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Branding Yourself
As an author, you need to brand yourself, create your own identity.
For example, when I go into public, I have a little hat I wear, and I keep my beard trimmed a certain way. I tend to wear light colors, often with shades of blue. It makes me recognizable at conventions to people who’ve never seen me in person.
In the same way, you want to create your own brand for your fiction. Ask yourself, “Who am I as a writer? What do I want to do that is different from other writers?
For example, you might decide that with your strong medical background that you want to write medical thrillers, or perhaps your interest in religion might lead you to write “spiritual thrillers,” so that you almost create your own subgenre. One of my fans specializes in military fantasy and tells stories about wizards embedded among troops in Iraq, while another writes literary role-playing fantasy.
So as an author, how do you want to brand yourself?
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7 Replies
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In my career, I specialize in brand-design, development, and management, for businesses, products, and individuals.
However, branding myself had never been easy.
My Brand Elevator Pitch:
“I write uplifting sci-fi/fantasy stories with humor and drama to illustrate my hopes of what people should be.”Filler Pitch (Follow-up):
“I only write from a place of hope. I only write characters trying their best. Every person, dragon, alien, creature, and some inanimate objects, are the heroes of their own stories, even if the reader never learns about them or they only express them through simple actions. Take nothing for granted in my work. I write prose with purpose…and the occasional alliteration.” -
I learned from fellow Texan and writer Tex Thompson to wear a hat at conventions etc. She has this bright red cowboy hat and red western shirt, jeans and of course, boots. So a couple of local writers decided we’d be the “Writers of the Purple Prose.” We wear purple cowboy hats (or just some kind of purple hat, some are getting into the 50s women’s hats, kinda cool). It really works! At last year’s poetry conventions we attended, everyone remembered our names, and remembered us from the previous convention/festival.
I also learned over the past few years that I tend toward writing protagonists with wings–they start with them, or they end up with them somehow. Maybe I have an angel fetish, who knows LOL.
Another thing I’ve discovered.. I enjoy taking things from history, mythology, even the Bible, and twisting it a bit (asking “what if”). There’s lots of stuff in the Christian Bible that is mentioned but then nothing much happens with it or with the people. I like to take those and tweak them into some kind of spec fic story. I find them fascinating anyway, so why not use them? Who says Gog from the land of Magog aren’t really aliens from another galaxy? And what about those pesky Nephilim? History is just full of stuff we don’t know much about, so I’m filling in the gaps, fantastically speaking.
Maybe I should get a tattoo…. ?
Pat
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This is something I’m still working on.
On-line, I try to keep my content with the idea of “courage” and “adventure” – be it tackling a new thing, or a small adventure of getting lost and discovering a new neighborhood in your city, to taking a road trip across the country or confronting your fears.
In my books, I tend to take the idea of “quiet courage” and promote it – those characters who have a strong will and persistence, but who aren’t loud or obvious in that courage. It’s a thread I try to have in all my books to one degree or another. Kind of highlighting the secondary characters and turning them into the main ones. I wouldn’t say I stay so much in a particular genre or sub-genre.
I also always have some kind of animal side-kick in my books (a beast-mount, felines, ferrets, etc.)
As for a physical in-person branding, I used to have blue hair similar to one of my characters. But, I decided to change that (really wasn’t the right color for me), so now I need to re-think it. -
Wearing lots of black focused around a genere-themed T-shirt has worked well for me so far. I can go casual in summer (shorts & shades) or more traditionally professional (suit jacket, matching pants) and I tend to have similar amounts of success in standing out. Sure, my height (6’7″) helps, but those T-shirts have started so many conversations for me.
Branding myself by content is a little trickier. I don’t have an easy phrase aside from (forgive the profanity) “I write weird shit.” I’d like to come up with a better way to describe my work verbally. Anime-inspired love of [insert video game here] will only take me so far.
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I think I’ve done the damage. https://amysterlingcasil.com/
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I write epic fantasy, so when I’m selling at conventions, I wear some sort of Medieval-esque garb (or, depending on the venue, will cosplay a character that will fill either role). I almost always have a griffin shoulder puppet I’ve named Jerry who fans remember from convention to convention and always look forward to seeing, and a candy dish that’s a ghost “barfing” chocolate on my table. I’m typically the super approachable author who aspiring writers come to for advice and bring my husband with me to man the sales side if those conversations run long.
As far as branding in my writing, I tend to lean heavily on themes of tragedy and redemption and work almost exclusively in shades of gray. I write character-driven stories with a shallower learning curve than most other epic fantasies out there, which has won me several readers who “could never get into” fantasy previously.
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My in-person branding is that I’m most recognizable by never being there 🙂 I don’t get a lot of opportunities to network!
One author who really rocks it is Jane Gilheany Barry. Her Instagram, Facebook, prose and personality all have this beautiful feeling of old magic. Her images all match in a vintage, cool-tinted kind of way, and it really suits her image as an old soul wandering the earth and sprinkling her spells everywhere she walks. That’s what I aspire to.
In reality, I’m so lost! I’m starting a second pen name and though I can ‘brand’ my Facebook and website headers, I can’t seem to brand *me*. Perhaps I’m not interesting enough? Not unique enough? I don’t know.
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