Member-only story
Branding for Nonconformists
Developing an Author Brand When Your Passions are All Over the Map
Do I have to pick ONE thing to be known for?
A decade ago, back when people were still reading personal blogs (remember those?), my sister remarked, “You’d attract a lot more readers if you only wrote about one thing” — an observation rather than a criticism. In addition to the writing advice and book recommendations you’d expect from an author, I posted with equal enthusiasm about my knitting and sewing projects, vegetarian (and later vegan) cooking, and our adventures across five continents.
Maintaining separate blogs on each topic didn’t feel like an efficient use of my time, and the prospect of limiting myself to book talk felt inauthentic. The downside was that a reader who’d enjoyed one of my fantasy novels might react to my blog content with puzzlement or disinterest instead of becoming an even bigger fan, but I decided that was a risk worth taking. I continued to thumb my nose at any author asserting that real writers don’t indulge passions apart from the written word. Creative cross-pollination had always seemed perfectly self evident to me: each of my artistic outlets continually informing and inspiring the others.
