Episode 6 - The Basics: Why Publishers Want Author Platforms

In this episode, we break down what it really takes to land a book deal—hint: it’s not just about having a great idea. With over 850 people taking our book quiz in 2024, we found that 64% were working on books outside of what we focus on: self-help and how-to books. If you’re an entrepreneur or expert aiming for a book deal, this episode is for you.

The key to getting a book deal? Your author platform—the audience and credibility that prove you can sell books. We cover why social media, speaking gigs, media features, email lists, and corporate partnerships all play a role. And no, there’s no magic follower count that guarantees success. Some authors with huge platforms still get rejected, while others land deals without being social media stars.

We also bust common myths about publishing, like the belief that “a good book sells itself.” Spoiler: it won’t. Publishers want authors who can market their books. If you’re serious about getting published, this episode will help you understand what it really takes.

Find the 3Ps freebie here: https://meghanstevenson.kit.com/50230df9e1 

Episode Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(4:24) What is an author platform, and why does it matter?
(5:42) The myth of “how many followers do I need?”
(6:53) Hidden platforms: why some authors get book deals with no online presence
(8:36) Why entrepreneurs have a natural advantage in book publishing
(9:11) The different ways to build an author platform
(12:18) The reality of book marketing: no one is selling your book for you
(13:08) Common misconceptions about getting published
(17:34) The power of platform: why it gives authors more control
(20:16) Harsh truths: only 3 out of 200 workshop students landed a book deal
(23:12) Why most online businesses (and author platforms) fail
(24:13) Are you serious about getting published, or just dreaming?
(27:33) Outro

Follow Meghan:

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• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/megstevenson
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meghanstevenson/
• TikTok: @meghan.stevenson.books
• Website: https://www.meghanstevenson.com/

Have a great idea for a book but don't know where to start?MeghanStevenson.com/quiz


Traditional publishing expert Meghan Stevenson blasts open the gates of the “Big 5” – Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan – to share what every entrepreneur and expert needs to know about landing a book deal.

In episodes released every other Monday, Meghan shares wisdom and stories from 20+ years in publishing as well as interviews with authors, literary agents, and editors. She also answers questions from listeners like you.

Whether you are an experienced entrepreneur with an empire, or are just starting out – this podcast will help you understand what you need to do in order to turn your dream of being a bestselling author into real life.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

There's an idea out there that if the book is good enough, it'll speak for itself. It will not. It is paper, it is glue, it is ink. It will not sell itself, it does not walk, it does not talk. You need a platform to do that.

Speaker 1: 0:14

Welcome to the Kind of a Big Book Deal podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn about traditional publishing. I'm your host, Meghan Stevenson. After working as an editor for two of the biggest traditional publishers, I started my own business helping entrepreneurs become authors. To date, my clients have earned over $5 million from publishers like Penguin, random House, Simon Schuster and HarperCollins. In these podcast episodes, I blast open the well-kept gates to traditional publishing. I'll explain what every entrepreneur needs to know about landing a book deal without losing your mind. I'm going to share stories, answer your questions, interview the successful authors I've worked with and probably save platform more than a tech bro. So if you dream of landing on a bestseller list but have no idea how, this is the podcast for you, and I am so, so glad you're here. This is the podcast for you and I am so, so glad you're here.

Speaker 1: 1:06

So in 2024, over 850 people took a quiz that I have on my website. You can go there and take it right now, right? This quiz has existed for a couple of years and there are eight questions on this quiz, all of which help me determine whether someone is qualified to work with us and if they're not, then they get a recommendation. Right? I use this quiz because I can't and I don't want to talk to 850 people every year, right, that's very reasonable. So what I discovered in the first couple of years of my business, before this quiz existed, is that often the type of book that you, as the author, want to write or want to develop is not something I work on, right, and this is a pretty big bone to pick that I have is that people just don't read and authors don't take the time to narrow down and look at what we're saying as publishing professionals and I think that's not just true for books, right, it's true in all different areas that people just don't read or aren't paying close attention or aren't using critical thinking, like all those things kind of happen. But often, like you're not working on the type of book that I'm working on, and so, therefore, like I am not the best fit for you and it's actually in my integrity to not work with you right. It's my integrity to give you a referral list which I am happy to do of people that I know that work on fiction, that work on children's, that work on memoir. So in 2024, 64% of people that's over 500 people completed the quiz that were working on something else, right, they were working on fiction. They were working on memoir. They weren't working on what I work on, which is self-help and how to.

