Jane, her black hair in a bun, sits in a taxi to go shopping, a chore she hates. But that is her lucky day. The taxi stops and a girl with red hair and brown eyes jumps in next to Jane. “Hi, I’m Sally. I have monkey spirit,” she introduces.
“Hi,” Jane says awkwardly and they shake hands.
Sally is very talkative that she goes on to tell Jane her life story, and at the end she mentions that she has recently become a writer. Jane is excited and her interest is peaked. Jane invites Sally to her home, and the latter accepts immediately. It takes Sally three days to teach Jane all about partying.
Three days later, Jane stands next to Sally, the latter’s hair bobbing along with her jittery legs, and she stares at a crowd of people that has gathered around them. Sally has invited night sky watchers like her to this party. She swallows and raises her book. “Hi,” she says and all turns quiet. “You may not know me, but I come from the deep forest. I talk to the stars every night and the stars talk to me. I wrote this book to tell the story of a cricket who was different and lonely. Do you think he will overcome his sadness and find his singing voice?”
“Ooooh!” the crowd gasps. “I want to read that book!” “I love this story!” “I need a copy!”
As the party dwindles, Jane thanks Sally, unable to fathom how she could get 50 orders for her book. Wow! Not what she has expected!
The End
Assuming you have read Part I of this post, you can see how Jane is now taking action. It’s good to be in touch with fellow writers who understand our struggles and needs and can offer help when we need it. Jane had learned this lesson a little later, but not too late.
Let’s get into the second month of building your platform. I’m super excited right here! If you haven’t read Part I of this post, you can read it here.
At the end of this post, there is a downloadable checklist of specific goals for building your platform during the second month. Read till the end to understand each element.
Make Author Friends
After you’ve set your social author account and connected with other writers, there is a high chance you’ve met a few you liked a lot. Connect with these people more often, and send them direct messages if they don’t mind. Offer them help if they need and ask for their advice on writing issues that you have.
Keep your conversations around writing, and don’t ask any personal questions. At least not too early. If you two mesh together, you can take your friendship further and do some writing activities together. Have calls and meet virtually or face-to-face. You will find each other when you need support in your writing journey. The more writing friends you make, the wider your circle of fame will become.
Your Goal for Month #2
Make one new author friend and contact her frequently.
Start an Email List
Launch a newsletter and start collecting subscribers. That requires a little work on your side, so I’m keeping the list of goals for the second month shorter.
Where do I start when it gets to email lists?
People who pass by your website or social media account, might never happen to pass by again, and they’ll soon forget all about you. This has nothing to do with the quality you offer, so no offense. It’s just that we are all humans and we forget stuff, especially stuff that we don’t encounter regularly. So your aim is to keep the people who visit your site or page and make them citizens. You will have to build for them a station so they can stay. Tell them that they will get daily ice-cream if they subscribe. Promise them good quality and be ready to deliver it.
An Email list is a list of emails that you will collect, so you can send frequent emails to their owners, your subscribers, about your books and activities. By subscribing, these subscribers will give you permission to be in their inbox regularly, so you need to respect them by sharing with them the value that you’ve originally promised.
To do so, you need to create a landing page or a pop-up on your website with an incentive and a call-to-action button. The incentive could be a free short story or anything your target audience would be eager to get. Then put the link to the landing page in your social media account’s bio for everyone to find, and ask your friends to share it.
It’s not enough to collect emails and contact people whenever you feel like it. You need to have a welcome email sequence ready and pre-scheduled. This is a sequence of emails that will be sent out daily, or every two days, and offers value and more information about you as an author. Later on, you start sending a newsletter once or twice a month, in which you list your recent activities and books. I can’t get to all what you can put in a newsletter in one paragraph. The options are endless. Your goal is to get and preserve a permanent client who will be up-to-date with all your activities and book launches, and eventually become a buyer and a fan.
A great email marketing platform I know of is ConvertKit which has a free plan for as long as you have less than 1000 subscribers. Once you get above that number, you will start paying. If you choose ConvertKit to work on this goal, they will have a step-by-step guide on how to do everything regarding email marketing.
P.S. The free plan does not offer some important features like sequences and automation.
SendX is another awesome email marketing platform that includes great features for all plans, including email sequences and automation. The pricing is accoding to the number of subscribers you have, but it’s much cheaper than the pricing of ConvertKit starting at about $7 per month.
Your Goal for Month #2
Create a landing page on ConvertKit or SendX, prepare a welcome email sequence and collect 5 subscribers.
Do More of Month #1
During the first month, you started a new blog, opened a new author account, and interacted with other authors through comments and book reviews. Continue doing what you did.
Was the short story that you’ve submitted accepted? Have you won any contests? Whether your answer is a yes or no, do more of that.
Your Goal for Month #2
Obtain another 200 followers on social media.
Write and submit another short story.
Publish 2-3 blog posts on your site.
Write one book review and share it.
That’s all for the second month, and that will keep you busy for a while. If you want more help on any of the above titles, drop a question in the comments, or send me an email at fictioncozycabin@gmail.com. If you were more like Jane, I hope with the help of Part I and Part II posts and the specific, easy-to-bite goals I provided, you will soon obtain an author platform as big as Sally’s.
Below is an image of the goals. Right click on it and click save to keep a copy. You can print out a few copies and keep them around your place as reminders.
Like and share this post if you like the value it offers to reach more talented writers who deserve to be seen.
Fiction Cozy Cabin 
Leave a comment