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! 

Miley and her manager achieved their goal: To change her image.

Is that a good thing? Changing her image is good and necessary, but the image they’ve chosen for her isn’t necessarily the best one. (More on that later.)

It got us talking, that’s for sure. And it got me wondering if are there any lessons in this, um, event, for authors who want to generate buzz for their books.

What, in fact, can authors learn from the 20 year old’s strip tease act? Here are four takeaways:

1. Bad publicity can be exactly that — bad publicity.

Some ask, “Is there really any such thing as bad publicity?” The thinking is that any publicity is better than no publicity at all.

When you’re promoting your book, you want publicity that contributes to your career as an author. Sure, you can do something outrageous, hoping to get your book title mentioned in the resulting firestorm, but if your book isn’t about train wrecks and disasters, does it really do you any good to get publicity linked to either? It might lead to page views on Amazon, but not to purchases if the ruckus doesn’t relate to your book’s topic.

2. Pick your advisors carefully.

Miley’s team spent time strategizing and orchestrating her disturbing little exhibition on the VMAs. Remember, she paid people to tell her to do this.

It makes me think of the authors who buy ridiculously pricey promotion packages from vanity presses (see my blog post, “A new way to learn how to promote your book“). Are these con artists really the people you want guiding you? You can do far better while spending far less money.

3. You’re a brand.

You are, so you need to know what you and your brand stand for. Miley’s brand was wholesome Disney Channel Hannah Montana. She outgrew that, so she used the VMAs to jettison her young fans. Will her new, skanky look help her she pick up an older crowd? She won’t snag anyone old enough to understand what has happened to Lindsay Lohan. Been there, done that.

4. You need a plan.

Miley’s foam finger fun on the VMA stage was part of a plan to have the media world say, “She’s not Hannah Montana anymore!” It worked, didn’t it? Certainly, there’s more to her plan that we’ll see in coming months.

You need a plan, too, so that you can achieve your marketing goals in the same way that Miley achieved hers. Don’t wait another day to start working on yours.

Today, people are questioning why MTV let this bizarre peep show air. They’re wondering how involved her parents are in her career (you’re never too old to get advice from your parents). They’re using this as a conversation starter with their young daughters who looked up to Miley as Hannah but are confused by Miley the inappropriate performer.

While you want people talking about you and your book, you don’t want this kind of chatter. Learn from this situation and apply it to your book publicity plans.

What does your author brand stand for? Please tell us in a comment.

What’s all this about author branding, anyway?

Essentially, your brand as an author is what people think of when they hear your name. It’s a collection of impressions people have of you, and those impressions can come from your:

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

Your brand is who you are, what you stand for, how you handle and present yourself, what you do. It’s the authentic you, not a manufactured you.

Ask yourself these author branding questions

To help develop yours and the imagery that surrounds it — a unified look that goes with you across all platforms, from your website to your book covers to your social media profiles — ask yourself these 5 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?

2. How do others describe me?

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?

Are you doing this now, or have you moved far away from it?

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?

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

This is important because a leader’s brand looks and feels different from a follower’s or a helper’s.

Do you need help defining your brand?

Do you need help developing your brand? Brand-building is a careful, thoughtful, strategic process. Most of us need help uncovering and leveraging our natural brand.

I can guide you through the process as a consultant, asking the questions you need to answer, then helping you make sure that what people see matches what they will get. Just e-mail me to start the conversation.

How would you describe your author brand?