by Diane Holmes, Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book

This is the seventh in a series on Author Branding. Previous articles include:
1. Author Branding vs. an Army of Writers
2. The Author’s Branding Manifesto
3. The Gleam in Your Author Brand (Brand Building Technique #1)
4. Storytelling Your Author Brand (Brand Building Technique #2)
5. Yes, Your Book Is Part of Your Brand (part 1) (Brand Building Technique #3)
6. Yes, Your Book Is Part of Your Brand (part 2) (Brand Building Technique #4)

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Your Reputation

When you consider your brand as an author, you’re participating in creating the story of your career and how you interact with your readers.

If you could be in the room with every reader, every time they thought about you and your books, then branding would be easy.  But readers think about you even when you’re not really there.  Such is the magic of the author-reader experience: your words go out into the world on their own.

-Chris Garrett, Work on Your Branding

Simply put, the largest and most important aspect of your brand is your reputation.

Famously, whatever is said about you when you are not in the room….

What do you want people to think about you? What do you want people to say about you?

In this series, we’ve been looking at ways to uncover what you want your brand to be, and how you want your reader to think about you as an author beyond one single book.  You’re starting to come up with ideas, but now you need to look critically at what you’ve identified.

It’s at this point that your brand can really fail to serve you, because while you’ve come up with things that are true, you may not have come up with what you’re actually communicating to your readers or what differentiates you from other authors, other books, and other reading experiences.

So, let’s look at your reputation.

Brand Building Technique #5 – Reputation Assessment

For each of the following groups, ask two questions:

1. What is your reputation right now? (What they say about you and your work when you’re not standing there in front of them.)

2.  What do you want your reputation to be in the future?

• Readers
• Fellow Writers (in your genre and outside your genres, new authors as well as authors you’ve admired for years)
• Industry Pros
• Booksellers and Librarians
• Reviewers
• Media & Speaking Outlets

Do you have as lot of blanks?  That’s important to know.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be pulling together all the Author Branding concepts discussed so far, looking at real Author Brands out there, and testing them to see if they actually work.

One of the biggest questions when it comes to Author Branding is what makes an Author Brand “road worthy” and what causes a brand to fall short?

Here’s a sneak peak at the criteria we’ll be using:

• Original
• Relatable
• Long Term
• Mythic
• Punchy
• Emotional
• Authentic
• Effective
• Strong (able to support the weight of a career and reader interest)
• Able to capture lightning in a bottle

See you then!

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Diane writes two columns for Freelance-Zone: Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery and Marketing-Zone:Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book.

She’s the Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University – “Learn to pitch your book from the AGENTS and EDITORS who make their living at it. Learn. Pitch. Sell.”

by Diane Holmes, Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book

This is the sixth in a series on Author Branding. Previous articles include:
1. Author Branding vs. an Army of Writers
2. The Author’s Branding Manifesto
3. The Gleam in Your Author Brand (Brand Building Technique #1)
4. Storytelling Your Author Brand (Brand Building Technique #2)
5. Yes, Your Book Is Part of Your Brand (part 1) (Brand Building Technique #3)

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While YOU are your Author Brand, your book is an essential part of YOU.

In part one, we explored how to link your book to your personality, values, and story. In part two, we’ll look at how you and your reader are linked by a comment delight in genre, character, plot & prose.

Let’s face it, you’re building a brand because of your writing, to support your career.  And it’s a rather unique career, especially for fiction writers.  We write and write and write for the love of it, hoping that someday we can sell what we write.  We tend to love our books fiercely, because it’s just us against the world.

So, today let’s look at that thang we love, because what jazzes us most about our writing can also be part of our Brand.

Brand Building Technique #4: Linking Your Brand to Your Book’s Genre, Character, Plot, and Prose

For each book you’ve written, ask the following questions. (Like last time, omit any book that doesn’t have a plot or topic you’d write today. If it’s not part of your current or future career, it’s not part of your brand.)

