Does the idea of “branding” yourself or your work make you cringe? (I’m an artist, dammit—not a corporate sleaze bag!) Are you confused by what “branding” for novelists, essayists, poets, or even general non-fiction writers even means? Or, conversely, are you sold on the necessity of branding your writing and excited about the opportunity, but completely intimidated by how exactly to go about it?
I confess I was solidly in the cringe camp for much of my early writing life when discussing authors as brands. But that’s because I was (as my above “corporate sleaze bag” comment might have hinted!) operating under misconceptions about what branding is (and possibly being unkind to sleaze bags too . . . but I digress).
Thankfully, around the same time I decided to launch my own small town contemporary romance series, I came across gold star advice in James Patterson’s Masterclass.com workshop. He explained branding in a way that clicked for my stubborn brain and totally made sense to me.
In a nutshell, he says to think of “brand” as a relationship you have with your readers. What can readers turn to your books for—and never be disappointed? What can they depend on you for that you will always deliver?
I also really benefited from Mike Loomis’ take that “personal branding does not mean a fake façade.” Rather it’s “the public expression of your calling.”
Thinking of brand that way—as a promise and a commitment rather than a hard sell—eased my concerns about seeming overly “salesy” or gimmicky.
I already knew in my heart of hearts what I hoped to give my readers via my stories, so making sure that my covers, book blurbs, website, ads, and content of my social media posts, etc. consistently show potential readers the same thing—what they can always turn to Ev Bishop for—seemed natural and right, especially since doing so is actually helpful to readers.
And while developing brand is sort of like honing one’s craft—an ongoing process, hopefully forever—I say with confidence and great conviction that determining your brand and consciously meeting your brand promise with every book is as crucial for your writing career as your actual writing is.
Why YOU (and every author) needs a brand
First and foremost, having a clear brand finds you readers—who then, hopefully, become loyal, voracious fans.
Regardless of genre or form, Trad published or Indie, the biggest struggle authors face is getting noticed and not having their book(s) fall into obscurity.
Knowing precisely what your brand is (what you offer readers!) gives you an action plan to attract readers, gain visibility, and stand out in a very crowded marketplace.
A strong, clear, consistent brand is:
- a magnet to new readers (Ooooh, this looks and sounds like my kind of book!)
- a reassurance to return readers (I really liked his last book—and this one is awesome too!)
- a comfort to true fans (Insert YOUR name never disappoints!) that keeps them coming back to you book after book
Two side benefits of knowing your brand:
1. It makes almost all aspects of marketing and promotion easier.
I used to fumble about, never really knowing what I should post, blog, or Tweet, etc. (I’m sure most of you relate to how figuring out promotional content that isn’t just some variation of “Please, pretty please, buy my book!” can be a struggle.)
Once I started to be aware of my brand (so, to reiterate, what I’m trying to give to my readers with each book, but also with each encounter with me in public or at online events or via social media), I was delighted by a huge side perk: a light to guide all marketing and promotion activities.
What do I blog, post, share, etc.? Anything that will appeal to readers who appreciate my brand of “Thoughtful, uplifting, often hilarious page-turners about family, friends, love, and finding your true home.”
What do I NOT blog, post, or stress myself out with? Anything that doesn’t fit under that umbrella—so, for example, no politics (phew!), no in-depth social commentary, no personal tirades about this pet peeve or my bad day, etc., etc. YOUR brand may include these things, of course, depending on what you write.
2. It is a map for deciding future projects.
Like many writers, I have a gazillion ideas—and they range wildly across genres, from thrillers, soft sci-fi, and mysteries to women’s fiction and contemporary romance.
Knowing my brand and seeing the practical benefits of building that brand and sticking with it (a growing reader base, increasing book sales, dependable income so I can write even more!) provides a map to follow when a book’s done. Faced with the what-to-write next conundrum, the answer is always: whatever story best fits with what my readers already want, expect, and hope for from me (AKA, whatever best fits my brand).
What brand is and isn’t
For you, your brand is your promise to your readers in terms of what they can expect from you.
For your readers, your brand is their full impression of you as an author. It will primarily be built on their experiences reading your books (how you make them feel, how you educate, help, or entertain them, etc.). However, it will also be shaped by any other contact or connection you have with them: your newsletter, your social media content, your website, etc.—and that’s where branding comes in.
