6 Easy Ways For a Debut Author in India to Connect With Readers and Build an Author Platform To create your own platform and gain people's recognition you must start early, just when you start with the first draft of your first book or even before that

Gone are the days when writing did not qualify as a secured career option in India. In the present time, people from varied fields are turning into successful full-time authors; provided they have the prerequisites to become one. Some fundamental factors for this growing phenomena are- the rise in a number of publishers and literary events, the option of self-publishing becoming popular and the emergence of agencies that assist authors by connecting them to publishers. Another huge factor that has led to the creation of new generation bestselling authors in India is the advent of social media and its promotional tools. However, despite all of these, the debuting authors often face their biggest hurdle in the form of reaching out to readers and letting them know about her or his first book.

Here are some simple but effective ways that first-time authors can use to connect with readers and build her or his author platform.

1. The most important step here is to plan your things in advance. To create your own platform and gain people's recognition you must start early. Just when you start with the first draft of your first book or even before that; start contributing for various popular online writing platforms. With numerous e-magazines now looking for stories from the youth, this is the best time to take its advantage. Become a frequent contributor to different online portals and choose topics that are contemporary and relevant to the target audience of your book.

2. Start maintaining a blog on topics that people can connect with. But at the same time, provide something different; which can become the USP of your blog. E.g. let's say you have chosen a popular theme like "dealing with dejections and rejections of life'. Now rather than plainly penning down the solutions and advice for the above issue, it would work much better if you can curate incidents or stories of people who have dealt with and overcome such concerns.

However, even if you have great content on your blog; it is always advisable to promote it on your social media handles. Learn to create eye-grabbing and intriguing captions for promoting your works on social media. Also, research and implement the simple hacks which can help one to reach more and more audience on social media.

3. Another way which is highly effective in making collaborations with like-minded bloggers on social media. Here, one has to be very specific and analytical to identify fellow bloggers who probably are emerging gradually, have contents similar to your domain and those who too are seeking an audience.

You can also take this one step further by creating a community of such bloggers and trying to grow it with time. This community could become the pushing factor for your first book, once published.

4. With the attention span of people plummeting drastically, this is the age of expressing more and in less time and words. This demand has created the supply for micro fiction on social media. The young adults love reading short tales which expresses the various emotions that they go through. Now, this is something you cannot afford to miss if you want to grab young and dynamic fans. Also, you can be more interactive and curate micro-tales on personal impactful moments of your audience. But to do so your interaction with your audience has to be strong for the get-go.

5. As a debut author, one thing is certain that a crunch of your followers on social media would be hardcore bibliophiles and aspiring writers. So, once you have started the above-mentioned activities consistently; start sharing about yourself to your followers. Tell them about the book you are writing, the inspirations behind it, the various real challenges that you faced and how you have overcome certain obstacles in your path. Do not try to teach your followers, rather state your honest experiences. Also once you get your book published you can share the intricate details on how to pitch a novel plot to publishers and what things one must be aware of in the process of publishing.

6. You can also collaborate with microblogging pages that can promote your book and your profile. The collaborations can be paid or just like me you can make barter. The book covers often have space enough to mention the brand name and logo of your various collaboration partners. You can provide them with brand visibility through your book and in exchange they can promote your works.

These steps which do not require any substantial investment or shrewd marketing tactics can be easily applied by young authors to grow their list of followers and readers. But one thing which is must here is your consistency and ability to identify and understand the pool of audience that would reckon with you and your book.