeding his obsession. Every time I replied to his comments, I was feeding the beast without seeing him for what he is.
 
When I looked at his latest stating of my book on his website, it finally clicked. He’s a bully. And the worst thing you can do when dealing with a bully is react. So I realised he needed blocking, ignoring, and left to stew in his hatred of me and my books until he eventually got bored and went away.
 
He is just one bad apple, I guess. Besides him, surely there are positives to having loads of followers. Why would people seek fame if they didn’t want to be noticed? Being noticed is good, right? It helps people make money, doesn’t it? Um, I’ll come to that shortly.
 
I’ve been talking a lot about the negatives of having loads of followers, so I think it’s important to address the subtitle of this section a bit more concisely: What is the benefit of having loads of followers?

• You have an author platform. This looks good to publishers and agents, it you want to traditionally publish.
• You often get a lot of comments on your posts. Sometimes, I post questions about things I genuinely want to know the answer to, and I’ve had a lot of good answers at times.
• You meet people who are happy to read and review your book. Despite the person I mentioned, most of these people are decent and give helpful feedback.
• You become part of an online community of writers and readers and feel like you get to know some of your followers and create online friends, which is nice.

 
But as for selling books?
 
Err…
 
Whenever I try to plug my books on Twitter, the response is usually tumbleweeds. Sure, I may have found a handful of readers for my stuff on this platform. But in terms of the ratio of time spent tweeting stuff to profits for book sales, I’d be far better off using that time working for minimum wage and using that money to pay for ads.
 
The Platform Curse
 
If you have lots of followers, a lot of people can see you. I’m very much of the opinion that most people in this world are decent and good. But there’s a minority who are nasty and spiteful.
 
The more people who can see you, the more likely it is that one of these nasty people spots you. And if you do something they don’t like, they will gleefully set about trying to destroy you.
 
The sad reality of life is that hate spreads far quicker than love. I managed to collect hundreds of book reviews, ratings, and comments in a short space of time that were nasty and vindictive. But to try to get hundreds of good book reviews and ratings takes a lot of time, effort and patience.
 
We are all human, and we all make mistakes. You can get things right 99% of the time. But we sometimes make mistakes. And the more people that notice, the more likely it is that someone will be ready to sink the knife.