Speaker 1: 2:51

I'm going to keep repeating that, because I assume that people are so rabidly hungry for publishing advice that they're happy to take it from anywhere, and the caveat that I always give is like, not everyone's for you, and so I am only speaking to entrepreneurs and experts who want a how to book deal. Everything else that I say might not be relevant to you. Just recently, I had an Instagram post that was about platform building and someone was like, well, I'm writing a memoir, I don't want to have to build a platform. And I was like cool, I'm not writing this for memoirists, right? So your results may vary based on kind of what book you're writing. So if you're writing something other than how to, if you're writing something other than self-help, then you're welcome to keep listening. I love those stats but, like, ultimately, this advice isn't going to help you as much as someone who's more focused on the craft of the genre of the book that you're writing. Okay, so out of those people, right, so we have 64% that just aren't writing a book that I'm working on and out of that 36% of that 850, there's only a handful, usually that are actually ready to work on a book proposal. And you might be wondering you, why is that? And that's because those remaining 300 or so people writing how-to books, you know, need a platform, which is what we're going to talk about today. Right, this is the second p and and if you missed the 3p framework, go listen to those episodes. Okay, because platform is a huge, huge deal and platform is something that authors get twisted all the time. We're going to end up talking about platform way more often than this singular episode, but I think this singular episode can be a great level set in terms of how I think about platform and maybe hopefully change the way you think about platform as well.

Speaker 1: 4:45

So the easy definition of an author platform is an audience, your audience as the author. But it's slightly more complex than that. It's slightly more nuanced than that. That's because your author platform is what sells your book, and that's not always your audience, right? It's also worth mentioning that an author platform is unique to you, so everybody has a different author platform. What you have going is going to be different from what every other person on the planet, every other client on our roster has going on with their platform. So, as you listen to this podcast, you're going to notice that there is just so much subjectivity in publishing like so much, and especially in the traditional publishing world, and platform being one of those areas where it's really really subjective and circumstantial and unique to every single person. Right?

Speaker 1: 5:41

A lot of times I get asked hey, what's the number of followers? I need to be ready to work with you on a proposal, and I have to say there isn't one, right? One of our clients who had the biggest platform I've ever seen got no's from the publisher last year. Right, that's because there is no magic number. Right? It's not a quantitative industry, so there aren't specific benchmarks to hit. Right? There's not a certain number of followers you need to achieve in order to get a book deal. It's not that way. You know, I wish there were. Life would be a lot easier for me. It would be a lot easier for you if there were right, a lot easier for editors and publishers. But the reality is that sometimes the author with the biggest platform gets rejected like my client did earlier this year and sometimes you get a book deal without a huge platform, without being on social media at all. Welcome to publishing.

Speaker 1: 6:39

What I do want to dispel and this could probably be an entire episode on its own is that when you think, hey, that author doesn't have a platform and they got a book deal, there's usually a platform hiding and I should probably walk through case studies with this, but there's usually a platform hiding and or some other reason that that person got a deal. Like a lot of times, people come to me and say, hey, xyz got a deal and I'll look at and say, okay, they got a deal in 2021, when everybody was like throwing money at people. Right, they got a deal in a really like booming market where people were hungry for projects and they were just like basically throwing money at folks. You know, they don't have a platform on social, but they've got this huge other platform of, like, celebrity clients and speaking engagements and brand endorsements and all sorts of things that are behind the scenes, right? One of my biggest clients, who got the biggest advance in my career seven figures, what I call obama money was barely on social media when she got that, because she's a corporate consultant, so she goes into companies like her platform is not obvious, all right. So that's enough bitching on that tangent.

Speaker 1: 7:46

For the second, so what's awesome about platform and what's different about author platforms for entrepreneurs is that the same actions that make your business successful is what sells books, and it can be called an author platform, right? A lot of our clients do organic lead gen on social media, and that's what their social media followings are for. They're not trying to be Miss popularity on Instagram, they're trying to sell shit, and so that's amazing, right? Or, you know, maybe they go viral on Tik TOK and then they start becoming a Tik TOK creator because it makes them money and that is their business is creating Tik TOKs. There are worse things to do for work, right? So like it's amazing. So this is why I specifically like to work with entrepreneurs, because for us, building a audience is just part of our business activity.

Speaker 1: 8:36

Building an author platform makes sense in a lot of ways for entrepreneurs and experts, because the same things that get you a book deal are also the same things that tend to make you a lot of money in a business, like they make your business work. So, cause, to be honest, I have no idea how or why someone writing fiction or someone writing memoir would ever want to build a platform Like I just don't get that. I don't. I understand the hesitancy there because I don't get that. I understand the hesitancy there because I don't understand how you do that either. So that's why our focus is on entrepreneurs and experts, right.

