Kind Of A Big Book Deal

Episode 17 - How Many Followers You Need to Get a Book Deal

• Meghan Stevenson

Share episode

If you’ve ever wondered whether your social media numbers are good enough for a book deal, this episode is a must-listen. Meghan Stevenson breaks down one of the most common questions aspiring authors ask: Do follower counts make or break your shot at traditional publishing?

The answer isn’t what you think.

Meghan shares real-world examples from authors with tiny social followings landing massive deals to those leveraging podcasts, YouTube, corporate clients, or speaking gigs instead. What matters more than a magic number? Systems that actually sell books.

You’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of what a modern “author platform” looks like and why it’s so personal. If you're building an audience, running a business, or starting a podcast, this episode will help you understand how it all fits into your publishing path.

Craptastic Mountain: https://meghanstevenson.kit.com/2f3c13271d 

Episode Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(1:22) Listener question: Do follower counts matter?
(2:28) What “author platform” really means
(3:33) Followers vs. book sales: What publishers care about
(4:10) Low-following, high-impact author case study
(5:35) Is your book part of the plan?
(7:03) Real follower counts of successful authors
(9:19) Why publishers look beyond Instagram
(10:03) Systems > Hopes: The key to getting a deal
(10:34) Final thoughts + your next step
(11:05) Outro


Follow Meghan:

  • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/megstevenson
  • 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.

Speaker 1:

So in my mind the benchmark is 100k. It always has been.

Speaker 1:

It has been for like easily 10 years which is why it's not a great benchmark, because social has changed a lot in the last three to five years, so we need to get more specific about followers and how. That's part of your author platform. We need to really understand how and where that number shows up. Welcome to the kind of a big book Deal podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn about traditional publishing. I'm your host, Meghan Stevenson.

Speaker 1:

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. All right, y'all. Today we have a question from Jennifer, who asked one of the questions I get constantly, and here it is.

Speaker 2:

My question is around a post on Instagram and social media followers and that being a deal breaker for literary agents, I'm curious what the approximate number range is. I don't want that to hold me back and I'm starting a podcast that will increase my reach and followers and I feel like that'll be a good, a better medium for me, since, you know, I do deep dives and sessions with clients and I think that's going to help get my message across. But I'm really curious what social platforms lit agents tend to put more weight on when making these decisions whether or not to, you know, offer you a contract.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So I'm cutting Jennifer off there, mostly because I don't want to put all y'all's business out in the world for everybody to hear, but also because it kind of doesn't matter. It sounds weird, but it kind of doesn't matter. So, kind of funny. You should ask about this. There isn't, unfortunately, a magic number here. I wish there was, honestly, because it would make my life so much easier.

Speaker 1:

When we talk about your platform as an author, we're talking about the whole kit, cat and caboodle, not just social media. As a collaborator who wants to get you a deal, I'm fucking looking at everything. Yes, I'm going to check social and yes, I'm going to check a podcast which Jennifer mentions she was starting, but I'm also going to consider and look at every possible other way that you can promote and sell your book to the audience who needs it could have corporate contracts, you could have individual clients who are famous or have big audiences of their own. When it comes to your author platform, the number of followers you have doesn't actually matter as much as how you're going to sell books. That is why a huge social platform is often the first thing that people like me and literary agents and editors look for. For example, one of my clients has over 6 million followers on Instagram and TikTok, it's easy to see how that client would have a better chance at selling more books than someone that has only 600 followers. Right? But social media isn't everything. Recently I had clients land a deal for $400,000 at auction with multiple publishing houses interested because those authors were willing to buy 100,000 copies over four years for their clients direct from the publisher and had tons of corporate clients who would buy thousands or hundreds of copies of their book just like on an ask. Right, it was like no big deal. Collectively, those authors actually had less than 3,000 followers across every social media platform, but for them, in their particular case, that doesn't matter so much because they can sell books to their clients who have millions of employees.

Speaker 1:

Now, obviously, not everybody has that kind of business. Not everybody can do that. That's why, offering advice on building author platform in a format like this, where I don't know you, I don't know who you are, I don't know your dreams, I don't know your business, it can be really difficult because your author platform is yours, it's individual. What works for you might not work for somebody else. It might not fit your personality, it might not fit your genre. It might not fit. You know, a podcast might work for me, but for my clients who work with educators it won't work, because educators don't listen to podcasts right. So there's a lot of different options there. So what I'm going to say here is more broadly based on that, and I want to talk about Jennifer specifically, okay, and the question she asked specifically.

