Oh, That Pesky Platform Thing

Yesterday I received an advance copy of THE YEAR OF LEARNING DANGEROUSLY: Adventures in Homeschooling (Perigee Hardcover; $23.95; August 7, 2012).

I toyed with the idea of homeschooling one of my kids--believe me, there were weird circumstances involved because I am genuinely not the type to do this. So, my first question when I saw this book was, How did this person manage to get a memoir on this subject published?

Checking the bio in the press material, I found that "popular blogger, author, and former child actor Quinn Cummings explores her family’s decision to wade into the unfamiliar waters of homeschooling."

Bingo. This writer has a platform--a way to reach people to tell them about the book. (I am petty enough to think that former child actors [FCA] get undeserved bonus points in publishers' brains, but it can't be argued that FCAs must be media savvy.)

All writers improve their chances of being published if they have a platform. So, when Ericka Dreifus's blog Practicing Writing mentioned a platform-building challenge on a blog named My Name Is Not Bob, I thought I'd pass it along.

I hope to take Not Bob up on the challenge. But I also hope to the do the Etsy store-building boot camp, too, so we'll see how these work out.