Branding is the use of various tools to:
- build awareness that your books even exist
- convey your promise (what your brand offers!) to readers
- develop a consistently positive relationship/association with you (your books) in their mind
Common branding tools are things like the colors you use on your website, the logo you or your publishing company uses for your series or standalone books, your covers, the blurbs and taglines used to promote your books, your social media content and language, your newsletter content and voice, etc.
So, branding is not brand, but to share your brand with the world, you’ll want to work to have branding that consistently shows what your brand is.
How to determine your brand
So, we’ve determined having (being!) a recognizable brand is a super good thing—beneficial for both you as an author and for readers craving exactly what only you can offer—and we’ve talked a bit about what brand is and isn’t. That brings us to the main guts of our topic: What is YOUR unique personal brand?
I have great news regarding this. You probably already have one and just need to recognize it as such and consciously work to hone and build it.
As mentioned above, once I had a better understanding of brands for authors, I immediately knew what it was that I hoped readers would “get” from reading my books. I think you know what you hope for too. Don’t joke about wanting to make a million bucks. (I mean, that might be your goal, but I suspect there’s more to it. After all, there are way easier ways to make money than writing! What are you hoping to give readers? What do you want them to receive for investing time in your words?)
Homework time!
1) Generate a sentence or two outlining specific feelings, experiences, or information you want readers to come away with. (You don’t have to share this with anybody. It’s your personal guide, so be honest, no matter how “big” your vision is.)
2) Review your website, social media content, covers, blurbs, etc. Evaluate them critically. Would a person who stumbled upon them get any clue about what your books offer in light of what you want your brand takeaway to be?
3) Brainstorm 5 things you can do in the next week to start showcasing your brand more effectively. Do those things!
4) Going forward from the moment you define and claim your brand: Make sure everything you do for your readers, so your social media posts, your newsletter content, your book covers, your blurbs, your ad graphics, and so on and so on, show some element of your brand—or at least compliment it and don’t give mixed signals.
I hope I’ve given you food for thought and that if you were feeling anxious or directionless about your “brand,” I’ve given you some practical ways to identify it and start building it today. Your ideal readers and kindred-book-spirits are out there, eagerly waiting to find you! If you make your readers a promise and effectively convey what that promise is—then always deliver on it, you won’t even need luck. Or not much anyway!
If you enjoyed this post and would like to dig into the topic of branding more deeply, plus have the opportunity to take part in a live Q&A, I’d be honored if you joined me online Sunday, November 15, for my Federation of BC Writers workshop, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Brand? Click here for more information.
Ev Bishop is an award-winning, USA Today bestselling author, best known for her small town contemporary romance series, River’s Sigh B & B. Readers describe her books as “full of humor, love and wisdom,” set in a place “where breathtaking scenery and the magic of love are the best medicine for the soul.” She believes in fiction’s power to transform lives and that the world needs more stories—AKA yours. She hopes you’ll put your promise out there and find the readers just waiting for the exact thing you write!
Ev—Thanks for clarifying “brand” and for offering solid, down-to-earth ideas authors can use to define their own personal brand.
Glad you found my take helpful, Ruth. Thanks for reading and commenting!
Great words, Ev. This is an excellent look at branding for writers. You nailed it with “Your brand is your promise to your readers in terms of what they can expect from you.” It’s like the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) they teach in Marketing 101. Thanks for this!
Thanks for your affirming words and comment, Garry. So glad you found my take helpful!
Well expressed Ev; I do think about brand but only because others prompted me to make it more of a conscious process. As you said so well, most of us DO it, we just don’t realize it and so it’s more scattershot and less purposeful. I’ll keep thinking!
Thanks, Will. I’m so glad you found my take on brand to be on point. I know, for myself, starting to be more purposeful alleviated a lot of stress and eased my workload too. The whole “work smarter not harder” philosophy came into play. (All my throwing stuff at the wall, any wall, hoping something, anything, would stick, got exhausting, LOL!)
Fantastic advice, Ev! It takes time to develop a consistent brand, but with your expert advice, authors now have an exact roadmap of how to get from point A to B. I still cringe when marketing my books, though. LOL
Thanks so much for your affirming words and comment, Sue! So glad you found my take helpful and think that other authors will too. (And yes . . . I hear you re: still cringing . . . I think “non-cringing” is another always-ongoing, attempting-to-grow-in “process” for most of us, like honing craft and brand and, and, and . . . 😀 Best of luck with it!)
