A Different Kind of Strength: Platform Building for Writers by K.B. Cooper

K.B. Cooper examines what platform building looks like beyond the advice, and how connecting with readers can quickly extend past marketing into ongoing engagement.

Okay, I followed through with all the advice about building a platform. If I want to even get my nonfiction proposal noticed, I need to already have followers. A book? No, I need fans waiting for a book.

An agent gave me the literary blessing: “You are a good writer. But I want your next book. Write a 6-hour course that you can teach from experience.”

No problem. I’ve been a college composition and rhetoric teacher for over 20 years. I write curriculum, teach the lesson, review what the students learned. What did they get correct in composition and argument structure? Semester finished. Grades given. Students get their chance with teacher evaluations. Brush my hands together—done.

But a platform?

How hard can it be to develop a Facebook page? Communication is communication. I’ve been getting college students to care about thesis statements for two decades. Surely I can get some adults to follow.

So, I approached Facebook like any other curriculum challenge. Target audience: Caregiving Daughters. Learning objective: support and encouragement. Content delivery: regular posts supporting daughters caring for aging mothers comparing it to a heroine’s journey.

Posts were scheduled like class periods, planned content themes like semester units. Mondays: encouraging and supportive words for the tasks they’d undertaken. Wednesdays: more support with academic evidence and quotes about the hero’s journey reframed for a heroine. Fridays: explanations of complex mother-daughter relationships, each ending with a question to invite discussion.

I waited for the engagement metrics like I’d wait for midterm scores.

The first few responses were encouraging. “Thank you for this perspective!” “I never thought about it that way!” I’ve got this. Just like positive student feedback. I’m helping people, building my platform, checking boxes for that book proposal.

But then the comments started getting deeper. Not the tidy discussion responses I’d planned for, but raw confessions that showed up at all hours.

“My mom doesn’t recognize me anymore, but I keep showing up every day. Is that heroic or just heartbreaking?”

“I haven’t slept through the night in six months. She calls for me constantly. I feel like I’m drowning.”

“I love my mother, but I want my life back. Does that make me a terrible daughter?”

These weren’t engagement metrics. These weren’t academic discussions about heroic narratives. These were daughters in crisis, and somehow my neat curriculum plan had become their lifeline.

There’s no syllabus for this. No office hours that end at 5 PM. These women don’t disappear after finals week – they’re there at midnight, posting about another sleepless night, another crisis, another moment when they’re not sure they can keep going.

I find myself checking the page at all hours, wondering if someone needs a response, needs to know they’re not alone. The metrics I thought I needed for my book proposal – followers, engagement, platform growth – suddenly feel absurdly small next to Sarah’s post about her mother’s final days.

But what do I say to the woman whose mother just stopped eating? What academic theory covers the daughter who’s grieving someone who’s still alive?

This isn’t the kind of strength I’ve built over twenty years of teaching. Grading papers, designing lessons, explaining rhetoric – that’s intellectual muscle. This requires something else entirely. The stamina to show up emotionally, day after day, for people whose pain doesn’t fit into semester schedules or publishing timelines.

I thought I understood communication. Write a book, readers buy it, maybe we meet at a signing – finite interaction, clear boundaries. Teach a class, students learn, semester ends, everyone moves on. Clean transactions with natural endpoints.

Caregiving daughters don’t graduate. Their mothers don’t recover on schedule. There’s no final grade that closes the loop on watching someone you love disappear piece by piece.

The publishing world’s decree about “building a platform” never mentioned this part – but they probably don’t know it either. When your expertise touches something people desperately need, you don’t just gain followers. You inherit their vigil.

Perhaps that’s exactly what happens when you write about something that truly matters. Staying connected with your readers, even when it’s demanding, becomes part of the work itself.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

K.B. Cooper is a writer focused on care, responsibility, and women’s lived experience. She is the founder of Caregiving Daughters and Traveling Ladies, and a writing expert with Mercor Intelligence, contributing to large language model training and evaluation. Her 2025 anthology publications include Songs of the Heart (Nov. 2025), And God Made Pets (July 2025), and Lessons That Shaped Our Lives (Nov. 2025). Her essays “Through Mary’s Eyes” (Adelaide Literary Journal, July 2025) and “What We Count” (Adelaide Literary Journal Award-Winning 2025 Essay Collection) were published in 2025.

Learn more at TravelingLadies.net and find Caregiving Daughters on Facebook.