How to build an author platform (without losing your mind!)

Welcome to Rising Tides Writers, a community of 2k aspiring and published writers. I’m Caroline Madden, author of The Marriage Vendetta (2025 HarperCollins/Bonnier) and The Village (April 2027). It took me more than a decade to get my first book deal and in this newsletter I’m sharing all the things I wish I’d known back when I was getting buried under rejections!

If you’re struggling to find writing time, I feel your pain! For some mysterious reason, our school was closed almost all week, so I’ve spent most of my time this week on the beach with Children + Dog and almost all day yesterday playing Monopoly. Which was so lovely!

But my new manuscript has been crying out for attention — I know from experience that if I neglect a work-in-progress for too long (especially at this early stage) it starts to die and sometimes there’s no resuscitating it. I may have to go back to my old 5am regime for the next few weeks, as I need to get the first 10,000 words done and polished by the end of June.

What about you? How do you manage to make time to write? (I need inspiration!)

This week’s post is inspired by a question from a lovely subscriber who is writing her first novel:

Do you have any thoughts on building an audience (long) before the first book comes out? Looking back at your own debut journey, how would you have approached this in hindsight?

Such a great question!

I have a LOT to say about this. I’m the type of person that when I go for something, I generally go waaaaay too far. Like, in a really unhealthy, unbalanced (but fun!), obsessive deep dive kinda way. So when the time came to start doing social media stuff to promote my debut The Marriage Vendetta online, I went for it.

I did online courses on book marketing and social media for authors (The Author Circle and Marketing by Shelby) and then I went all in on Instagram which at the time was my favourite platform. (More on this below)

Also, last year I posed a version of this question to my very experienced New York literary agent: what should I be doing in terms of social media? Her answer surprised me. In a good way.

So here’s what I’ve learned from my own experience of what worked, and my agent’s advice and… what I’ll be doing differently for my second novel, The Village: