I’m just a business writing coach. I’m not an actor, but I do play one on TV.

I’m told that getting a SAG card is a catch-22 situation for starting actors.  There are two rules associated with getting one.

1. You can’t get an acting gig without a SAG card.

2. You must have an acting credit to qualify for a SAG card. 

In practice, this leads to people getting that first gig by trading favors with a casting director or other influential person, or so I’m told. It’s similar to a situation in modern publishing.

1. Agents don’t want to talk with you unless you’ve established a platform. 

2. It’s hard to get a platform before you’ve become a published writer. 

It’s that same kind of catch-22, where getting one thing requires that you have another thing, which takes the first thing to get. Since you don’t have time to chase your tail, what’s the solution?

I’m here to make the case that self-publication is the solution. If you publish a solid book and build its audience with a combination of compelling writing, intelligent engagement and a little bit of traditional marketing, you build that platform the agents want to see.

In fact, I’m predicting that traditional agents will be irrelevant in the next 5 to 10 years because performance of your first book on Amazon will serve the gatekeeping function those agents provided for publishers last century.

So get off your duff and turn 20,000 words into a self-published work over on Kindle Direct Publishing. If you’re a professional, it adds to your credibility. If you’re a novelist, it gives you metrics to show when you’re approaching a publishing deal. If you’re a freelancer, it’s another source of income.

Anybody out there self-publish something yet? I’ve got two self-pubbed books out there right now. One is hitting the top 10 while the other sort of languishes. What advice to we all have for fellow readers?