When I met author branding pro Jessica Sorentino through a mutual friend, I knew immediately that she had lots of wisdom to share with you! Jessica helps authors – aspiring, debut, and repeat – elevate their name and build notoriety with readers through content and community. Between working at a Big Five publishing house and launching her personal branding and social consultancy, Jessica has made a name for herself over the past decade by educating hundreds of authors on how to make a name for themselves, too. She is the host of the soon-to-launch “Open Book” podcast, and founder of Turning Pages, a personal branding partnership program for authors. Be sure to subscribe to Jessica’s author newsletter (I did!) and follow her on Instagram.

Why authors need a personal brand: Advice on how to make it happen

By Jessica Sorentino

In today’s competitive and information-saturated world, authors must go beyond simply telling the stories in their books – they need to tell their own story, too.

This, my friends, is personal branding.

Every author should consider crafting a personal brand that resonates with their target readers and sets them apart in a crowded marketplace. Effective author branding not only increases visibility, but also fosters reader loyalty and trust.

Why authors need a personal brand

Here are more reasons why authors need a personal brand.

Differentiation

With millions of books published each year, standing out is a formidable challenge. Your author brand is your unique selling proposition, allowing readers to differentiate your work from the rest. A strong brand communicates what makes your writing distinctive and why it’s worth ending up on readers’ bookshelf.

Connection

Authors who build strong brands forge deeper connections with their readers. Readers don’t just want a book; they want an experience, and that includes a relationship with you, the author. Your brand is the bridge that connects you with your audience emotionally, making readers feel more invested in your work.

Credibility

A well-crafted brand builds credibility and trust. It shows that you’re not just a one-hit wonder, but a professional committed to your craft. Consistency in your branding and messaging reinforces this trust over time.

Marketing and promotion

Your brand serves as the foundation for your marketing efforts. It provides a clear direction for your promotional activities, making it easier to identify where and how to reach your target audience. It’s the magnet that attracts readers, agents, collaborators, and publishers alike.

10 steps to a personal brand

Sounds great, right? But how do you actually build an author brand? Let’s dive into tips to get started branding yourself today:

1. Know your audience.

Your brand is an equal combination of who you are in relation to your goals, and what your dream readers care about – shared in the places you can intentionally connect with one another.

Understanding your dream readers requires thorough market research and a clear understanding of who they are.

2. Define your unique selling proposition (USP).

What makes your writing unique? Your USP is the core of your brand.

It could be your writing style, your expertise in a particular genre or subject, or your personal story. This uniqueness is what will set you apart from the competition, and starts to build that emotional connection to your community.

3. Develop a consistent branding statement.

Develop a clear, concise branding statement that encapsulates your brand’s core values and what readers can expect from your work. This statement can serve as a guideline for your marketing and promotional efforts.

4. Craft a compelling author bio.

Your author bio should succinctly convey who you are and what you stand for. Highlight your accomplishments, experiences, and the essence of your writing. Make it relatable and engaging.

A general template to follow includes: who you are, what you write, and who you write for.

5. Be consistent across platforms.

Ensure consistency in your brand visuals, voice, and messaging across all platforms. This includes your author website, social media profiles, book covers, and promotional materials.

Consistency reinforces your brand identity and builds recognition and trust.

6. Engage with your audience.

Building a brand involves active engagement with your readers.

Respond to comments on your blog or social media, participate in discussions related to your genre, and create opportunities for meaningful interaction. Personal connections enhance brand loyalty.

7. Leverage content marketing.

Produce content that aligns with your brand values and appeals to your target audience.

This can include blog posts, videos, podcasts, or guest appearances on relevant platforms.

Quality content helps establish authority and reinforces your brand.

8. Be authentic.

Be genuine and authentic in your interactions and communications. Readers can spot insincerity from a mile away.

Authenticity is a cornerstone of trust-building, so find interesting and creative ways to connect while staying true to your brand.

9. Create a visual identity.

Your visual elements, such as a logo, book covers, and website design, should align with your brand’s personality. These elements are the first things readers encounter, so they should accurately convey your brand’s essence and be aesthetically consistent.

10. Be open to reinvention.

Don’t be afraid to evolve and adapt your brand as your writing and goals change. Rebranding can breathe new life into your author career and attract a fresh audience.

In an age where content is abundant and attention spans are limited, authors must go beyond the bookshelf.

With dedication and a well-crafted brand, you can not only thrive, you can also leave a lasting legacy in the world of literature.

Do you think authors should brand themselves? Why or why not? Please tell us in a comment.

What do you have in common with Google, Nike, and Samsung?

You’re all brands.

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as “a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that identifies one seller’s goods or service as distinct from those of other sellers.”

Author brands

But aren’t your books the products – not you?

Yes and no.

In most cases, you’re the brand, while your books are “brand extensions.” They’re literally an extension of your brand onto additional products.

For example, remember when Coca-Cola was just, well, Coke? Now you can drink Coca-Cola Cherry, Orange Vanilla, Diet Coke, and more. Coke is the brand; the flavor varieties are brand extensions.

As an author, you might not be as well-known as that brown carbonated beverage, but you’re still a brand. In addition to books, your brand might also extend to online courses you’ve created, presentations you make, and even other products such as t-shirts and coffee mugs.

Book series as brands

With a book series, the titles in the collection are extensions of the series brand.

