Your home page is where your heart is

In one of the classes I teach at Southern New Hampshire University’s MFA program, we spend a good amount of time on platform. (Loosely defined, this is essentially a writer’s capability to sell books based on their own network. But that’s a topic for another column.) It’s a big, hairy beast that has many new writers both scratching their heads and feeling like they must get one without really understanding why. It’s just like that time you discovered that you could buy shoes made of eucalyptus fiber on the internet and suddenly decided you needed a pair. (This may or may not be a true story; I admit nothing.)

This is a huge topic, so of your platform, but a critical portion. And, in fact, it can help you to frame your platform overall: “It” is your author’s website.