Speaker 1: 9:11

So what goes into an author platform? I mean essentially anything that could or would sell a book. So that could be, you know, for online entrepreneurs it's an email list. It's certainly social media. The platforms that we kind of include as social are YouTube, tiktok, facebook, instagram and, to a lesser extent, threads and X Blue Sky as well, mostly because those platforms don't have as much content promotional oomph. They haven't been established as long. Press and media is a great component to have.

Speaker 1: 9:44

I also include podcasts. So not necessarily hosting your own podcast, but being a guest on other people's podcasts can be really helpful. Any free content you have that could be your own podcast. It could be a blog if it's popular, if you have a quote, unquote real job or a tie to a major institution, like you're on a board or you belong to a university, or if, especially if you belong to, like a very active alumni group, that can be really helpful. Your network is important because your friends and colleagues that also have big social media follies that can create a lot of buzz when you all get together and, you know, promote each other's work, any speaking engagements you do. So that would be. You know, any time you get up on a stage, whether it's your own stage or someone else's stage, that can be really helpful because you're selling in the back of the room.

Speaker 1: 10:38

The last category is what we call bulk buys, that is, education and corporate buys. So that's when, let's say, you're a corporate consultant and you go into a company and you are presenting and workshopping with 30 leaders. You could easily include a bulk buy of 30 books. Another great example is education buys. So I have a client. They are a non-binary and a therapist that helps trans and non-binary people navigate gender identity. So when they go into a college they are presenting not only to like the LGBTQIA affinity group, but also to faculty, also to admissions. They're going in and they could do multiple book buys within that one educational context. So you can see how all of these are ways to sell the book.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Now, you're not going to have all of these, nobody does. I like to think of them as a pre-fee menu, like you get to choose what you want to have, right, there's only so many options, but you get to choose what you want to have and leave the rest. You don't have to eat the entire menu, right? That said, you usually have a mix of places and platforms where you interact with your audience and your potential readers. So, just to recap, like that is a mix, right? Maybe you do social but you don't do speaking. Or maybe you do bulk buys are your primary factor, but you do a little speaking right. For a lot of our online entrepreneurs, it is that classic email list, social media, once in a while a stage, once in a while a book buy, but primarily they're selling every day through, like sales funnels and email and online marketing.

Speaker 1: 12:18

I wanted to spell a few things about platform as well in this episode. So the first thing is like you don't need a million followers, although I can probably get you a book deal if you have a million followers. So if you have a million followers, pop into those DMs on Instagram and let me know. But instead, most of the time for a big five publisher again, check out episode one if you haven't listened to it. You need to demonstrate that you can reasonably sell 20,000 books, not hope, pray, plan for those books, but actually reasonably be able to predict that. There's a lot of reasons for that number that we could probably go into and that's really just an estimate. Different places vary, but essentially, selling that many books makes a publisher money and makes your project profitable. They like that. They need that right.

Speaker 1: 13:08

So I want to pause and dispel a couple more misconceptions, because there's a lot of them about author platforms. So the first misconception is that million followers idea. It's not real. But neither is the idea that you can avoid marketing altogether right and some magical fairy publisher will make your book sell, make your book resonate. There's an idea out there that if the book is good enough, it'll speak for itself. It will not. It is paper, it is glue, it is ink. It will not sell itself. It does not walk, it does not talk. You need a platform to do that. So note that I said, marketing earlier and not social media.

Speaker 1: 13:49

People need to know who you are in order for your book to sell. That could involve being, you know, insta-famous, obviously, but it could also be being a LinkedIn top voice, right. You could be a YouTuber or a professor who has developed a new model for something academic. You could be all of those things. Some of our clients are all of those things, right. So you could be Brene Brown. You could be Adam Grant. You could be Jonathan Van Ness. You could be an entrepreneur that everybody knows and that everybody's been following for a few years, right. Someone like Amy Porterfield, rachel Rogers, marie Forleo, brendan Bruchard.

Speaker 1: 14:35

But what you generally will not be when you get a book deal is someone who posts on social once and then goes silent. Someone who is inconsistent with their marketing. Someone who only has three podcast episodes and then gives up. I see that so often, um, or someone who is a best kept secret solopreneur, who is overwhelmed and overworked but still wants to add a book to their plate. That might sound super harsh, but unfortunately, it's the reality. Um, and that's because I mean, did I mention that publishers are corporations and that you know we live in a capitalist society? In a minute because I'm pretty sure I have um, sarcasm aside, people who aspire to be authors often get really out of shape. People who aspire to be authors often get really out of shape about platform, and what I hear most often is you know what is an author platform? I told you that. Hopefully you understand.

