Building Your Author Brand (and Why You Need One)
It's an important to stand out among other authors and books.
Hi Authors.
Before we get started today, we just wanted to remind you that if you haven’t yet upgraded your subscription to a paid membership, you’ve been missing out on lots of useful information to help you better promote your work, build your author brand, and — most importantly — sell more books!
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Now, onto today’s newsletter!
Between print-books, eBook, and audiobooks, the number of books that hit the marketplace in a given year is typically between one and three million. Needless to say, that’s a lot of competition!
It’s not always the best books that sell the most copies. In fact, quite a few mediocre books make it on bestseller lists, while lots of high-quality books languish with very few sales.
The difference is how well an author brand is developed, along with the size of that author’s fan base. It’s a marketing game more than anything, and the cornerstone of book marketing is building your author brand so readers will know who you are and want to follow you.
A lot of new authors have the misconception that their publisher (if they have one) will take care of all the necessary marketing, but that’s very rarely the case, and readers don’t generally follow publishers. They follow authors, because it’s you and your writing that they’re interested in.
What Is an Author Brand?
Your author brand is your promise to your readers. It is the entire package of how you present yourself and your book to the world. It includes things like your biography, your book genre, your social media persona, your thoughts on various topics, and even your website design. These are tools for communicating to your readers how you want them to think about you as a writer and person. A strong author brand will also help differentiate you from your competitors.
When you hear J.K. Rowling’s name, you naturally think about Harry Potter. But did you know that she also writes crime fiction under the pen name Robert Galbraith? Rowling has a specific author brand with the Harry Potter franchise that is separate from the books she writes for adults.
A strong author brand is a “message of experience” that tells readers what they can expect from you and why they should care about your books. Effective author branding will help build your writer platform and audience, which in turn will help you market your book.