Today on the blog we have Louisa Clarkson of Indicated to give the 101 on author branding, an important step in marketing your words. Without any further ado here is Louisa!
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No doubt you’re familiar with
brands, their advertising slogans and logos (unless you’re a troll living under
a rock bridge). Like McDonalds for example, is highly recognizable with the golden
arches, the red and yellow and their branding statement “I’m Lovin’ it”.
From a marketing perspective, the
colors and branding statements helps customers recognize it and influence them to
buy the products. Red means passion and love, it stands out, and is used to stimulate
people to make quick decisions. Yellow is bright and sunny, grabs attention and evokes
feelings of happiness and joy. “I’m
Lovin’ it” implies you will enjoy the food.
Branding is a brilliant and
important tool for authors too. Our writing style, book themes/genre, covers,
our author website(s), branding statements, and even our personalities, all shape
our brand. Let’s look at these things in more detail, and start building a
brand that knocks Stephanie Meyer from her perch!
Writing Style
Your writing voice, writing
style, tone and even choice of words, is what a reader bonds and fall in love.
No one else writes the way you do. These component make your author style unique,
and helps your readers recognizes your writing.
Two examples of very distinct
writing styles are Doreen Virtue, author of Healing
With the Angels, who has a very motivating and inspiring style and tone,
which compliments her self-help and spiritual brand. While Eion Colfer, author
of the Artemis Fowl children’s
series, has a very tongue in cheek voice that tickles a child’s funny bone.
Books Themes and Genre
The genre(s) and themes that you
write about is what readers will associate with you, and what they’ll expect from
you in future. For example, Stephen King is synonymous for horror, supernatural
themes, and a few drama novels. Readers would never associate Stephen with
comedy. That would be like McDonalds selling pizza!
For those of you published in
multiple genres, or if you’re planning to write in more than one genre, it’s
recommended to use pen names to separate the brands, unless your books have a
common element such as magic or fantasy that filter through them. Start small
with one genre and build a fanbase, like Stephen did, then expand into other
genres.
Book Covers
A book cover, its artwork, font
and colors should reflect the tone, style and genre of the book(s). For
example, on Suzanne Collins Hunger Games
series, every book features a Mockingjay, which is a distinct symbol
for these books, and is even used for the film posters. Each book also uses the
same square font for the book title and author name, and a different color to
reflect the tone. Book 1 has a black cover representing a bleak society,
hopelessness and oppression, typical of the dystopian genre. Book 2 is red
which is symbolic of war and fighting back. Blue features on blue to show hope
and freedom.
These elements need to be kept
consistent when publishing a series to help the reader identify your books and
brand. If you self publish, try to use the same cover designer to maintain the
style.
Author Website
The function of the author
website is the same as the book covers. It should convey to any visitors the
style and tone of your books, reflect aspects of your personality, hobbies or
interests, and it can feature a logo to represent your brand. Here’s a cool website
by paranormal romance author TF Walsh, which reflects the romantic and supernatural elements of her
books, and her love of everything fantasy. The black gives a creepy and dark
tone, while red highlights the romance and passion.
Branding Statements
A branding statement defines who
you are as an author, the types of books you publish, aspects of your
personality, who your target audience is, and helps readers to find you. For
example, mine is “crafting whimsical,
inspiring fantasy adventures that keeps tweens reading for days.” I could
have used John Grisham’s Number 1
Bestselling Author, but it’s boring (zzzzz) and doesn’t tell me anything
about his books.
Personality and Perception
Part of an
author’s job is to build a public image that reflects their personality and
brand. Aussie author Morris Gleitzman has a cheeky, fun brand, which supports his humorous children’s
books. This is what draws readers to him and keeps them loyal. But if he were
to go and post rude or adult’s only jokes on his social media accounts, there’d
be public outrage. Always remember who your target market is and who might be
reading.
Branding is
such a huge topic, and this is but a small, but important part of it.
I’d love to
know what your branding efforts you’ve made. Do you have separate brands for
your books? Have you created any distinct features on your covers or logos?
C’mon. Share you branding statements, so I don’t feel like such a dork! If you
don’t have fun, then make one up. Promise I won’t laugh.
About Louisa Clarkson:
Louisa Clarkson is the author of The Silver Strand, the first in the Mastermind Academy tween fantasy series for 9-12 year olds. Creative endeavors
called, and she left her Environmental Engineering career to study a Masters in
Creative Writing and pursue her writing dreams. In the months she spent
researching how to promote her novel, she found bits of information here and
there, but no complete author resource. As such Indicated was born. Indicated
features book promotion guides and a comprehensive database of where to find
book promotional opportunities like book review bloggers, free and paid
advertising opportunities, guest posts, authors interviews and so much more.
