Increasing Sales, One Chapter at a Time

Building Communities

As many professional publishers work to find material that will stand out in a crowded marketplace, the focus on the author’s role has become even more intent, and the concept of the all-important author platform has broadened in its scope.

Vondeling believes that publishers need to tap into authors who already have established audiences, or communities. “We are seeing that the books that are working are by people, professionals, authors who have an established community of people who know them, know their work and are hungry to learn more,” she says. “And they might know their work because they do training or do a lot of speaking, or they blog regularly … the reality is, if we just publish an interesting idea, the book is going to be dead on arrival.”