Author branding is one of the scariest and yet most necessary things an author can do. But how tight should that brand be? Can you have a “broad brand?”
Teddi posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:
Randy, in the second half of your interview on StoryFix.com you mentioned branding and reader expectations. You said,
“New writers often fail to understand the importance of branding. When you attach your name to a novel and publish it, that’s an implicit contract you’re making with your reader: ‘I promise to produce more fiction like this in the future.'”
I have a dozen stories in various stages of notes-and-development, and they are spread across several genres. I intend to pursue a certain amount of self-publishing, so the choice of branding is going to be in my hands for many of these projects.
Is author name really the key factor in reader expectations?
For example, one of my favorite authors is Lois McMaster Bujold. She writes fantasy, science fiction and things in between. Although I like some of her books more than others, it didn’t really bother me to discover “the hard way” that I like her sci-fi better than most of her fantasy. I’d read anything she wrote, even in other genres outside SFF, because I like her writing.
Just wondering if that’s atypical. Maybe we need new ways of categorizing things.
Lois Bujold: Science Fiction
Lois Bujold: Medieval Fantasy
Lois Bujold: Fantasy RomanceI’d prefer something like the above rather than having her identity obscured behind a totally different author name. Especially if her aliases weren’t easily and publicly available.
Any thoughts on this? Do you think the publishing world is changing enough that this sort of thing will also change? Or should I simply make up a pen name for each genre and then put them somewhere on a website for folks who want to know “what all Teddi’s written”?
Thanks!
Teddi
Randy sez: Imagine this scenario: You’re in Cairo for the first time and feeling way out of your depth. Egypt is a very different world for you, and you’re starting to feel just a wee bit homesick. Then you see the golden arches of a McDonald’s fast food restaurant. Desperate for a taste of home, you walk in … and find that the only thing on the menu is crocodile pancakes.
Question for you: How do you feel about that?
I suspect you’d feel a bit put out. Nothing against eating crocodile. Nothing against eating pancakes. But you don’t go into a McDonald’s looking for either one of those. You go there because you expect exactly the same menu in Cairo as in California.
When somebody violates your expectations, you don’t blame yourself. You blame them.
In the case of Lois McMaster Bujold, I don’t see a problem. Fantasy and science fiction have long been joined at the hip. Whether she’s writing in one sub-category or another really makes little difference.
I think you’d be a bit upset, however, if you bought one of her books and found it to be cowboy erotica. Or an Amish detective story. Or an Ayn Rand-like economic manifesto on the virtues of capitalism.
Any of those could be a fine, fine book. Or not. The quality of the writing is not the issue. The issue is that when you see Lois McMaster Bujold’s name on the cover of a book, you expect a certain kind of story. If you don’t get anything like what you were expecting, you don’t like it.
Treat your readers the way you want to be treated. (This brilliant piece of advice works in many areas of life. I regret that I didn’t invent it.)
This reminds me that my friend James Scott Bell just published a zombie legal thriller. No kidding, a zombie legal thriller. Jim has been writing legal thrillers for quite a while, but this one is out of his normal zone. So he wrote it under a pseudonym, K. Bennett. This is not a secret, so I’m not spilling any confidences here.
The novel, PAY ME IN FLESH, is hysterically funny. I’m tempted to say the novel is “brilliant,” but that term gets thrown around so much that it’s pretty useless. Let’s just say that I haven’t had so much pure fun reading a novel in a long time.
Any time you start a novel with a female lawyer being sexually harrassed by a lecherous judge, and the lawyer’s immediate reaction is to wonder what the judge’s brains would taste like, you’ve got a weird, wacky start to a hilarious book. I loved it.
I’m not a big fan of horror fiction, by the way, so I’d never have guessed that I’d enjoy a zombie legal thriller. But my friend, Susan Meissner, (whom I interviewed on this blog a few years ago), gave such a glowing review that I had to get the book. Susan is a gentle soul who writes literary women’s fiction, and I figured if she could stomach the zombie stuff, then it wouldn’t bother me either. I figured right.
In my view, Jim did the right thing by using a pseudonym here, even though a “zombie legal thriller” doesn’t seem all that different from a “legal thriller.” The fact is that the zombie element plus the humor element make this quite a bit different from Jim’s usual writing. (Jim can be funny, but he doesn’t usually do slapstick comedy, as he does in this book.)
The fact is that Jim’s new pseudonym, K. Bennett, now effectively owns the entire subcategory of “zombie legal thrillers.” So Jim can go on to break new ground in this wacky genre under this name, and if the category eventually fades out, he can walk away from it. Good move, Jim!
If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.
Thanks for a great answer and a timely example, Randy! (And a book recommendation — looking forward to checking out Bell’s, er, Bennett’s zombie story!)
So glad to be having this discussion *now*, before I’ve published any books under any particular name. Gives me plenty of time to plan it all out and save my “real name” for the genre I want most easily associated with me and my usual circle of friends/family.
Thanks again!
I don’t know. I can understand how it might be an extreme to publish 20 mysteries and then a random fantasy, but for the most part, do we have to brand author’s genres anymore? When there’s already so much cross-genre stuff? Why not just brand author’s voices?
I can write fantasy or science fiction or mystery or literary or romance and there will always be a distinctive I WROTE THIS. People will know certain things to expect about the characters, the worldbuilding, the sentence structure, ect. I’m not saying this to brag, this is pretty much true for any writer past the beginning stage.
Take Neil Gaiman for an example. He writes mostly fantasy/horror stuff, but he could really write in any genre and I wouldn’t be that surprised. Because I would know it’s not an example of him changing his brand – he’s just taking his brand and using a different paint color. Okay, mixing metaphors, but hopefully you get what I’m saying. No matter what he writes, I will be reading Neil Gaiman and that will satisfy me.
