For writers, the word “author branding” might feel icky. We tend to think of major corporations trying to sell us stuff we don’t necessarily need. It feels like we are trying to confine ourselves to a neat little marketable package. But we don’t have to sell our souls. Branding for authors means …
… taking your you-ness and displaying it in the most authentic and consistent way possible.
So what author branding strategies can you use to communicate to readers who you are and what you write about?
Think of creating your author brand as decorating the storefront of your bookshop.
How will you display your masterpieces?
What do you want to be known for?
How will readers recognize you?
Whether you’re starting from scratch or auditing an existing author platform, think about the mood of your books. How do you want to make your readers feel?
Consider the colors, textures, elements, fonts, and themes on your site and socialmedia profiles.
For example, thriller authors might use bold colors and metallic or stone textures. Romance novelists might use soft colors and floral or lace textures. Scifi or fantasy might use jewel tones and cosmic or cloud textures.
Gather these elements and incorporate them into your website and social media artwork.
Have you actively designed your author branding?
Is your look, feel, and message consistent?
Could it use a makeover?
Join us in the Writers’ Mastermind for the Author Platform Mastery Workshop
where we will make it easier for readers to find you, fall in love with you, and buy your books.
Much has happened during the past few months. We pray your are all safe and healthy and continue to be careful and resilient.
Luckily, we have only good news to share in this post.
May 2020
The Writers’ Mastermind cut the ribbon on the Founder’s Membership. Thanks to all the founders for making the dream of this online writing community a reality! Founders had exclusive access to the website 2 weeks before the formal launch date and also got locked in at the $9 a month lifetime price.
June 2020
The Writers’ Mastermind opened forSpring Registration with The Ultimate Author Planning Workshop, where we reverse-engineered our path to our dream lives as successful authors. We joined together for our first official mastermind call on Zoom and also started live Zoom write-ins, where writers have since accumulated tens of thousands of newly written words.
July 2020
The Author Platform Mastery workshop went LIVE this month, where members perform a branding, website, and social media audit to make sure their author platforms are tweaked to perfection and attracting new readers.
Writers’ Mastermind Member News
Our members have been accomplishing some incredible things. We invite you to join in and support our authors!
Joseph Sale
Joseph Sale has re-released several of his books, including his Black Gate Series in “omnibus” format (aka box set). I am a devoted fan of this series and I can tell you it that it will be something that will haunt you in the most profound and unexpected ways.
Black Gate: Omnibus (Nekyia Book 3)
For the first time, hold the complete Black Gate trilogy in one volume, including Gods of the Black Gate, Beyond the Black Gate and Return to the Black Gate. Follow the story of Craig Smiley, a merciless killer and servant of seven dark gods, on his quest for escape, revenge, and ultimately: redemption. Smiley’s journey will take him from the high-security prison facilities of Mars, to the wildernesses of Texas and Louisiana, and to fantastical worlds beyond imagination and horror. Described as “Barker-esque”, “Lovecraftian”, and yet “a genre all of its own”, experience this epic series in its entirety like never before.
Joseph Sale has also recently set up a Patreon account, where he is sharing never-before-seen writing and behind-the-scenes videos every month. The topics he covers are full of useful insights and hacks for every fiction writer. To sign up for your monthly goodies, CLICK HERE.
Ross Jeffery
Ross Jeffery demonstrates his versatility as a writer by following the publication of his weird, post-apocalyptic horror, Juniper, with his intimate, literary novella-in-flash, Tethered.
Tethered Released
Tethered explores the fractured relationship of a father and son. Each story is told with unflinching and honest prose that is both hard hitting and heartrending.
These stories delve into themes of toxic masculinity, love, hope, despair, domestic violence, sexuality, weakness and overcoming oppression.
Tethered also asks the bigger question of ‘do we ever escape the harm our parents do to us; or do we go through life marred and influenced from our upbringing.’
‘‘Ross Jeffery’s flash fiction is immediate, visceral and real. To read his stories is to feel the understanding of a life lived through the eyes of a compassionate man. Always unapologetic, always raw, always true.’
Our resident Master-of-Writing-Resources, Dan Soule, released his new novel, Witchopper! We’ve all been anticipating this book and are celebrating its publication. What do people say about Dan Soule?
‘His stories aren’t just guaranteed to scare you, they’re guaranteed to devastate you.’ – Caitlin Marceau, editor Sanitarium Magazine.
