Author Branding: 3 Tips for the Indie Author

Marketers toss around the term branding like it’s the Holy Grail. It’s not that important…but just barely not. Authors, and indie authors in particular, frequently have trouble with this idea of Author as Brand. It’s an understandable problem. After all, when you think of Nike, Microsoft, or even Urban Outfitters as a brand, you think about the company or the products. Behind that corporate façade, you know there are thousands of individual human beings and, minimally, dozens of them are responsible for maintaining that brand. What you don’t do is tie, for example, Greg Sullivan, a Senior Marketing Manager at Microsoft, to Microsoft the brand.

For an author, though, the person and the brand are largely indistinguishable; at least from the public point of view. After all, there is no massive organization fronting for you. It’s your name and your picture that readers see when pick up the book, or go to your blog. So the question becomes, how do you manage your brand as an indie author?

1. Understand What a Brand Is

You can define a brand in a lot of ways. I mean a whole lot of ways. I counted a while back and came up with at least 10 distinct and (slam head on desk) accurate definitions. So, if it seems like you get contradictory information about brands, you probably do. For a good brass tacks explanation, I would refer you to Jay Ehret’s piece, “What is a Brand?” Ehret defines a brand as “…the emotional and psychological relationship you have with your customers.” For the indie author, substitute readers for customers and you’ve got a working definition. In essence, your brand as an author is the response evoked in your readers by the sum total points of contact they have with you. This is where it gets tricky. This response doesn’t just come from your books, though that plays a part, but from everything you say and do in any public context, from status updates and memes on Facebook, to your blog, Twitter account, and public events. Have a meltdown at a book reading, that’s part of your brand. Take five seconds out of your day to encourage a young writer to keep at it, that’s part of your brand as well. So now that you have a framework for the concept of a brand, how do you apply this to managing your brand.

2. Define Yourself

It’s not universally true, but most writers tend to specialize in one area. Your hard-core technology reporter probably isn’t going to be making a lot of forays into writing erotica and your speculative fiction writer probably isn’t going to be penning many articles about the stock market. There are exceptions, of course. Isaac Asimov wrote fiction and non-fiction, and a lot of both. Let’s face it, though, most of us lack the inclination or the sheer, unmitigated talent to truly master multiple forms. The upshot is that this makes branding easier. When you sit down to determine what you want your author brand to be, already have a partial answer. I want my author brand to include (insert whatever genre/subgenre/category you write in here). Then it becomes a narrowing down process. You can’t really brand yourself as “the horror guy,” because Poe tops that list and Stephen King has a lock on that broad category for the foreseeable future. You might, however, be able to lock in a brand as the noir-horror guy or rampant technology horror guy. Narrowing down gives you a specific hook that readers can grab.

Of course, that’s just the professional side of it. You also need to give serious consideration to personal or “human interest” side of your brand. Are you going to be highly open with fans about your life or maintain a certain professional distance? Neil Gaiman, for example, lives an almost shockingly public life via his blog and his Twitter account. Thomas Harris, author of the Silence of the Lambs, might very well live on the moon between publishing books for all we know. Both of these approaches are acceptable ways for authors to act, but something in the middle is probably ideal for indie authors that don’t have established audiences. You should decide going in (or very soon if you’re already online as an author) how much of your personal life you’re willing to divulge and how much time you’re willing to spend interacting with readers on social media. Once you decide, stick with it unless you’re given a very good reason to change. That consistency will become part of your brand and violations of it will probably be treated harshly by your readers.

3. Consistency, and then more consistency

Consistency is one of the keys to an effective brand, whether you’re JC Penny or an indie author selling 5 eBooks a week. Consistency also operates at several of levels. As stated above, there is the consistency with how much you divulge and how much you interact with readers. Exceptions to this include marriages, birth of a child, and traumatic events. No one will blame you for talking about that stuff, as long as you do it in a somewhat sane way. Consistency also applies to how often you do things. If you don’t plan to blog every single day, don’t say you will. If you can’t commit to blogging once a week, it’s probably best not to blog at all. Most people will make an effort to check your blog once a week. Asking them to remember you at intervals larger than that is asking too much. Can you take a day or week off here and there…sure, just let your readers know you’re doing it. Life is hectic. People get that and they will forgive you for a lot, if you give them a reason to do so. Then there is what I call technical consistency. Duolit has an excellent piece on this element of branding, but I’ll give you two of the highlights. Do you use the same author photo everywhere? You should, since it serves as an instant visual cue to your readers that they’ve found the right book, blog, or website. How about screennames? If the URL for your Facebook author page and Twitter account don’t include the name you write under, it’s a nightmare waiting to happen. The more consistent you can be across your platforms, at every level, the better off and more potent your brand will become.