Abiola Abrams is no stranger to building an author’s platform. She had been doing it for nearly a decade without even realizing it. Abrams is best known as the host of BET’s The Best Shorts as well as Drew Barrymore’s new VH1 reality show, Tough Love but in her heart of hearts she’s always been a writer.
In our in-depth interview with Abrams, she tells writers her tips for building a platform, how she took her passion for love and relationships and built a career from it and about her debut novel, Dare (Simon & Schuster).
You and I first came in contact when I published my novel, Forever My Lady (Grand Central) when you were hosting BET’s Best Shorts. How did that show come about and how have you built your platform?
I was writing and directing short films and docs when BET offered me an on air job hosting their indie film competition The Best Shorts. Stranded, a short film that I directed in Germany as a part of the Berlinale apprenticeship program aired on the show prior to BET hiring me. I had been a host, reporter and correspondent on other mainstream programs previously such as HBO’s interstitial talk shows The Buzz and Chat Zone; and NBC’s hip hop news show The Source: All Access, a Source Magazine spin-off.
As for web presence I started keeping an online journal around 2000, and when audio podcasts started in 2005 I hosted a popular women’s motivational podcast on iTunes named The Goddess Factory. I didn’t know at the time that I was building a platform. As a storyteller I was only trying to form a sense of community with like-minded people. My platform was originally based on women and inspiration and that evolved to Relationships, Lifestyle, Pop Culture and Empowerment.
When did you decide you wanted to write novels?
I’ve been a writer since I was 6 years old. When my parents gave me a toy kitchen set I used the stove as a desk, turned the fridge on the side to make a file cabinet and stored pens in the sink! My father is a journalist so I was just trying to do what I saw him doing.
I wrote my first unpublished novel when I was in undergrad in the 90s. Tongue was the magical realism story of a woman who tries to put a spell on her boyfriend and instead puts a spell on a rival frenemy who then falls in love with her. People I let read it said, this won’t work because then she’d be a lesbian. God forbid! I didn’t have the cojones at the time to stand by my work.
What is your latest novel and how did you land an agent and a publisher?
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dare. It’s my debut published novel. It’s a comedic adventure through love, heartbreak and hip hop. After practically being left at the altar, a 30-something year old sociologist named Maya Hope goes undercover as a rapper and winds up “in too deep.” My framework for the story was actually the classic German fable Faust about a scholar selling his soul to the devil. What better metaphor for the entertainment industry is there than selling one’s soul to the devil?
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dare developed a really passionate following and was actually taught last semester at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in a hip hop literature course. They wanted to teach it again this semester but the printing was sold out. Hopefully Simon & Schuster / Pocket Books will enable them to be able to teach it again next semester.
My talent agent for TV hosting was the innovative Mark Turner at Abrams Artists but I was too afraid to express to him my literary side. They tell you when you’re talent be talent or you scare “the industry.” I was lucky that the producer of a film project that I was doing introduced me to her literary agent.
Then the wonderfully supportive Andie Avila who was at Hachette Book Group, Warner Books fought hard to acquire <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dare. She saw that a book could by literary, fun, sexy and urban all at the same time. Selena James won the book for Simon and Schuster/ Pocket Books and then sadly left for Kensington before we began the project. Hopefully I will still get the opportunity to work with these wonder women. Abby Zidle was ultimately my editor at Simon & Schuster.
What inspired you to write <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dare?
The parody of a female rapper had been rolling around my head for a while. At the time I was feeling sadness over loving this music that no longer seemed to love me. My “break up” with the music I loved paralleled my breakup with my starter husband! Rap music video imagery had become cartoonish and misogynistic and I wanted to explore and critique that. I also wanted to contribute positively with my art to hip hop storytelling by creating a literary tale. For example, Bluestone Road from Toni Morrison’s Beloved is located in the fictional town of Faustus, Ohio where the story begins. The book also references Alice Walker’s Finding the Green Stone, Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls and many other gems that might only be exciting to a women’s literature geek.
When I was writing the book I didn’t think about how difficult this would be to market – a fun African American women’s fiction hip hop retelling of Faust. Yeah.