Speaker 1:

So, in her voicemail, jennifer says she's willing to do the marketing work so that she gets a deal. That's awesome. That is honestly half the battle, the willingness to do that. So often what I see is disconnect between what the publishing industry wants and what authors want. As I said before in previous episodes, you can't stay small and expect to get a big book deal. It just does not work like that. But you also need to make sure that the level of audience a publisher wants to see won't break your business or break you.

Speaker 1:

So let's pause here, because I really want you to consider this. Here's a question for you Is a book simply part of your plan to make an impact, which also includes having a big audience, lots of speaking events or client engagements, hiring a team scaling to millions of dollars in revenue, or do you want your book to be the primary source of your impact? Because if it's part, then traditional publishing might work for you, but if your book is the primary way you want to make an impact, then traditional publishing probably isn't the right fit. There are so many reasons why this is, which I'm going to get into over the next few episodes, and I don't say that to crush your dreams. I don't like particularly crushing anyone's dreams or letting anybody down, but there are so many ways to publish your book in 2025 and beyond that aren't traditional publishing, that are totally viable and can work even better for authors who want their book to be the primary source of the impact than traditional publishing. So I say that as an expert in traditional publishing right, I've seen it go well, I've seen it go badly. I've seen people get you know the book deal of their dreams. I've seen people heartbroken, and as someone who's going to tell you the honest truth of what I think, so for better for us. I was born without a filter, right.

Speaker 1:

So now, after a much needed visit to tangent town about, like, how your book fits into your business, let's go back to Jennifer again and her question about the range of social media followers needed. So in my mind, the benchmark is a hundred K. It always has been. It has been for like easily 10 years, which is why it's not a great benchmark, right, because social has changed like a lot in the last three to five years, much less the last 10 years, right? So we need to get more specific about followers and how that's part of your author platform. We need to really understand how and where that number shows up.

Speaker 1:

So, in preparation for this episode, I looked at the Instagram accounts for every client I helped in 2024 to land a book deal. I'm going to share their followers and also an important detail of their platform that didn't involve social media at all. So example number one 26,000 followers and previous book sales of more than 60,000 copies, which showed that her audience buys books at a higher than normal conversion rate. Right, so she could sell through with less people, essentially. Example two 40,000 followers and a YouTube channel with nearly 900,000 followers, plus a show on HBO Max. So Instagram, as it turns out, is a low performing platform for her personally. Now, you might think YouTube is social media. You might think it's actual traditional media. You might think it's like a streaming service. It's kind of all three of those things, to be fair, but For our purposes, this client has a popular channel with lots of engagement, lots of subscribers, and that's going to sell some books.

Speaker 1:

Example three 14,000 followers. But and this is the big but the ability to reach over 100,000 teachers through contracts with school districts that she already has in her business. You wouldn't ever find this online and it represents super easy sales for a publisher because it's a business-to-business sale. We're going to cover these kind of bulk sales for a publisher because it's a business to business sale. We're going to cover these kind of bulk sales in a future episode. Example four has 65,000 followers on Instagram, plus another 65K on other social media platforms, and she's gathered lots of statistics about how fast her business has grown over the last three years. This cumulatively shows publishers what they can expect in the future from this author and exactly how serious she is about growth for her business, which includes promoting her book, but is not limited to it.

Speaker 1:

And what I want you to take away from these examples none of which had 100,000 followers on Instagram, by the way is that literary agents, publishers and me even me are going to be looking holistically at your business and your audience, not just at social media, and certainly just not on Instagram alone, or TikTok alone, or Facebook alone, or whatever alone LinkedIn alone, right? Personally, what I want to know, and what I communicate every single time in the book proposals my team and I write, is how the systems in your business that bring in paying clients and help you make money today are the exact same systems that will help you sell books and make your publisher money in the future. Those systems and their scalability are your author platform and, a lot of times, your potential in terms of like, hey, could this book work for a Penguin Random House or a Simon Schuster or HarperCollins? Now note I said systems not plans, not hopes, not dreams Existing systems that have been proven to be effective at getting people's attention and getting them to convert to buy things from you, preferably much more expensive things than a $30 book. So, in short, yes, your author platform is your social following, but it's also more than that. So there you go. That's the answer to Jennifer's question.

Speaker 1:

But now I want to hear from you. Where are you at on your book journey and what questions do you have about traditional publishing? Check out the show notes for a link to leave me a voicemail. I am loving the questions I've received so far. I'm going to answer every single one of them in upcoming episodes and I am so so looking forward to hearing from you. So check out those show notes In the meantime. I'll see you in two weeks and until then, cheers to your success. 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 meghanstevensoncom 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.