Commentary On: The Bestsellers Lab Guide for Authors

I recently started reading Jonathan Gunson’s free PDF book, The Bestsellers Lab Guide for Authors. (It’s free — you ‘pay’ with just you name and email address so why not zip over and pick up your own copy? Then we can discuss other points here as well.) I’m finding it both affirming (that I’m doing a lot of the things he recommends) and gap creating (there’s more ground to take in developing my author career and platform). Today I want to focus on one particular area where I feel I’ve made some progress and yet there’s more ground to take.
Under his section, Three Steps To Building Your Author Platform, he lists the following steps to take to gain visibility for your books:

Step 1 – Choose your genre and define your reader

Step 2 – Define your unique author brand

Step 3 – Share the ‘World Around Your Story’ with your community

Oops! Kuplump… I stumbled on the first step. Over the years I’ve written in different genres and for different groups of readers. My Zak Bates Adventure Series (that started with Dominion Over All) is fantasy for a middle school audience, while Seeds of a New Birth is a high-tech thriller definitely for adults only. (If you’re wondering why, just look at the picture on the cover and compare it to the Dominion Over All cover. Yes, those are ‘super seeds’ on the cover. 🙂 ) That’s why I chose to publish it and FreeForm under the pen name Orrin Jason Bradford. But then there’s also my most popular non-fiction self help book, Life On Purpose: Six Passages to an Inspired Life and the follow up Spiral of Fulfillment: Living an Inspired Life of Service, Simplicity and Spiritual Serenity.
So you can see how authors with many interests can have a real challenge with step one. But it gets worse because these steps build upon each other. Defining your unique author brand assumes you’ve chosen one genre and have defined your reader for that genre. And of course, step one and two are all in preparation for step three – sharing the ‘World Around Your Story’ with your community.

One Solution to this Dilemma

As I read this section of Jonathan’s book I felt a tightening in my chest and a familiar dialogue with myself. “But I write in a number of different genre’s and for different audience. Does this mean my writing career is doomed from the start?” Well, of course, time will tell on that question so I decided to read on a bit further:

Now, having said that, the fact is you don’t have to write in just one genre, but as you can see, if you do it will massively raise your chances of success.

Oh, thank God. There’s still hope, even if only a sliver. Then the sliver grew into a slice when I read his next set of questions:

So what’s your author ‘elevator pitch’? In a sentence, how would you describe to a potential reader the type of books you write?

I realized I had the makings of my author’s elevator pitch by looking at what most if not all my stories had in common — what was the larger umbrella under which they could all rest comfortably. It goes like this:

I write visionary fiction and non-fiction – books and novels that both entertain and enlighten.

That’s good for even the shortest elevator ride, right?
For the longer rides I might expand it a bit to:

I write visionary fiction and non-fiction – books and novels that both entertain and enlighten, that inspires the reader to live their own lives on purpose.

When I look at my body of work up to this point (including those in the queue) through this lens, I see they all fit pretty well under this description. I can also see that keeping this in mind will help direct my future work as well.
So, if you are an eclectic writer, take heart and look a little deeper at the common elements of your work to date.

And Now It’s Your Turn

What would you say your author’s elevator speech is? If you’re more of a reader than a writer, what would your reader’s elevator speech be if you found yourself trapped in a tiny room slowly ascending or descending with another reader?
What methods have you found that work well in building your author’s platform and a community of avid readers?
I’m still wondering how to take step two and three. What would you suggest? (Johnathan, care to weigh in on this one? 🙂 )