First the sales team marketed Dare as erotica. For me, building a long term audience, I did not want to bait and switch them just to sell books. I love erotica but with 3 or 4 sex scenes – as hot as they are- in 400 pages, this ain’t it! But the “urban lit,” “street lit” or “hip hop lit” tag would also lead to the “wrong” readers because those readers are looking for something gritty and simple. I learned that the marketing of books is still very segregated so I launched my own campaign marketing the book as African American “chick lit,” as marginalizing as that sounds. I’m not a person who gets hung up on the semantics of terminology – I just wanted to find my audience which we did. And <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dare developed a very loyal almost cult following of passionate readers. We’ve also had a few offers for film rights but nothing that seems right yet.
I plan to do an audiobook of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dare this year. The preeminent audiobook seller told me that Dare‘s key audience, women of color, doesn’t buy audiobooks. I disagree. You’d be surprised what people buy if you make it available to them rather than just make assumptions. The dollars of women and people of color are always underestimated. But if I need to podcast the book into an iPhone app there will be an audiobook for all of the people – male and female, black white and everyone else – who keep requesting it.
How important would you say is a platform for fiction authors nowadays? And how specifically can someone in Smallville, Nebraska create a massive platform as big as yours?
A platform is key. I am so excited about marketing my next book because now I have a hungry multicultural audience excited and waiting. Every day I get emails and tweets saying, we need the next book right now! I have to resist just posting all of my upcoming work on my daily Sex & Relationships column because I can’t wait to share the next books with my fans.
My platform is me – Abiola Abrams: Passionista, Author and TV Big Mouth who writes about love, sex, dating, pop culture and the quest for joy and personal power. Kiss and Tell TV is my award-winning bi-weekly docu-talk web series, Abiola’s Kiss & Tell Live is my monthly NYC reading series, and the Kiss & Tell Report is my column. I have a dedicated following on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blackplanet and my home base is my new site AbiolaTV.com. I am also a featured writer on Pepsi We Inspire, Hello Beautiful, Examiner etc.
Here’s how I built my platform for Dare. As I said <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dare was challenging to market because it didn’t fit neatly into the standard book boxes but I knew an audience was waiting. At the time I was hosting the short film show for BET and I communicated with viewers primarily through MySpace and AbiolaAbrams.com. If I had known as an author that the selling of the book was up to me I would have been ready but no one tells you that as a new author! Three weeks before my book launch I realized that there were no signings, events, reviews, parties, panels interviews scheduled– NOTHING — and I had a small TV show but on a major network. I got my butt in gear.
I planned a sponsored book release party and contacted every single black and women’s book blogger and reviewer I could find. Publisher’s Weekly ignored <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dare due to the erroneous erotica angle. The blogs and book sites supported me in a huge way and I had soon about 30-35 articles, guest blogging spots, reviews, Blog Talk Radio appearances etc as my virtual book tour. Meanwhile readers were sending me photos of themselves holding the book and telling me that <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dare was selling by the register in several Wal-Marts. So I called Wal-Mart and set up signings- doing the same with Barnes and Noble and Borders. I partnered with several authors to create topic centered panels and events so that as a new author I could be exposed to their audiences as well. I did out of the box events- like a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dare reading / concert by collaborating with a hip hop jazz group for signings at Barnes & Noble Lincoln Center and HueMan Bookstore in Harlem.
I also guest blogged on mainstream sites like Largehearted Boy, Powell’s, and used video podcasting. Rachel Kramer Bussel and her NYC reading series In the Flesh were incredibly supportive as was women’s bookstore Bluestockings.
It’s funny because I really didn’t want to be pigeonholed as “just a black book” whatever that means and it was the African American sites like AALBC, Rawsistaz, Backlist, Black Expressions Book Club, Urban Literary Review, African American Literary Awards, Writer’s Cramp, Conversations Live and Blackplanet where I had amassed 400,000 “friends” who supported me thoroughly. And all of this would have been for nought if I had a crappy book. People didn’t know me as a writer so they were hesitant but once they read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dare they said, we have to get this book out there. I started my web TV series in part to promote Dare and by the time I went on a 5 city tour with other authors called the Divas of Literature 6 months later, readers knew me from the web more than from BET.
For those looking to build your platform, find your niche community, speak your mind and your audience will find you. For example, this past week I tweeted my disgust and frustration at Nightline pimping the “Single, Picky, Lonely Black Woman” story yet again. Blogger and Feminist Activist Megan Carpentier saw the tweet and invited me with several other strong women to write about it on Jezebel.com. So many women have reached out to me after that story which is actually related to the topic of my next book. Was I trying to build upon my platform with that tweet? Absolutely not; but the wonderful thing about social media is that like finds like.