If you’ve authored several series, each series is its own brand. The books in each are extensions of their respective “parent” brands. 

The Dummies multi-author book series from publisher John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is a good example. The name “Dummies” is the brand – it even says so on the series logo. The many individual titles are brand extensions.

What’s in a brand?

Your author brand is usually also your personal brand. It’s what people think of when they hear your name; it’s a collection of impressions people have of you. A number of elements help create those impressions, including your:

• Books — both what they look like and what’s in them
• Online interaction with readers and others
• Social media contributions
• Website
• In-person interactions with readers and others
• Personality

Your brand is who you are – not who you want to be or who you want readers to think you are. But it also goes beyond who you are to include what you stand for, how you handle and present yourself, and what you do.

Successful self-published romantic comedy writer Jami Albright is a good example of author branding carrying over to books. Her humorous “Brides on the Run” series reflects her personality – fun, funny, and smart.

What does author branding look like?

Your author brand is reflected in the imagery surrounding your book and its marketing materials.

Albright’s author branding for her “Brides on the Run” series is light, bright, and cheerful. The covers use a whimsical title font in a decidedly feminine color that pops on an almost-white background. And, there’s literally a smile on every cover.

We know from the branding alone, without reading any descriptions, that these books aren’t going to make us cry.

Jami’s website header uses a similar script font and a lighter shade of that pink in a background that resembles nail polish. Pretty girly, don’t you think? So is Jami. She is her brand.

Compare that with best-selling crime writer Michael Connelly’s site. Like his book covers (and what’s between them), the header is dark, intense, no-nonsense.

Defining your author brand

How do you determine your brand so you can translate it to the imagery that surrounds it? Working with a professional designer to create a unified look that goes with you across all platforms starts with answering these branding questions:

1. What am I known for, and is that an accurate reflection of who I am?

If it isn’t, what changes do you need to make? For example, you might see yourself as a relaxed and ramblin’ kind of guy, but your book covers and content come across as uptight and pedantic. Which is the real you?

2. How do others describe me?

Rather than guess at this, ask people who know you well how they describe you to others. Does their description match yours? Or is there a disconnect between their perception and yours?

3. What am I naturally good at? What do I do best?

Understanding what you do best and how (or if) you’re doing this now will help determine your brand’s “mood.” It will also help you see if you’ve strayed too far from the core you – and your brand really is your essence.

4. What differentiates me from my competition?

What’s unique about you or what you offer? How do you compare to others? They’re more X and you’re more Y, but what’s Y for you? Try to pin that down.

5. Am I a leader, a follower, or a helper?

You want to determine this because a leader’s brand looks and feels different from a follower’s or a helper’s. The brand for someone who’s an encourager should be quite different from that of someone described as “making the trains run on time” or “takes no prisoners.”

Invest time in your author branding

Identifying and developing your author brand is an important process that takes time and effort. Be thoughtful about it. Be patient. Work on it until it rings true not only with you, but with those who know you.

When you have that clarity, work with an experienced designer to bring it to life visually. You want a “look” – branding – that involves colors, fonts, and imagery you will use as the basis of your website design, book covers, social media profiles, and social media content.

When you’re done, you’ll have a unified public face that represents the real, true, you: Your brand.

How would you describe your author brand?

You’re thoughtful about what will resonate with your readers because you know that your website reflects your author brand.

As I explain in “Author branding questions,” your brand represents what people think of when they hear your name. It’s a collection of impressions people have of you and your work. You translate those impressions into something visual on your website with colors, photos, and text.

Branding extends beyond your website

Because this branding represents who you are as well as who readers think you are, you want to carry that impression over to anyplace you have an online presence. This includes the headers for your Facebook business page and Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

For example, here’s how I do it on my Facebook business page.

It also applies to images you create for your blog posts, as well as some of the social media images you create on sites like Canva.com to share on social networks.

Keep your colors consistent

When I create the images I add to the beginning of every blog post here, I mostly use my colors from my logo and header palettes. That’s for branding reasons.

I can match my colors precisely — no guessing needed — not because the designer told me what PMS colors she used. It’s possible thanks to the magic of technology.

I use a free Chrome browser extension called Eye Dropper.

Want to give it a try?

Using Eye Dropper is so easy!

This short video shows you how easy it is to use Eye Dropper to provide consistency with your author branding colors when creating new imagery. I’m demonstrating it with Canva, but you can use it with other similar tools, as well.

Abbreviated transcript/instructions

1. Download and install the Eye Dropper Chrome browser extension. It gets added to your browser toolbar.
2. Go to a web page with the color you want to match.
3. Click on the Eye Dropper icon in your toolbar.
4. Select “Pick a color from web page.”
5. Move your cursor to the color you want to duplicate and click on it.
6. Click on the Eye Dropper icon in your toolbar again. In the “Selected” box of numbers in the upper right, copy the first set of digits.
7. Go to the Canva image with the color you want to change. Select the “Background color” box in the upper left.
8. Paste the color number you copied in Eye Dropper into the search box to the left of the background color box.
9. Double click on the colored square that appears “From your search.”
10. Watch the magic happen.

You can also this approach to change other colors in your Canva image, too.

Don’t use Chrome? Google your browser and “eye dropper” or “color picker” to see what’s available.

Eye Dropper is one of my favorite browser extensions. What’s yours? Why? Please tell us in a comment!