Discover Your Brand Quotes

“As always, Google—or any other search engine of your choice—is another great source of information, search “how to write” + your genre, and see what comes up.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Boiled your brand down to a single sentence and to three brand buzz words Determined whether you need a new pen name Formed a plan for your evolving interests and abilities And, most importantly, discovered what readers will love about your writing!”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Brainstormed and borrowed eight story ideas—not all of which you got to keep Used author research methods to define your ideal reader, and then printed out a photo to represent that reader Identified your genre(s) and style”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“I used a combination of my brand sentence and my three buzz words to create the title and tagline for my author website, which is “The Hidden World of Melissa Storm: Author of Sweet, Speculative Fiction for Women.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“most important to you? Circle those too.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“How should readers feel while reading your writing? How will readers feel once they reach the end? How do your characters relate to one another? What ties them together? Why do you write? What do you want to show the world?”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Defining Your Brand Now, answer these ten questions about your remaining idea cards as a whole. This time, write down your answers. Be sure to use your writing super powers, answering each question with rich and vibrant detail. What are the two to three genres you chose? Why were you drawn to write these genres in particular? Who is the target reader you defined in Chapter 4? Are there any recurrent time periods or settings across multiple ideas? Are there any recurrent situations? Are there any recurrent themes or symbols?”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“if it’s especially hard to remember or to spell correctly, you may want to create an alias that’s both unique and accessible.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“So I suggest sticking to a single author name, unless you absolutely have to break up your reader base to avoid muddying your brand.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“one brand, one name. Determining your brand and building an author platform take a lot of work, so it’s best not to recreate the wheel.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“So how do you know if you need a pen name?”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Let me tell you from experience, readers of one franchise rarely crossed over to the others.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Example I muddied my brand by writing paranormal young adult, literary women’s fiction, and children’s picture books using the same pen name and releasing them all within a year’s time.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“It’s not ideal, but if you can’t adapt your outliers and you can’t—or don’t feel like—starting over with a new alias, move forward with your new brand front and center.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“If you are self-published, can you adapt your outliers to fit with the main thrust of your new and improved brand?”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“If you have four, eliminate one of your selected genres or styles.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“If you have two, great!”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Blending genres is okay to an extent, because it helps define what you offer, but taking it to the extreme within a single piece or by writing different genres from book to book, you’re really making a huge—and possibly irreversible—mistake.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Similarly, when an author switches back and forth between wildly different genres, she also alienates her readers.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Mixing Genres So by now you may have selected three genres and a style. We need to whittle that down. While novice authors tend to think blending genres makes them stand out, it does the opposite.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Experimental. While transgressive fiction is all about breaking society’s rules, experimental fiction often breaks the rules of writing. This isn’t the result of sloppy plotting or editing, but deliberate planning.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Sweet fiction. Sweet is most often used to describe romances with no sex or with action that takes placed behind closed bedroom doors, but the sweet or wholesome style can also be applied to other genres.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“you “hilarious,” you might be a Humor writer.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“You’ll see these novels at the top of every critic’s picks and award-winner list out there, but you won’t see them at the top of bestseller lists quite as often.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Literary fiction causes a lot of confusion for readers and writers alike. As far as misbranding goes, literary fiction bears the brunt of it. In fact, I see so many authors misclassify their beautiful literary novels, that one day I got fed up and went on a blog rant.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Reading books in the genre you write is incredibly important when it comes to understanding the rules of your genre and the preferences of your target audience.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“For the most up-to-date list of subgenres plus an easy way to access tons of research material, I suggest you check out the bestseller lists on Amazon.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“A common misconception is women’s fiction is synonymous with romance. That is so not true.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Women’s fiction is a subset of the larger genres contemporary or literary fiction—it all depends on how you tell your story, and we’ll discuss style more in the following chapter. On the lighthearted side of this genre, you have “chick lit” like Bridget Jones’s Diary, and on the more serious side, you have the works of Nicholas Sparks and—my personal favorite—Liane Moriarty.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors

“Inspirational fiction is the proper name for religious or Christian fiction. These stories feature God-fearing characters—predominantly Christian—who live according to the values of their faith or who, after making a series of unfortunate mistakes, experience a profound conversion to that lifestyle.”
― Emlyn Chand, Discover Your Brand: A Do-It-Yourself Branding Workbook for Authors