Witchopper
If you see her, then you’re dead…
All Rob wanted to do was fit in at his new school after being torn from London so his parents could fix their marriage. But when Rob’s journalist father dragged him along to investigate the legend of the Witchopper for the local paper, her curse became their reality.
She was priestess to the pagan god of the wild wood, hanged by a rabid mob for her unspeakable crimes. Now, something far worse than the hell of high school is after Rob and his dad…
In the vein of The Wickerman and Midsommar, Witchopper is an epic ordeal of a father and son relationship, where past sins echo in the present. Dan Soule delivers another of his terrifying Fright Nights, with a tale of love, lies and truth that will leave you sleeping with the light on.
We are thrilled to announce that Charlotta Amato’s short story, Il Ragazzo, will be published by Storgy Literary Magazineon September 21st, 2020. This was her first ever submission and acceptance. Congratulations, Charlotta!!!
Tia Wojciechowski
Tia Wojciechowski’s first novel, Hectrossipy, is on schedule to be published with The Writing Collective later in 2020. She has just released this blurb so you can get a taste for what this twisty, epic, sci-fi is all about!
The alignment of the three moons is a sign of positive changes to come. But the moons never promised that such changes will happen to everybody.
On the pre-industrial planet of Velva Leena, two sisters eagerly anticipate the Hecctrossipy Festival, a yearly tradition that celebrates the victory over a legendary evil monster who had the power to manipulate the elements and use them for chaos.
Artheena is smart, talented, and beautiful. She is also blessed with multiple, special gifts. Mell May, on the other hand, is simple and average adopted sister. Both are in love with Leeandro Paul, a celebrity heartthrob who has an intriguing way of turning the leaders of the land into his followers.
When Artheena has a premonition that she will marry Leeandro Paul during the alignment of the three moons, her quest for true love takes a turn for the weird and crazy. Meanwhile Velva Leena’s conservative social standards are turned backward by an outrageous contest that will threaten the sisters’ close bond.
When the Hecctrossipy Festival begins, the sisters have the time of their lives… Until Leeandro Paul makes a choice that shakes up both their worlds and a twist of fate threatens to tear them apart forever.
The star reporter for the Beacon City Beam has a knack for showing up in the right places at the most opportune moments and a newsman’s flair for detecting a droplet of drama in a sea of dross and dregs. Accompany him on his nose-poking adventures, jot by jot, scribble by scribble—from his relentless search for an enigmatic fortune cookie to his visit to the Sociopaths Anonymous® weekly meeting to his bizarre correspondence with a pen-pal who claims to be the Devil. Beacon City Confidential offers a mole’s-eye view of American urban mythology run amok. Petty crimes and deceits, daily dissatisfactions and squabbles, puny triumphs inflated like hot-air balloons. Like our reporter’s notebook, the pages are crowded with events and outcomes, brimming with entertaining villains trying to survive the 21st Century by any means necessary. Less visibly, the real heroes, the joe-schmoes and who’s-thats, threaten to make their own stand, clamoring for their stake in the American dream and a taste of its pie.
It has been 5 months since I last saw my husband. Airport closures have prevented me from returning home to Panama. I’ve rebooked my ticket so many times, I don’t get my hopes up anymore.
I thought this would be a source (albeit, a negative one) of creative energy. Instead it has been a block. What little I have written is shallow and empty of meaning. My heart is not in it.
Luckily, I have broken the seal on the rewrite of an old, beloved project I had been avoiding. This has brought me some joy.
But we are all going through a very weird time now. Even if we’re not watching the news or consciously thinking about what is happening all day, it’s affecting us.
Add into the mix our personal issues, emotional residue, and just generalized anxiety about the future. Sometimes you just want to hug a pillow all day.
We may not have the capacity to be as creative and productive as usual. But we are not machines and we need to slow down and listen to what we need emotionally, mentally, and physically.
Give yourself some time and space to purge, process, and heal. When you are ready, you will feel it. Then you can get back to the journey onward.
Your author platform has 3 purposes—help readers to discover you, fall in love with you, and buy your books
In the Author Platform Mastery workshop, we will:
Establish a distinctive and memorable author brand
Discover blind spots in SEO and social media
Increase your readership and engagement
Maximize results and free up time to write
Author Platform Mastery Overview
Part 1: Your Author Brand
“Branding” is like decorating the storefront of your bookshop. When readers visit your website and your social media, you want them to stop in their tracks and pay attention.
