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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.
So when book marketers started pushing the concept of author branding, I was at a loss. How could I effectively “position myself” if I refused to specialize? The question compounded itself as I branched out from novels about cloning ancestors, witchy spies, teen cannibals, Marian apparitions, and time slips (plus my guidebook to Ireland) into “sneaky self-help” books on ego management and turbocharging one’s creativity through ethical veganism. I’ve been publishing for well over a decade now, and while I am in regular social-media contact with a small group of loyal fans, it seems as if the majority of my readers are enthusiastic about only one of my books, and then they move on. I could hire a marketing consultant, but I’m pretty sure what they’d say: the problem is I’m all over the map.
Is it even possible to develop a cohesive author brand without choosing between writing for adults and writing for children, impossible scenarios and practical philosophy, literature and veganism? Few authors have attempted this…
