Turning Your Book Into A Brand

by | | Blog

author brand

Turning your book into a brand means understanding what a brand is. An author brand is more than a logo, photo of you, or picture of your book cover. Just like with any small business, your brand is the images, logo, symbols, words, and phrases that your target market (or ideal reader) uses to identify you. A well-crafted, well-developed brand can help you garner respectability, be seen as an expert, and increase sales of your book. Knowing that turning your book into a brand helps you stand out in your genre, how do you build a strong, recognizable author brand?

Your author brand is important because people will eventually come to recognize it. Think of the golden arches or the bitten apple. You know what products and services those logos stand for immediately. Their brand also means you can gauge their pricing, customer service, and user experience just by their brand. How do we know? Because you know which companies we mean even though we haven’t said their names. And, because you know which of those companies will charge $10, and which will charge $1,000.

Go into brand building knowing that your goal isn’t to brand a single book. It’s to create a complete author brand. These three steps will get you started in the right direction.

  1. Turning your book into a brand starts with knowing who your ideal reader is and knowing who you want your ideal reader to be.
  2. The next step is knowing what voice you want your readers and potential readers to hear. Do you want them to view you as a fun, whimsical children’s writer or a concise, professional non-fiction expert?
  3. Choose the colors, fonts, graphics, images, and other visual components that will make up your brand identity. DON’T just go with your favorite colors, either. Instead, create a color story that appeals to your target market.

When you’ve turned your book into a brand and created an author brand your target market responds to, display it everywhere. Make sure every element of your brand is cohesive. In other words, a reader who finds you on Facebook should readily recognize your branding and logo on Instagram and every other social media outlet. Keep this thought in mind. When you define your brand, you also define your business, your target market, and your success story.