Thank you, Ev, for all your suggestions about branding. It’s pretty much always been an elusive term to me though I understand what it is – basically. But I like your advice that we should review our website, social media content, covers, blurbs, etc: and then ask ourselves: “Would a person who stumbled upon them get any clue about what your books offer in light of what you want your brand takeaway to be?”
That’s something I’m going to think about seriously today to make sure it’s what I’m doing.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for reading and commenting, Patricia. I’m so glad you found something helpful and practical in my words! Best luck and wishing you lots of insights and ideas as you evaluate your website, social media, etc.
I get hives whenever I think about marketing. I think that at my age, 71, I don’t feel relevant in today’s world, and don’t have much to offer. There’s much of the modern age I don’t relate to from music to social media.
That being said, your post fostered a new way to consider ‘branding’. Make my work the brand and what my books can bring to the table instead of what my personal foibles happen to be. It’s often lack of knowledge and being overwhelmed that prevents this relic from taking that step. My website is as dusty as I am. Maybe it’s time to give it another go. Thank you.
Aw, Brenda – I’m sorry thinking about the marketing side of things causes you so much stress. I can definitely relate.
71 is not old (at all – and, if anything, a bit of life experience only gives us more fodder), but I think you hit on something that a lot of us worry about (off and on, or consistently 🙁 ). . . who are WE to put out books, to have the audacity to think someone, anyone, might appreciate or value or benefit from our stories? But then again, why not us?
I also think, more than ever, people of every age (not just talking authors and writers now) feel a similar feeling of disconnection to (and in) our modern world. Fostering connection through the art and story is more important and longed for than ever.
Anyway, I’m very glad my words in some small part gave you a sense of possible . . . possibilities 🙂 —and I hope you DO give your website, etc. another go.
>>> Make my work the brand and what my books can bring to the table instead of what my personal foibles happen to be<<<
Yes, definitely _this_. And, seriously, if that’s “all” your social media/Internet presence is (posts and images about your stories specifically, and links to things people who love the type of books you write will like), with nothing about your personal life, that would be totally FINE and could be very effective.
Excellent insight, thanks to Ev, Anne. 🙂
Thanks for reading. Glad you got something out of my take!
Great post Ev! SO looking forward to your workshop on this topic! Always so much to learn….
Thanks so much, Barb! And I’m so looking forward tor the workshop too. I have SO MUCH more that I wanted to share and just didn’t have the word count here for, LOL.
>>>Always so much to learn….<<<
Yep, always! It can be daunting, but I prefer to think of it as exciting. 🙂
You ask, “What is YOUR unique personal brand?”
Quite frankly, I don’t have one.
These words by my favorite — and likely the world’s most brilliant — marketing guru apply:
“I am not a brand
You are not a brand.
You’re a person.
A living, breathing, autonomous individual who doesn’t seek to maximize ROI or long-term brand value.
You have choices. You have the ability to change your mind. You can tell the truth, see others for who they are and choose to make a difference.
Selling yourself as a brand sells you too cheap.”
— Seth Godin
For the record, my books (mainly self-published in the English editions) have now sold over 1,000,000 copies and have been published in 22 languages in 29 countries by foreign publishers. Even during the pandemic, I managed to get two more foreign-rights deals with a Vietnamese publisher, which now makes it around 125 book deals for me without using a North American foreign rights agent.
As Seth Godin’s advice implies, selling myself as a brand would sell myself too cheap. That’s why I get the results that I get.
Your discomfort with the word “brand” is the same one I used to have, Ernie, and although it’s (of course!) fine for you to completely reject using the word or seeing yourself or your work as a brand, I suspect that all the people that love your books across the globe, if asked, would say very similar things about what brings them to your books again and again – which is your brand, at least in the way that I discussed.
It often helps writers who are struggling to find their niche and build their readership to look for the common thread(s) readers love about their work and then find ways to increase, build on, and continue to deliver those things in an intentional way. I’m happy to use the word “brand” to make discussing it easier.
All the best to you and your writing – and congrats on having such a loyal and growing readership worldwide. What most of us only dream of!