Speaker 1: 15:34

Why do authors need a platform? You know spoiler alert because publishers are companies that need to make money and they can't and won't do everything on an author's behalf. If you want that, you can hire a hybrid and pay them six figures to do that. And the idea that publishers only want to publish famous people and TikTokers, which isn't it's not entirely true, but it's not not true also. But the reason those people get book deals and the reason you see celebrities out there selling their books is because they have an audience, they have proven content and the publisher has a pretty good feeling that when they sign Prince Harry or Michelle Obama, they're going to sell a lot of books. Those people have both potential and platform to harken back to our 3P framework and usually they can definitely hire someone like me to do their proposal. Okay, so if you don't know what I'm talking about there, go back and check out the episode on our framework, which is episode four.

Speaker 1: 16:36

So what most authors fail to realize is that building a platform for yourself is totally possible. Right, people have have done it. It's in your control. It actually gives you power and agency within the world of publishing. My authors that have big platforms have a ton of power. They just have so much power. They get to, you know, decide to show, throw their own cover, shoot, or they get to dictate what their rights are, or they get to have more creative control. And because they have that platform, the publisher is going to pay them more money because they expect to sell more books. And then, on top of that, because publishers invested so much money, they're going to put a little more attention to it. They're going to put a little more effort to it, because wouldn't you, as a business owner, if you had invested, you know, a hundred thousand dollars in a new initiative, wouldn't you put way more effort and attention to that than if you had only spent ten thousand? Probably same idea, right?

Speaker 1: 17:34

So as authors, you get to choose, you know, if you don't want to build an author platform, if you, you know, just want to get your book out there, I, I hear this a lot. That's fine. That's what self and hybrid publishing are made for. But don't come yelling at me when traditional publishing I just did that. If you saw on YouTube, I'm like doing that little neck swirl that people do I got a little sass in me. But don't get mad at traditional publishing. Right Because it's capitalist, because it's creating, using art as product, it's monetizing these things. Right Because platform's in your control. It is your choice whether, to you know, use the system and create a platform or not. So that's just really important. And self and hybrid publishing are super valid options for people that don't want to build a platform for whatever reason.

Speaker 1: 18:26

And if you don't want to be on social media I hear this a lot you're a little bit more lucky, because I suspect we all might be headed that way after the brozone hellscape that social media has become in 2025. That said, social media still remains a great place to share brand awareness, reach people who don't know who you are yet and to build community. Even with its many flaws I know social is imperfect. I know social has been proven to be really bad for mental health, but, as a business owner, it can be helpful to leverage social in a conscious way, whether that is to hire someone to do it for you or, you know, to schedule it in advance, or there's a lot of techniques around that I won't get into it. But, like, don't shrug off social immediately. You got to try it. Try it before you knock it. I guess it's the lesson there. That said, if you are in corporate and we work with a lot of corporate consultants here as clients and you need to keep that ish classy, because some of us do right, some of us need to keep it classy.

Speaker 1: 19:30

Hosting workshops, facilitating programs within corporations, speaking engagements all of those things can be an author platform too. It's just selling books. It's not limited to social, it's not limited to online marketing, and your platform is ultimately up to you. I believe so strongly, and this sometimes even sounds naive to me, but ultimately I'm an optimist and I am fully in the idea that everyone exists at choice and everyone has their own powerful being within. Not to get too woo on you, but it's true, I believe anyone can get a book deal, but a huge part of that is being willing to build an author platform, and that takes time.

Speaker 1: 20:16

Over the past few years, I've had the privilege to teach over 200 people what I'm teaching you in this podcast. So the basics of traditional book publishing. I've done it in workshops, I've done it in my book deal boot camp, I did it in a membership, and that included always why publishers and literary agents require authors to have platforms. But unfortunately, the hard truth is that out of those 200 plus people, only three have really gone on to be successful and land a book deal. Those three entrepreneurs took the advice that I gave and applied it and used it to build their own audiences, to build their own unique content, to stand out online. And two of those clients came back to us and worked with us on a book proposal, secured their literary agent with our help and got book deals right. And now we're having conversations about writing their books.