Genre:

• When you find yourself talking to someone who loves your genre as much as you do, what do you both agree makes that genre so great?
• What books in your genre do you recommend the most to others?  What are the similarities between those books and your book?
• What drives you nuts about your genre?  How do you address that in your own book?
• What can you point to in your book that is a classic example of your genre?
• What did you do that you’ve never seen done before in your genre?

Continue reading Yes, Your Book Is Part of Your Brand (part 2) →

by Diane Holmes, Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book

This is the Fifth in a series on Author Branding. Previous articles include:
1. Author Branding vs. an Army of Writers
2. The Author’s Branding Manifesto
3. The Gleam in Your Author Brand (Brand Building Technique #1)
4. Storytelling Your Author Brand (Brand Building Technique #2)

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As we’ve been discussing, a company brand or an author brand is how you put yourself “out there” to another human. It’s all the things people know, feel, think, and experience about you. In fact, when someone defends you to another person, they are defending your BRAND.

What does this mean? It means your book is NOT your brand. Your Logo is NOT your brand. The color scheme on your website is NOT your brand.

Instead, as Roni Loren says, “Your brand should be YOU. Whoever that may be. Your book/genre is only a piece of that package.”

This is a really good talk on brand by Thunder::Tech.

Key Points:

• Brand is a combination of Personality & Values.
• Why is spending time on building your brand important? “You’re not always there to tell your story.”

One of the things that is “there” is your book. It’s not you. It’s not your brand. But it does speak to your brand. It’s a piece of information that generates a reaction from your reader.

So let’s look at how you can use your book to explore your Author Brand.

Brand Building Technique #3: Linking Your Book to Your Personality, Values, and Story

For each book you’ve written, ask the following questions. (Omit any book that doesn’t have a plot or topic you’d write today. If it’s not part of your current or future career, it’s not part of your brand.)

Personality:

• What do readers think they know about your personality from reading this book?
• Think about traits, skills, beliefs, and what they’d be expecting if they saw you in person.
• How do your characters influence other characters?
• Is the message that this is productive or not productive?
• What are the details of the story world & setting?
• The landscape of the character’s life?

Values:

• What do readers think they know about your values from reading this book?
• Look at the themes & issues explored in your book.
• Think about morals, ethics, mottos, and sayings that seem “true” in your book.

Story:

• What can the reader guess about your personal story from reading this book?
• Think about the big events in the book, and also how your characters spend time in their downtime.
• Take a look at the hopes and dreams of your characters.
• What do they consider worthwhile?
• What do they fight against? For?
• How do your characters grow and change?
• What are their passions and interests?
• What are your characters overcoming?
• What do they work hard to achieve?
• What is their greatest regret? Greatest failure?

Jot down answers, then come back through and circle the answers that seem to apply to you.

What you’ve just done is identify the subtle information you’ve been giving the reader about you.  Look at this words.  Circle the ones that you’d like to be part of your brand.  This is key in understanding what you need to reinforce in your brand.

We’ll talk more about this in our next Marketing Zone installment: genre, character, plot & prose. These are the elements that delight both you and your reader. That delight is part 2 of how your book is part of your brand.

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Diane writes two columns for Freelance-Zone: Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery and Marketing-Zone:Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book.

She’s the Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University – “Learn to pitch your book from the AGENTS and EDITORS who make their living at it. Learn. Pitch. Sell.”

June 7, 2011 Marketing yourself No Comments

by Diane Holmes, Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book

This is the fourth in a series on Author Branding. Previous articles include:
1. Author Branding vs. an Army of Writers
2. The Author’s Branding Manifesto
3. The Gleam in Your Author Brand (Brand Building Technique #1)

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The branding, marketing, and blogging world is all atwitter with the idea of storytelling as a way of communicating brand. This isn’t a new idea.

Look at non-fiction books. Many of these authors have personal stories that directly led to the creation of the content in that book. The passion for the topic has a personal meaning to the author and a place in his or her life-narrative.

That’s story, my friend!

Fiction writers, on the other hand, don’t usually have the same luxury of “my personal story” led to “this story about solving crimes in a New England town.”

