So first of all what is a brand?
A brand is the identity of a business and its services whether it’s a big corporation like a supermarket or an independent author selling their books. Your brand encompasses the business name, symbolism, colour scheme, typography, voice, values, and mission statement. It’s what identifies you amongst the market of your competitors.
Your brand needs to stand on its own and is unique to each book’s marketing.
With the example of supermarkets, each brand can be easily identified simply by their main colour:
- Sainsbury’s: orange
- Asda: green
- Tesco: blue and red
- Target: red
- Walmart: blue and yellow
For authors the same can apply – a strong brand will make you easily identifiable. Consider Stephen King, known as the master of horror. Or Danielle Steel for her romance novels. They both have a very good brand identity that helps readers to establish immediately whether they want to buy their new book or not. Even just by looking at covers, it’s very easy to spot a Danielle Steel novel even in a sea of romance books, or find King’s latest work amongst other horrors.
How do you establish your unique brand? First ask yourself a couple of questions: what genre and subgenre do you write? Get specific with it, don’t just say you write fantasy or romance – what kind? What’s your niche? Whilst each of your books may have a different type of plot, characters who share no similarities, unique twists etc. there will be a thread that ties them all together.
Consider John Green, yes he writes YA but it goes deeper than that – we can safely assume that any Green novel we pick up is going to be emotional, and let’s be honest probably heart breaking. We can expect a roller coaster of feelings when reading and whilst we may enjoy the ending, it’ll also probably make his ideal reader cry. Katee Robert for example is well branded as a spicy romance writer – her romances aren’t sweet little stories in a sleepy seaside town, they feature dark, brooding love interests with very steamy scenes. Holly Black is well established as the queen of faerie despite the fact that plenty of books exist about faeries.
Identify your recurring tropes, archetypes and plot devices – I guarantee you there will be a running thread, we all have preferences as writers and tend to stick close to them. Lean into it – if readers can know what to expect from any of your books they’re much more likely to become loyal fans. Lots of readers will automatically buy new books from their favourite authors, even if they don’t know what it’s about because the author has established expectations.
S. M. MITCHELL 