In this lesson, we will define what makes you YOU and brainstorm elements that you can use to express your uniqueness as an author.
Part 2: Your Author Website
Do a complete audit of your website for content, usability, aesthestics, and performance.
Learn how to incorporate the branding elements explored in Part I.
Part 3 : Optimize Author Social Media
Make the look and feel of you brand consistent across all social media. Make the most of what each platform has to offer to drive readers to your website and books.
Formulate a consistent posting plan and make sure you are making the most of your time on social media.
The Author Platform Mastery masterclass includes:
3-Part Video series
Author Platform Audit Workbook
live Zoom Mastermind and Q&A on Author Platform Mastery
ongoing support in the Writers’ Mastermind private Facebook Group
1. Write because you love it. If you do it for that reason, no one can touch you because the reward is intrinsic to the act itself.
2. Write for yourself – not yourself the writer, but yourself the reader. Write to blow yourself away. Write like that because you are not special and therefore there will be plenty of other schmucks like you. To that end write what you love, not what you think other people want you to write.
3. Writing is a skill. Work to be better than your previous self. This current work is not an end in itself but part of the excellences of what you will produce tomorrow. To that end, mistakes are victories and moments of true learning that improve your work.
4. Be truthful in all things and to all people, including yourself.
5. When you publish, you are a business and your books are products: act accordingly.
6. Build a platform which you own – i.e. a mailing list first, everything else second. Funnel people from other platforms to your platform.
7. Never sign away 80-90% of your intellectual property because you are not prepared to learn how to sell books, or because you crave the recognition of gate keepers. The first is laziness; the second contradicts points 1 and 4 in the manifesto. There are conditions under which a traditional contract could be signed: access to print distribution networks at scale, but separate from digital and audio rights; or when financial compensation exceeds the demonstrable earning potential you could achieve by yourself; access to multimedia deals – games, tv and movies – likely to exceed self marketing potential. If these conditions are met, then such a contract can be considered.
8. Pay to play – social media is a blight whose only benefit is access to unfettered data which enables targeted paid for advertising. Don’t try to sell books for free on social media – there is little to no evidence that it scales. Cases that appear to are examples of content marketing whose financial costs are hidden in the time used to create the content. Full economic costing demonstrates pay to play is the only thing that scales reliably. To this point: no risk, no reward.
9. Invest in your skills and your business either in time or money.
10. Money is not the only measure of success, but it is a really good one that is empirically verifiable and correlates with selling books to more readers. To that end and to points 6 and 7 when you publish seek to make money. Hope is not a strategy for selling.
11. Do the work. No one cares about your work in progress. Why should they? It doesn’t yet exist. They will care once you’ve written it – if it’s any good – so shut up and write. It’s not hard manual work. It is a privilege. If done well, it matters. So do the work.
12. Do not procrastinate. Beware of procrastination that looks like work.
13. Create a bookshelf of work to be proud of and remember point 1.
14. Remember to replenish the well. Take a break … sometimes. When you do, do it properly.
15. Writing is a long game, play it as such. Play today and every day you can with that in mind. You my lose today, but you can’t win if you don’t play tomorrow. And remember, while it can be a serious game, it is still a game, so have fun and get playing.
Daniel Soule
Once Dan is a horror author who was an academic, but the sentences proved too long and the words too obscure. Northern Ireland is where he now lives. But he was born in England and raised in Byron’s hometown, which the bard hated but Dan does not. They named every other road after Byron. As yet no roads are named after Dan but several children are. Dan’s literary fiction has featured in Number Eleven, Storgy, and the Dime Show Review. His science fiction is available in Shoreline of Infinity and Phantaxis. And his horror can be found in Devolution Z, Sanitarium Magazine, Disturbed Digest and Into the Ruins.
Dan’s website is at dansoule.com where there is an exclusive ebook of short stories available, plus a classic horror novel.
We can’t hope to get better without constant learning. Just like I pointed out in my article about the self-taught writer, our teacher isn’t qualified.
I’ve heard this title going around for some time now, as if it’s begging for me to read it. I am not disappointed. The War of Art is just that, a war, and the war is against ourselves. I highly recommend it—not only for writers, but for anyone who is thinking about chasing a dream.
Will you be reading a book on improving your writing this month?
