Discovering Your Author Brand

Here's something not sexy. A brand for writing is a contract with the reader. Here's two more. Brands identify quality work with artistic effort. They serve as a stamp of approval for the customer. Yeah, yeah. You've heard that before. Look around, and you'll spot lots of flash-bang presentations on creating author brands. As more writers become self-published and traditional writers try to increase their marketing, the Author Brand is a hot topic. Everyone talks about it. Few people can explain how to do it or give instructions to follow. Well, gee, here's another book, too. How is Discovering Your Author Brand different from the other books in the marketplace? 1st It's packed with examples based on highly successful writers. Face it, in today's marketplace, our competition is our peers and every other writer who has come before us. Agatha Christie is still selling. Ray Bradbury is selling. Arthur Conan Doyle sells. Isaac Asimov's I, Robot was made into a Will Smith movie over two decades after Asimov died. These writers aren't on the best-seller lists; only new books earn places on those lists. But Christie and Bradbury and Doyle and many, many more writers are competition for everyone else entering the marketplace. And they have the cachet of quality that new and recent writers struggle to achieve. So, we'll look at successful brands and analyze the secrets of their success. 2nd Discovering Your Author Brand understands that the browsing readers will only give a few nanoseconds to our books. So, we explain the three main glances that hook the readers before they swim down the river. We also look at the keys to unlock those glances. With the right keys, the brand is revealed, and the door to the reader opens. To help with the keys and glances, we have worksheets (charts!) to help you discover the brand for book, series, and your author persona—because the first leads to the last. 3rd We have something the other books don't have, another way to catch the attention of that swimming reader. Video trailers! Advertising claims that consumers have to see something seven times—7!—before they'll buy. Static ads and promo posts are all well and good, but we writers need an extra oomph to get that seventh look. Enter the video trailer. Have you ever wanted to set up a video trailer or a brief clip, currently big on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram? Have you hesitated because you don't know where to start? We have an easily adaptable script as well as guidance on settling the debate between music and narration. (We pick music!) Discovering Your Author Brand is packed with explanations and examples. Book 7 in the Discovering set, the manual is designed for new writers on the journey to becoming totally professional. Writer M.A. Lee has been self-publishing fiction and non-fiction since 2015. She has over 25 books published under her pseudonyms.