by Maggie Wallem Rowe

You know you can write. It’s both a spiritual gift and a skill honed through years of study, practicing your craft, and learning from industry professionals and other writers at conferences, webinars, and workshops.

Better yet, you have a great concept: a big idea, compelling hook, or intriguing plot. You’re excited about sharing your work with the world.

What gives most of us pause, though, is that dreaded word that begins with a P: Platform.

In the Christian publishing industry, we’re careful about language. We know how to describe life situations or capture plot twists without using offensive terms.  The “P” word, though, is the “dirty word” you often hear uttered at conferences in tones of dismay or despair.

How will an agent or publisher take my work seriously if I don’t have a big enough platform?

It’s a valid question.

Faith-based publishing is ministry, certainly, but it’s also a business. In today’s competitive publishing landscape, publishers need authors who can help bring readers to them through their own marketing, speaking, and social media efforts. In a word, writers who have a platform.

In our culture, a platform is a fan base. Publishing has high overhead, with employee salaries, cost of goods, and vast warehouse space. Publishers want and need authors with platforms because their books are easier to sell and promote. Today there are many ways to get can published, but to get noticed you need a platform (“fans.”)  It’s not so much about who you know but who knows you.

Rather than seeing platform as a stumbling block on the pathway to publication, we can view it as an opportunity instead to build meaningful ways to connect with others.

In his book Write Better: A Lifelong Editor on Craft, Art, and Spirituality, Andrew T. LePeau describes it this way: “Our platforms are a mix of visibility, credibility, and community. We need all three.”

Writing may be a solitary endeavor, but platform-building is a group effort.  When I was first starting out, fellow members of my writers guild encouraged me to think of platform as more of a bridge and less of a stage.  What are the most meaningful ways of connecting with others? Who can you follow, watch, and learn from? You’ve already made a great start by getting involved with the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian writing community!

There’s no secret formula, no magic bullet for building a platform and increasing your reach. As you faithfully and humbly practice your craft, community, credibility, and visibility will follow. There are few overnight successes in our calling.

It’s also helpful to remember that most books are published before their authors were famous. And they still aren’t!

Most important of all is never forgetting on whose platform we truly stand.

Ann Voskamp explains it this way: “I’m humbly grateful here for every pastor, teacher, author, who sees platform as altar, as a place to come and lay down their lives in utter and complete sacrifice for Christ – knowing that the only platform Christ ever had was a place to come and die…(We must not turn) a platform given by God to lift high the name of Jesus – into a pedestal praised by men.

“God alone gave the platform for His name to be exalted, for them to decrease, for man to be invisible and clear glass to God.”

When we come to view platform not as pedestal but as altar – a place to lay down the fruit of our labor at Jesus’ feet – we can rest assured that He will be in charge of the harvest.

Maggie Wallem Rowe is a national speaker, dramatist, and author whose first book, This Life We Share, was a finalist for the 2021 ECPA Christian Book Award in the New Author category. Maggie has also been a TEDx presenter. Her second book, Life is Sweet, Y’all: Wit and Wisdom with A Side of Sass, released from Tyndale House Publishers in 2022. Maggie writes weekly from Peace Ridge, her home in the mountains of North Carolina. MaggieRowe.com.