Platform to Agent

dennis7490 said:

I have been reading all of these blogs, books etc. about creating a platform. Then it occurred to me that a platform has already been created for me in www.newfiction.com. No agent is involved. Neither has any money, since the audio books are for free.
Newfiction has 8 audio books on its site. Two of them are mine. I also rewrote two of the others (for money).
Newfiction gets 1 million hits per month. There are thousands of tweets. Tom, the owner, is running this site. Except for the writing aspect, I'm not involved.
Question: Since there is already traffic to these titles, how do I promote this to an agent to get a book deal? Are agents even interested?
Thanks,
Dennis

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Is there a way to tell how many individual readers you have or otherwise gauge the popularity of your individual stories? There are probably other unconventional ways that agents find work they want to represent and I'm not an expert on this, but the two I'm most familiar with are fan fiction and self published works, for which agents can usually get a feel for the popularity of a work based on reviews/reads/rankings/etc. So if there's a way to tell that on your venue, then I would say, query as normal and then let the agent know that it's been displayed at x-site and has x-number of reads/reviews/etc. Keep in mind that selling an already published work to a publisher is more difficult unless that work has generated a lot of interest with readers and has really impressive metrics. "Thousands" of interested readers might not cut it.

Your other option is to write a new story and sub that to agents, fresh, or self publish that piece. When you're published, if there's a way to leverage your current platform (twitter followers, site forum, etc.) to advertise your newly published work, that's where I really think you'll get the most benefit.

Every author here with a self-published book has their work on Amazon, Goodreads, whatever.

Those sites get millions of hits a day too.

In case that wasn't clear, the answer is "no". Agents only care if you have credits with major magazines, advance-paying publishers, or you've sold a significant number of copies (I'd say five figures, at least, and I mean sold, not given away for free).

Also, that's not the common use of the word "platform". Platform (as I know the term) is usually a fan-base that you have prior to your publishing endeavors, ie. you're a blogger with thousands of hits a day, a well-known actor, etc.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Platform for literary purposes means readership, but it applies almost entirely to non-fiction. It includes web presence (much more than you described), built-in readers (students, for instance), and books sold.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal

I don't think that would count as a platform.

But don't worry. An agent is going to be mostly interested in the book you query. Where fiction is concerned, platform is a bonus, not a requirement.

Forget platform, if you want to sell a novel. You don't need a platform at all, you just need a novel that makes an agent and an editor see dollar signs. That's it.