Yes, but first you have to write the book

OK, I'm going to talk about one of my pet peeves in the publishing business. There are so many thousands of authors who want to get published, and they do their homework in talking to agents, publishers, and marketing professionals, all of whom tell the fledgling author that he/she has to develop a platform and a marketing strategy for visiblity to ensure that the book will sell.

This is all well and good. They are right about that. You DO need to consider your marketing strategy, and your platform, and you DO need to do a gimlet-eyed assessment of your competition. BUT I have found that when authors get all caught up in stressing about their "marketing plan" before they've even written the book, they're putting the cart before the horse.

Yes, you need a marketing plan, but first you have to have something to market. You have to write the book! That means that you have to spend time thinking about your content, and about how to create that content to be as compelling as possible. You need to actually get into writing the book itself. Without your actual book, having a marketing plan won't sell books for you, because you won't have a book! Yes, you need to know who your audience is, what your "market" is--but to captivate that market, you need great content, written to a high standard, which will stick in your readers' minds.