What goes into Your Personal Story… if you don’t have one?

We’re used to a “Story that Sells” coming from the facts of someone’s life, the WHAT HAPPENED. But there are some other ways of looking at story that may be even more helpful.

Brand Building Technique #2:Your Story Is More Than Events and Facts

Check out these alternative ways to uncover your story. Click the links for great resources.

• Why you do what you do?
• Who are you AS you do what you do?
• How to you approach and experience what you do? What would your readers enjoy being told about the “thing” that brings you together (your writing)?
• How does your story relate to something your readers know and care about? What do you share in common? (Click here to read a great example of this under the header of “welcome”)
• How do you influence and change lives?
• What dreams and hardships do you explore or share in common with your reader?

In your writing and your life, there is something that speaks to you, and that same thing speaks to your reader. Make that your story.

It already brings you together. Name it. Tell it. Be it.

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Diane writes two columns for Freelance-Zone: Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery and Marketing-Zone:Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book.

She’s the Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University – “Learn to pitch your book from the AGENTS and EDITORS who make their living at it. Learn. Pitch. Sell.”

by Diane Holmes, Marketing Yourself and Your Book

Imagine that a reader sees your new book at the bookstore.  Instantly, there’s a gleam in her eye. 

She’ll reach for your latest book, but in the fraction of a second before she can reach out, extend her arm, press her fingers against the cover, there is just the gleam.  That gleam is your brand.

(If you don’t write books, just substitute your type of writing.)

The beauty of thinking about your brand in this way is that it’s obvious that your brand is not one book.  Instead, it’s about a recognition in the reader’s mind, an excitement and delight and opinion about you as an author.

It may be based solely on the previous books you’ve written.  Or it may also include information collected about other “aspects of you.” But whatever the specific details, it has created what Kathryn Lorenzen, Creativity Coach, calls a “Hell, yes!” in the reader’s mind. 

Before the reader can process the thought, “Hey, I’d like to find out more about that book,” her brain made the leap to, “Hell, yes, want that, awesome.”  Or some set of concepts that equaled an immediate gleam in her eye and movement of her hand toward the book.

That’s what you want, right?  Readers whose immediate response is,”I”m so lucky!” because they’ve seen that your next book is out

Brand Building Technique #1:Your Book’s Delight Factor

Step #1:  You are standing in front of the latest book by your favorite author.  There’s a gleam in your eye.  Why?

Run through this exercise for several authors you love.  Get a feel for how you respond to different aspects and different authors with excitement.  Try fiction and non-fiction authors. You get that “Hell, yes,” but for very different reasons.

Step #2: Your reader is standing in front of your book, gleam in her eye, hand extended.  STOP.  Freeze that moment.

A) What is inside your book that has triggered that gleam?  What are the reader’s expectations that have contributed to the gleam? Just make your best guesses and make a list.

B) Compare that list to what captured your imagination about the project and what kept you excited as you wrote the book.  There should be some differences.  The point of doing this step is to make sure you’re not just capturing what appeals to you.

C) Do this exercise for the book you’re currently writing, your previously published books, and any unpublished books you hope will be part of your career.

If you write widely, you’ll want to do a separate round for each project.  But if your books are similar in topic, tone, and sensibility, you can probably capture the Delight Factor by grouping them.

Did you find the gleam?  We’ll build on this exercise next tine. Remember, Brand can be way more than your book, more than all your books combined.

But this is a great starting place.  So start.  Even if an author brand seems a foreign and dubious topic, you have to admit you want that gleam   You know you do.

This is the third in a series on Author Branding.  Previous articles include:
#1 Author Branding vs. an Army of Writers
#2 The Author’s Branding Manifesto

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Diane writes two columns for Freelance-Zone: Fiction-Zone: Leaps in Fiction Mastery and Marketing-Zone: Marketing-Zone: Marketing Yourself and Your Book.

She’s the Founder and Chief Alchemist of Pitch University – “Learn to pitch your book from the AGENTS and EDITORS who make their living at it.  Learn.  Pitch.  Sell.”