POV: You are an aspiring author who wants to write a book, get published, and earn royalties from the book. You believe that selling enough copies of your first book through successful book marketing tactics is all you need to become a renowned author. If you get lucky, your first book can make you a millionaire.
If that’s what you think, take a break to readjust your expectations. While many aspiring authors believe that publishing one book can boost them to heights of fame and fortune, it’s rarely the case. Most authors rely on multiple titles to build a steady stream of income. So, be advised to not get overconfident.
Building an ideal author’s life is more like a marathon than a sprint. You need to be mindful of how much energy you use and for what purposes since the start of your journey. Building an author’s brand is a task that needs more attention than book marketing. It doesn’t mean that you should refrain from marketing your books. It’s just that you should find a balance between the two tasks to make the results sustainable.
Because your author career is going to be much more than your first or second book, you must invest energy and resources in building a brand for yourself rather than just marketing your books. Here is everything you need to know about author branding, how it’s different from book marketing, and how you can accomplish it.
What is Author Branding?
Building an author brand is creating awareness around your writing prowess and your vision. You can choose any genre to showcase your talent. If you want, go for multiple genres. As long as you excel at building a story and telling it, nobody will care if you are writing in a single genre or multiple. However, for the sake of expertise, many authors choose to stick to a single genre, just saying.
Your brand can be tied to your books but it should be more than that. So, you be present in the digital world through your ideas on writing, stories you have written, the world, and life. This brand is about you so be authentic and upfront.
How Author Branding is Different from Book Marketing?
Once you have understood the personal branding for authors, it’s time for you to understand that book promotion is way different than it. While marketing a book, you need to not only engage people with the ideas and stories presented in your book, but also tell them about the launch and sale information.
On the contrary, when you present your brand, you don’t include sales information or service information. The brand-follower relationship is based entirely on information-based value. You talk about everything related to your writing projects and past ventures.
While the purpose of your book marketing efforts is to sell one or another book you have written and earn royalties for that, the purpose of the author brand is to sell all your books and gain attention for new projects from publishers. Luckily, you don’t have to exert your efforts on building your brand separately. Instead, your book marketing investments will work towards building your brand and vice versa.
How to Build Your Author Brand?
Interestingly, you start building your brand passively even before you approach it proactively. The first post you make on social media or your first digital interaction will launch your brand. This post can be anything related or unrelated to your work as an author. Still, it will impact how you appear in the digital world.
So, the first thing you need to be aware of is how you appear in your online interactions. Your comments, likes, shares, and posts should be mindful and well-thought-out.
Build Your Website
As soon as you begin working on your first book, get a website representing yourself as an author. Showcase your projects on this website and connect them with your official social media accounts. You don’t need published works to present here. Simply, give insights about your topic or write short stories to share with your readers to entertain, inspire, or educate them.
You must ensure that the website presents your style and writing personality accurately. As you grow as an author, feel free to grow and update your website as well.
Be Social
Once you have created a virtual home for your brand, you can walk into the digital world marketing your expertise. Connect with potential readers, writers, editors, and other enthusiasts in book and author communities. Build human connections with or without discussing your books and works.
At first, you will want to keep it simple. Start with one or two social media platforms. Experience them and see if they present communities for your genre of books. Experiment with these platforms and see which one works for you.
Build Credibility
While many authors believe in their magical words to conquer the world, many others choose to use this magic to educate and build nations. Whatever is your goal, your brand needs some values to stick to and some agendas to uphold. Your writings can inspire the readers in one way or another and you can showcase this power in your personal brand.
Build your brand based on the values you keep dear. Write about them, practice them, and talk about them, creating connections in the process.
Collaborate
An essential step to building your brand is collaborating with fellow authorities. These authorities can be famous book authors, readers, or editors. They are renowned for their work and oftentimes build and manage communities for their services.
You can offer them your services, promote their business, and build connections. Sometimes, you find that these authorities need your services on their projects, allowing you to showcase your talent on a borrowed platform. Make these collaborations public and build trust and credibility along the way.
Engage
Mentioned above were many tasks that you must do to build your author brand. While all these tasks are important, always remember that brands are built on service and human-to-human connection.
Wrapping Up
Building your author’s brand is an essential part of your career if you want to build your life around writing books. Know the difference between author branding efforts and book promotion strategy. Although a lot of involved tasks overlap, you must understand the purpose and approach of the two.
