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Branding for Nonconformists
Self Assessment in Author Branding
What are your values, and how fully are you living them?
“Your new series on branding is making me uncomfortable,” a friend messaged me after reading the last installment. “So that means it’s good.”
I feel uncomfortable too, which is exactly why I’m doing this. Say it with me, folks: No one is “pure.” We all have to fill our bellies, we all have to pay the rent, and the vast majority of us have to make squicky compromises (including Amazon buy links on our book pages, for instance) in order to fulfill those basic needs. We need to “sell ourselves.” We’re all hypocrites. The artists whose work interests me are artists willing to acknowledge their hypocrisy. That’s the kind of artist I’m always striving to be: candid, focused on improvement, and only just realistic enough to sock some money away for the retirement I hope I’ll never have to take.
And so we shall continue to squirm together through this first round of self analysis: two exercises intended to clarify what corporate types call “core values.” Ordinarily I skip over these sorts of exercises in self-help books because they seem so hokey and contrived and unnecessary, but maybe that’s just my being lazy. (Okay, okay. It is totally my being lazy.) We have to do this self-reflective work. If I haven’t articulated my values to myself, then how can I effectively articulate them to you?
This is a long one, but I feel confident you’ll gain several new insights about yourself if you do these exercises along with me. And if you’ve been curious about this series and thought, “But I’m not an author,” that doesn’t matter—these are ultimately personal growth exercises, so absolutely everyone can benefit by them.
Exercise #1: Three Essential Traits
In that excellent podcast episode I mentioned last time, the hosts of Writing Excuses suggest we come up with three essential personality aspects, traits, or interests we are comfortable sharing publicly and that aren’t too directly related to any one of our books in particular. For herself, co-host Mary Robinette Kowal lists historical fantasy, mentor, and theater person. Here are mine:
