Artemis Fowl on Platform

I started reading the popular ARTEMIS FOWL books this past week. Not too many books offer a twelve year old boy international criminal as a main character. It’s entertaining.

I was thinking about my experience reading it after having perused yesterday’s discussion on platform. Platform gives authors a launching pad of sorts for success. It also helps establish future readers’ expectations.

Whether a platform consists of university lectures or a modest blog, platform offers a glimpse into one’s writing. Well, possibly, anyway – what I am trying to say is that platform generally precedes publication, and platform sets expectations.

For instance, if you flip the back of a historical fiction book and read that the author served as a history professor, you expect credibility, possibly some scholarly tangents, etc. All I knew was that kids loved ARTEMIS FOWL and that it sold well. I didn’t know much else nor had I read any of Eoin Colfer’s other works.

As we talked about yesterday, a well written book trumps platform. I’d say my experience with ARTEMIS FOWL didn’t require an author’s platform. A kid told me I should read it, and I did. That’s the best sale, right?

I’ll close with this early morning Saturday thought – as good as having a platform is for an author, there is something delightful as a reader in reading a book (like me with ARTEMIS FOWL) where you have no preconceptions (i.e., no idea what is going to happen nor how an author likes to treat his/her characters and endings and so on … I’m certainly enthralled by the young Artemis Fowl.