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Home » Archives for Dan Balow » Page 3

Dan Balow

Building Your Platform Without Becoming a Narcissist

By Dan Balowon October 19, 2022
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Authors in the process of building and maintaining their media platforms can easily slip into a self-focused effort, evaluating every relationship with an eye toward their personal benefit, seeking attention in any way possible, and exhibiting all the traits of destructive pride.

Well now, there’s a cheery thought to start the day. Some little hairs must have gotten under my collar after my last visit to the barber.

Yes, platform building can be toxic unless you intentionally make it nontoxic.

Narcissism is when a person becomes arrogant, prideful, selfish, demanding, and manipulative. The consequences surround a person like a “sin force field,” making them far less than what God planned for them.

Often, I compare the writing life to a series of job interviews. Getting an agent, pitching a publisher, and assembling an author platform each have similar aspects to interviewing for a job.

When meeting with a prospective employer, it is always confusing whether you should come across as confident and assured or humble and open to leading. Without knowing for certain how to act in every situation, we can misread the audience, and it usually doesn’t end well.

When it comes to building an author platform for marketing purposes, there are any number of best practices for content development, media use, effective promotion, and reader service. But there should be best practices to prevent you from developing into a personal mess, as well.

How do you build your author platform without becoming a narcissist?

Compliments: Never write, “If I say so myself …” statements about your work. Always have compliments originate from others. Maybe you have heard the management technique of “Praise in public, correct in private”? A corollary would be, “Praise from others, admit to shortcomings yourself.”

Service: Any successful author platform has an element of service to it. This means you provide information and inspiration, with the reader foremost in your mind. Unless you are an already-famous person, you will never build a responsive platform by only writing about yourself. Give people something to inform or inspire them. Rarely will it be entirely about you.

Books: Since this is about book-writing, the books you talk about in your media platform should be from a mix of writers. Sure, include your work; but also talk about another book or author you recommend. Every author should have a list of books they enjoy and appreciate from other authors. And to be clear, do not expect the authors of those books to do the same. Expecting reciprocity only fuels the kind of behavior you want to avoid.

Prayer: Pray for your readers and those consuming your material, but don’t make a big deal about it. It’s fine to ask others to send prayer requests, but then you need to follow through quietly and without fanfare. This simple approach to prayer extinguishes the pride-potential, making you a real, caring person.

Concluding, these practices will always be a battle. Like many things in this world, it’s an imperfect process; and there will never be a complete victory in this life. But if you don’t push and pull on these things to control them, they will control you.

The solution is to struggle.

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Category: Branding, Marketing, Social Media, The Writing Life

Publishing Is Publishing

By Dan Balowon October 6, 2022
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Every part of the book publishing ecosystem adjusted its perspective to accommodate both traditional publishing and author-published works. It wasn’t long ago these two paths were treated as either/or decisions; but now they are both/and. Many traditional publishers offer author-paid services, some agents have indie services for clients, and a large number of authors publish both traditional and …

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Category: Book Business, Book Business, Indie, Marketing, Self-Publishing, Trends

Publishing Milestones

By Dan Balowon September 28, 2022
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Today, glance through a potpourri of book releases, important dates, and defining events that make up book publishing in general and Christian publishing specifically. Not all the books or events are “Christian” in nature, but their presence created historical markers to give perspective. (I stopped at 2010 since events and books take time to become true historical markers.) 1440 – German Johann …

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Category: Publishing History

Publishers Are Book Investors

By Dan Balowon September 15, 2022
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Traditional book publishers have a wide variety of employees, each with different but complementary abilities. Every task required to effectively publish a book is under one roof (metaphorically speaking these days, of course). Everything is geared toward publishing books well. The same could be said of many author-paid or indie publishers. Talented people with a goal of publishing well, working …

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Category: Book Business

Food vs. Medicine Books

By Dan Balowon September 7, 2022
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Even though this topic could be applicable to just about any type of book, we’ll be looking at those in the Christian publishing category today. Categorizing books has been part of publishing for a very long time. Officially, there are over four dozen primary book categories designated by the BISAC coding system, which spin off to thousands of subcategories. For example, one of the primary …

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Category: Book Business, Christian, Creativity, Theology

The Mystery of Book Data

By Dan Balowon August 25, 2022
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The book-publishing market has an element of mystery to it, and not only in the category of books called mysteries. Many things are not as scientific as you might think. Prominent book-bestseller lists are based on data from a sampling of booksellers, rather than comprehensive information outputs from all channels. Industry-status reports from publishing trade associations use a similar sampling …

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Category: Book Business, Technology, The Publishing Life

Just the Facts

By Dan Balowon August 17, 2022
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With the omnipresence of social media and other ways for people to directly express opinions, Christian writers should take extra care to be aware of the facts when it comes to both theology and society. Since Christians actually believe there is truth and it is knowable, Christian writers should be a lot more like classic journalists, researching, studying, and reporting truth, rather than simply …

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Category: Reading, The Writing Life, Trends

Theology for Writers

By Dan Balowon August 4, 2022
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Spoiler alert: God’s nature never changes. His truth is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. While Christian writers seek to write in a compelling, engaging manner, seeking to pull readers through their books from paragraph to paragraph and page after page, the foundational theology of which they write never changes. You might write about the need for someone to make Jesus the Lord of their …

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Category: Theology

Bestselling Books in 1997

By Dan Balowon July 14, 2022
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Today is a look back twenty-five years and the books selling well in 1997. Often, this type of exercise puts the present and future in perspective. You can draw your own conclusions about what any of this means. First, the July 13, 1997 New York Times Bestseller List: Fiction PLUM ISLAND, by Nelson DeMille (Warner) SPECIAL DELIVERY, by Danielle Steel (Delacorte) FAT TUESDAY, by Sandra Brown …

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Category: Publishing History

Make the Right Media Choice

By Dan Balowon July 6, 2022
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The study of communication through various methods fascinates me. Some media share audiences with other media and others have very select audiences. Each person consumes content differently. Those in education know students do not all learn at the same speed using the same tools. Fortunately, good teachers recognize those differences and adjust their methods. In the 1970s and 80s, educator Neil …

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Category: Pitching
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