One wonderful side effect of the whole "writers need a platform" business is discovering how supportive other writers are. Follow a writer on social media, and they're very likely to follow you back. And the side effect of the side effect? Getting to know and be inspired by those other writers.

I've been freelancing since everything was done by mail, phone, or when we got really high tech, fax.

It's hard to imagine how we got anything accomplished back then! We had to mail a large, postage-paid, self-addressed envelop to get a sample issue. Each query was mailed and required a SASE. Only maybe 10-20% of those SASEs ever came back. (I often pictured editors peeling stamps off my SASEs to use on their outgoing mail.) I absolutely love that email is the new standard for queries.

BTW, I still have one corded phone in the house for phone interviews. My recorder connects between the base and the handset, which you can't do with cordless phones, and landlines still provide better, clearer connections than cell phones, which makes playback a lot easier.

The great thing is you have more options today. From doing it all yourself to hiring professionals for various tasks, the choice is yours.

I understand the I don't want to deal with that aspect. But that means finding someone else who will and not just ignoring what you don't want to do.

I see the platform as just an extension of the creative process. You've created a product. Great. But the real trick is to create a persona, a following, and a buzz. I find that almost more exciting than the initial writing part.

You still had to build a platform. But the only way many authors did so was by publishing books. Your platform couldn't help you sell books until you'd already been published, often with multiple books. Now authors are simply figuring out that it's better to have some kind of visibility and audience up front to help even your earliest books sell. And publishers now expect it because they don't have the budgets and staff to do the kind of marketing they might have in the past.

While I know some writers in the "I just want to write" crowd don't like this, I see it as a great thing. It means authors are more empowered than ever to control the success of their own books when they have full (or almost full) control over how it's promoted.

At the same time, it's a "tough cookies" reality check scenario for those who don't think they should have to deal with the business side of things. If you want to succeed in business, you have to put the work in, and that work doesn't stop with creation. Pretty much every author is in business, whether they want to think of themselves that way or not (and whether they contract with a traditional publisher or not).