Self-Publishing Tip — 9

Author Brand

Author Brand — The Author Brand is a trademark of the author in the genre they are writing in. It’s a promise to readers that they will receive consistency from the Author, a way to immediately identify who the author is and what they write. It’s your tagline, logo, font type, types of covers used for your books. Your goals, the way you see the world; things that tell a reader who and what you are. Everything that identifies you as the author. This also includes your author website and book(s) website. This also means select one name to identify yourself with. If you write strictly under a pen name, any posts you make on blogs or send out in email lists better be the name you write under. Don’t confuse the readers. This also applies to Social Media like Facebook and Twitter.

 You need to select a main genre for your writing, from that your Author Brand will follow. It’s your unique style of telling a story, the covers of your books, short stories you write. This can be applied to your author website as well. The images you use, what you post there, how the site looks. Just remember, the website should be easy to read for everyone. Too much multimedia, or backgrounds with hard to read text will turn people off. If you can afford it, have some design the site for you; just make sure you give the designer plenty of input on how you want it to look. The Author Brand will stay with you throughout your writing and publishing life, so make sure you get it right the first time. Think of it as a job interview with potential readers: Make a great first impression so they will remember you.

Now, if you feel a desire to write in a different genre: say you started in Contemporary and decide to write Horror, he switch can be made, but you will have to do some tweaking and maybe write under a pen name. Don’t confuse your loyal following by suddenly pulling the rug out from under them.