Well, I can imagine the protest that of course Neil Gaiman can, he’s freaking Neil Gaiman and all. And I agree.
But shouldn’t that be the goal? I feel like Neil Gaiman branded his voice, his distinctive storytelling style, and maybe that’s what everyone should aim for, instead of being super-specific like, “I write Westerns with strong female leads who are half cats”.
Okay, I got to go look for that Zombie Legal Thriller. You do make your point about branding very well. But suppose that Egyptian McDonald’s had purple arches with orange stars on them (or green crocodiles)–then you might expect something different? Just a thought.
I don’t think you can compare author brand to expectations for MacDonald’s for this reason: The book jacket and blurbs and reviews will tell you what the new book is about and what to expect. You’ll no ahead of time wheter it’s a Big Mac or a Crodile Pancake. Just something to think about.
Oops, some misspellings there, but you get the idea, I’m sure.
I think author branding is very important to keep in mind when publishing books. I’ll give a personal example of how author branding disappointed me.
I’m a big J.J. Abrams fan. I was hooked on LOST all the way through. I really enjoyed Alias, and I’m currently hooked on Fringe. His upcoming show, Alcatraz, has similar tropes to these 3 shows. I expect his new show to be like his past shows.
But J.J. Abrams also has Felicity and Undercovers on his list of works. These 2 shows are very different from the ones I listed before. I saw his name attached to these two shows and I gave them a shot but I didn’t like them. I was disappointed.
In a way, my view of Abrams has shifted, even if only subconsciously. Now when I hear that he has a new show or movie coming out, I don’t immediately think, “I’m going to watch it!” I have to second guess myself because of Felicity and Undercovers. What if he pulls another one of those?
All in all, I stand in the camp that believes a new pseudonym should be used for every new genre you want to write in. That could be troublesome if you want to write in many genres, though. Perhaps you could brand yourself as someone who has no “home genre”?
Randy,
Great to sit with you and the other sci-fi guys last week at OCW. Fun dinner!
My favorite romance book is a Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Devereuax. It is about a knight who time travels to present day England and of course falls in love with a girl. When he returns to his century, the girl is desperate to time travel back to him. It is funny, romantic, and a venture into sci-fi by the author, but still in keeping with her branding of romance. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an Amish romance from her soon, since that is so popular. But since the underlying theme is romance where she has branded herself, dabbling in sci-fi didn’t confuse me or put me out. I would think the same of James Scott Bell. I love his legal prose, and based on your review above, will order his zombie legal thriller. It’s still James Scott Bell writing a lawyer story. Love those!
So my point is, or my question, since the main genre for Jude is romance and for Jim Bell is a legal thriller, were they really deviating from their brand?
Randy:
I understand the concept of branding for an established author such as JSB. But as an unpublished author seekign publication of book-length works, I’m writing in several areas because I don’t know where I’ll breakthrough first. I’ve got an historical/political book e-self-published. I’ve completed an historical novel, Bible era. I’m working on a contemporary sports thriller. I’ve completed a poetry book I may eSP. My next work will either be another non-fiction as a follow-up to my eSP one, or a mainstream spy novel based in Red China in 1983 (based on a trip I made there that year).
I don’t know which of these, if any, will be my breakout work, so I see no way to work on branding pre-publication. I just need to break in. Of course, once I do break in with something, I’ll have five or six other completed works that could be published right away. Would I just shelve them?
So what’s a pre-published author to do about branding? Anything?
That was a very interesting read. For now, I’m simply focusing on improving my writing, re-writing parts of my book, and trying to become a better storyteller.
Honestly, I think while there should be consideration given to these topics, an unpublished writer’s time is best spent trying to improve her craft.
There is no right answer to this question, but I think you hit all of the main points to consider.
I have gone both ways on this one. I have used my own birth name for several genres and I have chosen to use pen names for specific projects where I didn’t want to confuse my branding.
Sometimes confusing your branding can be useful though. For instance, I was able to pull 10,000+ followers from one genre into another by deliberately using the same pen name and talking about it to both groups of followers.
My fans were willing to read the new genre which normally wouldn’t interest them because I interested them.
It’s a strategic marketing decision, not a moral one. It all depends on your goal.
I had wondered about this as well. But the more I write the more I realize that the similar elements seen in my stories is what my true genre is. I thought I had a legal novel and an urban fantasy novel but in truth they are both mainly suspense with some romance and either legal or fantasy elements mixed in. So once you write some more you may discover that all your books share an element and that shared element is how you should market your work, since readers of that element will follow you despite sub genre changes as long as you are consistent in those key elements.
This is all very interesting and timely considering I have not yet published my first book.
I graduated from Business Marketing and “branding” regardless of the product was one of the most important facets of success for many product lines.
One of the other posts made an excellent point, in my opinion, that having one brand that can be used to distance you from your work in the eyes of friends and family for privacy reasons is an excellent idea. For example, I am writing a novel that is sexually graphic and I don’t want colleagues at work to know I wrote it due to the content so I will use a pen name when I publish it. However, if my next book is more conventional I would want the world to know I wrote it and would use my birth name. So, it truly depends on your goal and needs at the end of the day as to how you will approach this sensitive sales exercise.
I agree with Annalise. I think that authors should be able to brand their voice and still be able to write cross-genres. I’m not sure how the ‘branding’ itself would work though in terms of taglines and such. Reader feedback may provide clues on how your personal writing style is perceived by others. Whether or not you intend for it to be seen that way is another story altogether…