Speaker 1: 21:15

And while I'm super proud of those clients, I also know that that success rate is not awesome. It's not amazing. Three out of 200 people is 0.006%. And when you compare that, especially to the success rate of the book proposals my team and I work on, where 100% of our clients last year got literary agents and 90% got book deals, you can see that the difference is platform. You might be wondering like what the heck. Why is there just such a big difference? What the heck? Why is there just such a big difference?

Speaker 1: 21:58

And I kind of have a couple theories around why people are so resistant to author platform. First, building an author platform is a lot of work. It just is. The clients who come to me with existing audiences usually post on social media like multiple times a day or have invested years and years into their corporate careers as consultants. It requires a lot of dedication, a lot of time. A lot of you know for the online entrepreneurs, a ton of content creation. I'm sure a million, you know, dm responses. It's a lot of sustained effort. It's a lot of patience, particularly when you're first starting, because that first initial part is the challenging part. Right To not give up when your podcast only has 50 listens. And personally I know that platform building can be hard because I do it myself. I'm doing it right now with this podcast. But the benefit to online entrepreneurs, especially when it comes to platform building, is that we have to do this work anyway as part of lead generation. Right, we have to do this work anyway as part of sales and making money to live on. It's part of what you do to make a business successful.

Speaker 1: 23:10

So my second part of this theory speaking of those online entrepreneurs, it makes sense that the success rates for the people that join my workshops or join Book Deal Bootcamp that don't take action right the the lag of success. Honestly, the 99% failure rate would be similar to the failure rates of online business owners. Failure rate would be similar to the failure rates of online business owners and I was actually really surprised when I Googled this, in that Entrepreneur Magazine reports that over 90% of online businesses fail within the first four months. I think some of this is that a lot of people see online businesses as get-rich-quick schemes when they're really not. But I also, anecdotally in business incubators, have seen people decide to give up on their businesses or substantially change their business within like a year or two, or when you know the economy dips or like the results just don't hold up or they don't exponentially grow. So there's a lot of reasons for that.

Speaker 1: 24:10

Okay, so my third theory is that a book can often be a dream that you're interested in but don't really follow through on. So back in my days at Penguin, I worked on a book called how to Retire Overseas and in a meeting the publisher that I worked for at the time. So the publisher's person my boss's boss predicted that the book would be read by two different types of people. The first person, the first type of people, were people who were planning to retire overseas right, and presumably were going to take action on all the advice the author was giving in the book. And then the second group were people who are simply interested in the idea of retiring overseas and wanting to dream about it, without ever intention, of any intention of following through, like at all no intention. My boss assumed, and probably rightfully so, that the people who were interested outnumbered like vastly outnumbered the people who would actually take action on this thing, who would actually retire overseas, and I think that's really similar to books.

Speaker 1: 25:19

I think the same thing applies to writing and publishing a book. You can get all in your head about it, get all in your heart about it, get all in your dreams about it, but when you were confronted with the idea of having to build an author platform from zero to a hundred thousand, much less zero to a million, that can feel really daunting and you just don't take action on it. The same can be said for online businesses. A lot of people are interested, but a lot of people are not truly committed and not going to take repeated daily action towards this goal. So I don't wanna leave you on a down note, but I do think that it's a question to ask yourself. Are you simply interested in writing or publishing a book and getting a book deal and that's why you're here listening to this podcast or are you committed to following through and doing the work and understanding everything you need to know and listening to this podcast every week and subscribing to my email newsletter and getting that result that literally 0.006% of people get? Because if you are, I'm going to help you through this podcast. Right, I'm going to blow open these doors of traditional publishing and help you, because I do want to believe that everyone and anyone can get a book deal if you're willing to put the work in and to be completely honest with you. This knowledge used to be behind a paywall. I used to charge for this, but recently I decided to say it and share this with everybody on the internet and at least all the major podcast platforms in youtube, because I want to give this knowledge out. I think people need it and I hope you are enjoying what you're learning and you're benefiting from it and, in fact, if you're loving what you're hearing right now, please listen, subscribe, leave a review.

Speaker 1: 27:01

This is only episode six of a 10-part crash course on traditional publishing, and I've got so many more ideas to throw at you. So, if you have missed anything at all, go back and listen because, like T Swift's eras, this shit builds. You don't want to miss a thing. And for those of you who have binged the first handful of episodes when we released it back in February and are still hanging in and listening to these episodes, I truly appreciate you. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you all so much. See you in two weeks. You, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you all so much. See you in two weeks. Thanks for tuning into the kind of big book deal podcast. Want to see where you're at on your book journey? Check out my free quiz at meghanstephenson.com forward slash quiz. That's M E G H A N S T E V E N S O? Ncom forward slash quiz. See you next time.