Branding is a critical piece of your author business, and it’s one of the most poorly understood elements of small business building. A successful brand will draw in the readers who will love your books, but ineffective branding won’t attract anybody – and the wrong branding will bring in the wrong readers, who might feel misled when they buy and read your books.
A brand is identifiable at a glance
Your author and book branding need to be consistent across the board – from book covers to your website and social media. This brand cohesion might feel boring to you, but to your readers, it means that you’re telling a consistent story about who you are and what kind of books you write.
Effective branding is about your readers, not you.
One of the biggest mistakes solo business owners make is to design their branding around their own tastes. The purpose of your brand is not to appeal to you as the author – it’s to sell your books to readers.
If you spend just a few minutes browsing the bestsellers in your genre, you’ll probably notice trends and patterns in the cover design. You’ll see similar color palettes, design tropes, and fonts in use. When your readers see your well-branded cover, it’s like a billboard shouting, “Did you like [similar looking book]? You’ll like this one too!”
You will probably need multiple brands.
As an author you will need a specific brand for each series or standalone book. You’ll also have an overarching author brand that will be more general, especially if you write in different genres.
One way that authors distinguish different brands is by using pen names. A great example of this is Ursula Vernon, aka T. Kingfisher. Vernon began her career as a children’s author, and began using a pseudonym to avoid confusion when she began publishing in the adult market.
You don’t necessarily have to publish under different names in order to distinguish between books of different genres. Look at the covers of these two books – do you need to read the author’s name to know that these books are for different audiences? I really hope not, but writing under a different name helps prevent unsuspecting parents from mistakenly ordering the wrong book.
I’d like to close this entry by asking for your feedback. What are your biggest branding-related questions? You can comment publicly, send me an email at [email protected], or send me a DM on social media.
ACTION STEPS: MARKET RESEARCH
- Look up the bestselling books in your subgenre (the more specific, the better), on either Amazon or your favorite online bookseller. Spend at least 15 minutes observing and making notes.
- What color palettes do they use? What type of fonts do you notice?
- Do you see any cover design tropes or trends you could take advantage of?
- Are your existing covers consistent with current market trends?