Your discomfort with the word “brand” is the same one I used to have, Ernie, and although it’s (of course!) fine for you to completely reject using the word or seeing yourself or your work as a brand, I suspect that all the people that love your books across the globe, if asked, would say very similar things about what brings them to your books again and again – which is your brand, at least in the way that I discussed.
It often helps writers who are struggling to find their niche and build their readership to look for the common thread(s) readers love about their work and then find ways to increase, build on, and continue to deliver those things in an intentional way. I’m happy to use the word “brand” to make discussing it easier.
All the best to you and your writing – and congrats on having such a loyal and growing readership worldwide. What most of us only dream of!
Obviously this discussion about “brand” has evolved into a discussion about semantics. I do think, Ev, that your approach is crystal clear: Every writer to be successful (i.e. to sell books) needs to find the connection with readers. What is that connection? That’s the hard part to figure out but yes, definitely, there has to be a connection or else you won’t ever sell any books at all!
To help figure out the connection, you give some excellent, practical advice and I thank you for it. Quite illuminating, really. You also call it “brand”. Why not. I have no quarrel with that word. It rather nicely summarizes what is a rather subtle and complex marketing strategy (linking to your own persona, likes and dislikes, experiences and personal goals). And it does so in a simple, memorable way. Brand! Who doesn’t know what a brand is? Who doesn’t know that branding is the key to making money in the commercial non-book world?
You ask, can this method – branding – be imported in the book market? And you show brilliantly that it can. And tell us how to do it. Again, many thanks, Ev, very useful – and everything else is just, as I said, semantics. In other words: blah-blah!
Thanks so much for your affirming words and comment, Claude! So glad you found my approach on point and useful. ???? ???? And yes, re: semantics, LOL. Tomato, tahmato, potato, pattato, right?
Thanks so much for your affirming words and comment, Claude! So glad you found my approach on point and useful. 🙂 🙂 And yes, re: semantics, LOL. Tomato, tahmato, potato, pattato, right?
The homework tips are great. I’ve been meaning to work with a graphic designer friend on revamping my digital presence, but before I get to that, I should probably give more thought to the promise I want to keep with my readers. That will undoubtedly inform the aesthetics of my site and social media accounts.
Also, I love the idea that a brand can offer guidance about what sort of content to post. It’s always been difficult for me, coming up with non-promo ideas, so it’s good to know my brand can be my compass. Thanks, Ev!
Thanks so much, Mason! I’m glad you found my words (and homework!) helpful. (The homework appreciation made me chuckle. I love homework too. Only writers . . . 😉 )
Branding is about expectations. Moreover, I know authors who somehow manage more than one brand (I am still trying to define mine). I don’t know how they do it (besides using different pen names).
Perhaps that would make for a nice follow up topic.
Great article, Ms. Bishop. Very informative. Thank you.
I’m so glad you found my article informative and helpful. Thanks for the kind words! (Re: Pen names . . . Yes, I think that is the answer for authors who write wildly divergent genres – but you’re right: the how to do without drowning in all the double, triple, and so forth work would be interesting to know! I have a pen name, but only wrote two books under it and haven’t done much with it. 🙁 )
Best of luck defining your brand and with your writing!
I’ve been writing books and blogging for a while but have struggled with understanding brand. I often feel like a mixture of things and am trying to zero in on one and home my skills. I appreciate this information. Thanks!
Thanks, Nancy! So glad I could offer food for thought. 🙂
Thought provoking article, Ev. With zero book sales, zero social media engagement I guess I need to do some serious improvement. One question. Should I remove old blog posts that don’t support my defined brand?
So happy I provoked thoughts! 🙂 🙂 And no, I personally wouldn’t remove old blog posts that don’t support a newly defined brand (unless they’re something that might put someone off . . . I.E. If you’re now writing sweet romance and you used to write a lot of posts about graphic violence and horror or something.) Die hard fans might even enjoy drilling back. 🙂 It’s always about going forward . . . 🙂
Best of luck with it!
Our website https://jenanita01.com is a mixed bag affair. We are both writers but enjoy all aspects of socialising and promoting other writers work. Are we barking up the wrong tree?
Excellent article, Ev. I’m definitely going to scurry away and do my homework now. 😉