Draft Your Platform Action Plan: 5 Worksheets

Last weekend at the Midwest Writers Workshop, I offered a workshop on author platform building. Part of the workshop included 5 worksheets to help writers take an inventory of their platform (as it stands today), and also brainstorm how to better grow it.

Good news for you: I’m making my platform worksheets available for free.

Click here to download (PDF).

Below I’ve offered an explanation of each worksheet.

New writers may think they don’t have a “platform,” but everyone does. It might not be big or dramatic, but you do have one. These worksheets help you think about that platform from multiple angles, and for those who are advanced enough, you can also put some numbers behind it.

Note: If the term “platform” is new to you, in short, it can be defined as whatever gives you visibility and an ability to connect with readers. I gave some fundamental advice about developing platform in this blog post at my Writer’s Digest blog: The Hardest Part About Developing Platform

A brief guide to the 5 worksheets

1. Content. This worksheet helps you brainstorm all the content you currently own rights to, and prompts you to think of ways you might repurpose it for different mediums or channels.
2. Website/Blog. This worksheet is especially helpful for fiction writers or poets who aren’t sure what to blog about. The checklist acts as a prompt/creativity tool to get you thinking beyond “I’ll just write about my own work.” I’ve also included a checklist of questions about your site’s purpose, and how to maximize its impact. Note: USP stands for “unique selling proposition”—and if you can’t fit the USP into the space provided, it’s probably too complicated or unfocused.
3. Social Media. This worksheet takes stock of your social media presence, and prompts you to think about where your audience might actually hang out (rather than just where other WRITERS hang out).
4. Relationships. This is the invisible fuel of just about everyone’s platform. It’s hard to make progress if you’re working alone. Most people are (pleasantly) surprised when they really start to think of the number of people and organizations they know.
5. Actual Reach. This worksheet can be especially helpful if you’re putting together a book proposal, or doing a 6-month or annual inventory of where and how you seem to be succeeding. It is somewhat limited and could be crass, depending on who you are (numbers don’t tell the whole story, not by a long shot), but metrics can be essential in being more efficient with your efforts. (Note: Book sales and downloads are also part of your metrics; add those if applicable to you.)

Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.

Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.