Create a marketing education for yourself: Listen to Morning Media Menu with Jason Boog and Matt Van Hoven right here on MediaBistro and check out the great courses, along with Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It, Andrew Warner on Mixergy, The Learning Annex, ProBlogger.com and Seth Godin.
For promotion I’ve found it useful to mix web with traditional media (broadcast and print) and in-person appearances because I am comfortable in all of those areas. I also tend to say yes to things that a sane person might reject – like being on VH1’s Tough Love or posing for the NY Sex Blogger Calendar. But my life is a delicious social experiment – and I’ve got books to sell. The fantastic thing about growing up an outsider is that when you already don’t fit in, for better or worse, you don’t fear falling on your face as much. Life for me is is an adventure. As long as I’m being true to me, what’s the worst that can happen?
It’s not always about just numbers of followers. It’s about influence. When I interview an author like Terrance Dean or a musical act like Busta Rhymes on my lifestyle web TV series and commenters say they bought the book or album because of my show, that’s influence. The fact that people can experience my work and then communicate directly with me on Twitter or Facebook means something.
How are your books doing? And what have you done that has effectively helped you with not only exposure for you books but actually sell copies?
In addition to my debut novel Dare my writing has been published in several bestselling anthologies: A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer edited by Eve Ensler, Behind the Bedroom Door edited by Paula Derrow, Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex edited by Ellen Sussman. I love being in anthologies because it’s a fantastic way to be exposed to different readers than your key demographic and the joint appearances are a great way to meet with other writers.
Radio shows and TV appearances definitely sell copies of books so when I was invited to participate in a new Drew Barrymore “reality” show on VH1 called Tough Love, I signed up. Positive Amazon reviews also sell books. One thing that I wish I’d done is directed each of the 300 or so emails I’ve received from readers to leave a review on Amazon. Next time!
My Dare campaign also resulted in a few traditional magazine articles, which are great bio builders but I don’t know that they sell books.
What’s your next project about?
I am completing really fun high concept projects. One is a self-help book called The Goddess Year and the other is a “slightly fictional memoir” named Sex, Fashion and Food: How to Get Over A Breakup.
The Goddess Year is like a Happiness Project specifically for single women. The premise is that we as women are so relationship obsessed that we need a full year of being purposely single (not single by happenstance) before committing to a relationship.
Our culture treats being single like a disease to be cured. The Goddess Year is similar to the European gap year where students take a year off to find themselves before committing to university. Women are not encouraged to sow their oats. I propose that women take 12 months, a Goddess Year of living outrageously before being entering again into a committed relationship. A year of YOU.
I realized that I am in my 30s and I had not been single since I was 15 years old. Most women spend their adult lives either in a relationship or in pursuit of a relationship. The Goddess Year presents a program that involves among other things taking life-changing risks and ticking off items from what I call The Beach Bucket List.
Sex, Fashion and Food: How to Get Over A Break Up is an over the top “slightly fictional” memoir about how everyone always compares my life to Sex & The City but the love and life situations I find myself in wind up being more I Love Lucy. Sex, Fashion, and Food is fun, bawdy and over the top – just like me. It’s a rock and roll excursion through my bedroom and lifestyle and it ain’t pretty! From SGWC (Single Girl With Cat) to reality TV and back! Much of it is actually about the adventures during my own personal Goddess Year, so it may even work as an app bonus book to The Goddess Year. App books are here – and valid.
And wait until I unleash the interactive Vook style Apps I have planned to go with the books! Oy vey. Clearly I’m really excited about marketing my next books. As an author who loves to talk, blog and meet readers I am built for this new market. Someone called me the Martha Stewart of love at a recent appearance!
Right now I am a promotional machine – and not on purpose. I am not trying to sell my readers and viewers or hoodwink them into anything. I value each one of them as much as hopefully they value my offerings. I host and curate a hot NYC monthly reading series, give high energy talks to college audiences, host and produce an edgy award-winning web TV talk show, and I’ve created my own love column which is in the top 5 on Examiner.com- all on my terms because this is what I love doing. The celebs that I’ve interviewed for my web TV series have all been the ones to initate contact. The same with advertisers. There is value in what we do as storytellers and mediamakers. We only need to claim it.
Everyone is lamenting the demise of publishing but I disagree. This is a very exciting time to be a writer if you love to interface with readers and have a strong platform. Publishers – call me!