New self-published author Troy Tompkins, whose first installment in a fantasy book series is now published by Simon & Schuster, was determined to get noticed, so he created a fantasy publicist.

The Message Behind a Message Leads to a Series – New York Times describes a school presentation by Mr Tompkins: “‘Who here knows what a publicist is?’ Mr. Tompkins asked a class of ninth graders at the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics this fall. One student’s arm shot up: ‘It’s someone who talks about you all over the place.’ Mr. Tompkins agreed, then described how, two years ago, he couldn’t get a book publicist, so he made one up.

‘I created an alias, Alan Chase,’ he said. He put that name on press releases for a book reading, which caught the attention of someone at Simon & Schuster, who attended the event and called him afterward. ‘I didn’t expect that,’ Mr. Tompkins said.”

Most appropriate for a fantasy author.

There’s more to writing a book than writing a book. You need readers too.

Your readers are called your “platform”. If you’re a wise author, you’ll build your platform before, during, and after you write your book.

Do You Have a Purpose and Platform in Place? By Patricia L. Fry says: “As I’ve written many times in my books, hundreds of articles and my blog, your platform is your following, your way of attracting readers. Who needs a platform? Every author who wants to sell books. Think about it; if you want to buy a book on sports statistics, you would choose one written by someone with a track record in this topic, right? If you had to choose from a dozen novels, you’d probably pick the one by an author whose name you recognize. I would venture to guess that Rachel Ray and Paula Deen sell more foods and cooking books than any unknown cookbook author.”

Building your platform is also called – marketing your book.

If you’re new to publishing, you may not be aware of the vital role which marketing plays in selling your book to a publisher. You need to convince your publisher that you have a platform already, before the publisher will buy your book.

Unfortunately, some writers get this the wrong way round – they look on book publishing as a way of providing them with a platform to do something else: to coach, to build a career as a speaker, etc. It doesn’t happen.

You build your platform before, during and after you write your book with your marketing activities.

My ebook “You CAN Sell Your Writing Now: Marketing Skills For Writers” teaches you to become a successful marketer of your writing and your writing skill. You’ll discover how to build your platform in a fun way as you write your book. It’s essential that you learn to do this, if you want to become a successful, selling author.

Remember – you need readers.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Many authors have touted the effects of publishing your book on the Web as a promotional tool for bookstore sales.

This New York Times article Crossover Dreams: Turning Free Web Work Into Real Book Sales reports regarding the Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which was published free online: “Mr. Kinney, a design director at Family Education Network, a unit of Pearson that operates Funbrain, where ‘Wimpy Kid’ first appeared, spent 10 years writing the book and always intended to publish it in print form. But after discussing it with his boss, Jess Brallier, the publisher of the Family Education Network, Mr. Kinney decided to serialize his book on Funbrain.com in part to attract children to the site during the summer. As an unknown author, he figured he might gain more exposure if he published the book — which looks as if it could be a hand-written diary of a mischievous middle-school boy — on a Web site with thousands of daily visitors in his target market.”

However, PublishersLunch Deluxe, from PublishersMarketplace says:

The NYT cites the illustrated children’s novel DIARY OF A WIMPY KID as the latest example that material available for free on the internet can still have value in traditional book form. In this case, Abrams has sold 147,000 copies tracked via Bookscan, and a larger version of what became the book (1,300 online pages in all) remains posted at Funbrain.com, where it has been a popular feature. But at least one retailer says the sales are due to good word-of-mouth for the book rather than viral attention driven by the web version.

So what’s best? Should you publish your book online free as a promotional tool as you write the book?

My gut feeling, if you’re a new writer, and don’t know much about selling your book is – yes.

You get these benefits:

* a readership

* publisher interest once the readership is big enough

* confidence in yourself – readers tend to give you confidence

* motivation to continue writing, because of the interaction with readers.

Chris Anderson, the author of The Long Tail, plans to give away several versions of his next book FREE for… well, free.

He’s hoping that the free versions will help him to market his services.

In Free is more complicated than you think he says that by giving away the book he wants to: “Give speeches, customizing my analysis and research for specific companies and industries. The free book is simply marketing for that, which can be more lucrative than book royalties. And who knows what else? Free distribution will put the book, in one form or another, into the widest number of hands possible. I’m not quite sure how I’ll monetize that reach, if I can at all. But the problem of making money indirectly from attention seems like a great problem to have.”

Read the entire blog post; it shows that even Dilbert’s creator has problems monetizing “free”.

When you’re giving stuff away, you need to have a plan. Several years ago “free” was all the rage. However, Giving stuff away without knowing why you’re doing it is madness.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t use “free” if you decide it’s worth it. For example, you can blog your book, and see what happens if you’ve never published a book before and have no editorial contacts. Blogging your book can hep you to get attention and rise above the slush pile; but you need to have a plan.