BRANDING

Variety is the Spice of Life . . . right?

Wrong, at least in some situations.

And, “Branding”? What does it mean?

I’ve been reading a lot about Branding. Unfortunately, that one word makes me think of cattle not writers.

I picture a cow in a field getting shoved through a gate to get a stamp burned into its butt. Is that what we writers are supposed to do?

Sort of, I guess.

I mean Nike has the Swoosh, Adidas has the triple stripe, and Converse has the Star in the circle. There must be a reason these marketing giants use one symbol to be identified with their product.

But how can we writers use this “brand” to identify ourselves? We must be able to take something away from these marketing gurus’ examples.

I did a little research and read here that the American Marketing Association (AMA) defines a brand as a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these items to identify the goods and services of one seller to distinguish them from other sellers.

Well, how can writers use that information to make themselves “known”?

I’ve heard that once we get published in a certain genre and have some success in that area, we should stick with it. That way our readers can be sure they’ll get what they want when they buy our books. People want a sure bet. And, if we jump around from one genre to another, our readers won’t have that satisfaction and they won’t trust our name on the spine of a book.

I guess it’s like going out for a hamburger and ordering a cheeseburger, only to bite into an iguana burger when we’d been expecting beef. We might be a little disappointed, in fact we might even get mad. We writers don’t want to make readers mad. We want readers to trust us and buy our books – right?

And here’s an article about finding your focus.

Now, all I have to do is get a book published.