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Author Branding: Win Your Readers' Loyalty and Promote Your Books by Rayne Hall

Book Review | Author Branding by Rayne Hall

If you read my post last week, you’ll know that on Monday 4 March 2019 I’ll kick off my annual March Marketing Challenge: Kick-Start Your Author Platform. This is the third year I’ve run the challenge, and it’s been great to see writers take their first steps to building an online platform.

As part of my preparation I’m reviewing and updating the challenge, removing references to Google+ (yay! One less social media network to worry about!), and adding information about GDPR and Gutenberg.

(If you can’t join us on Monday or if you’re reading this post after Monday, don’t worry. The challenge is available throughout the year. The only difference is we won’t all be working through it together. Click here to find out more and sign up.)

I’m also reading a bunch of books about marketing to see what else I can or should add to the Challenge, and I’ll be posting several reviews over the next few weeks.

For this reason, I was thrilled to be asked to beta read Rayne Hall’s newest craft book: Author Branding: Win Your Readers’ Loyalty and Promote Your Books.

Understanding author branding is the beginning of creating your author platform.

Author Branding by @RayneHall is a must-read for authors looking to build an authentic and manageable author platform #AuthorPlatform #BookReview Share on X

I read a lot of writing craft books, and I’m always impressed by Rayne Hall’s way of giving readers a step-by-step approach to an issues, whether it’s writing, editing, or something broader like using Twitter as a writer. Her book on author branding is no different.

Hall explains the importance of consistent author branding, then takes readers through twelve archetypes. These form the basis of her approach to branding—we should each pick one archetype and develop our brand around that. Just as we should pick a target reader, we should pick a single archetype and “be” that person when marketing, whether online or in person.

I found this approach both refreshing and freeing.

Refreshing, because there were enough archetypes that I could “find” myself (unlike other books I’ve read, where I was supposed to choose from five), but not so many that the decision was difficult. And freeing, because it gives us permission to ignore what others are doing.

Once you’ve identified your archetype, Hall takes you though how that might apply in different areas of branding e.g. how we present ourselves online, and what we might choose to share on social media (yes, she states we don’t have to share everything on social media. We get to choose).

Freeing, because Hall points out that we should only share material that’s consistent with our archetype. We don’t have to be everything to everyone. We don’t even have to be everything to our target reader. So I don’t have to share what authors A and B and C are sharing if they’re obviously a different archetype.

Instead, I can focus on sharing what fits my archetype and do that well.

(Which is what I’ve been trying to do, but it’s great to have someone else validate my approach and give a solid rationale for it).

The Kindle version of Author Branding by Rayne Hall is currently on a pre-order sale–just 99 cents (click here to buy).

It’s a bargain and a must-read. It’s also a quick read, so you have time to buy it now, read it over the weekend, and use that new knowledge as you develop your author platform.

And if you don’t have an author platform yet, maybe now is the time to start. Click here to check out the March Marketing Challenge, and I’ll look forward to helping you kick-start your author platform!

Endorsement from Carolyn Miller

Building Your Author Platform: Do I Need a Website?

Building Your Author Platform: Do I Need a Website?

Last week I discussed the need for that elusive necessity, an author platform. This week I’m talking about the main foundation of an author platform: a website.

Your author website is your online home.

It’s where readers will go to find out about you and your books. I asked in a reader group and they confirmed this: they most commonly visit author websites to find out:

  • More about the author
  • When the author’s next book releases
  • What other books the author has published
  • The correct order of a series

And a website is where agents, publishers and editors will look to see if you have that magical author platform. It’s where publicists and bloggers will look to find information about you.

You also need a way for readers to subscribe to your email list—your list provider will probably have a way to integrate this with your website. I’ll talk more about email lists and why they’re important next week.

Your website one of the foundation elements of your platform and of your passive marketing. While it’s a lot of work to build a website, the ongoing maintenance isn’t as difficult, as long as you set it up properly (and remember to keep all your themes and plugins updated, especially security plugins. I’ve learned that the hard way).

What does my website have to have?

Not a lot. You need:

Home Page

To bring people into the site and introduce your brand.

About Page

To introduce you as the author, in order to engage with readers and begin to developing a relationship.

Books Page

(Only once you actually have one, of course!)

Your Books page should include all your books. The general guide is to feature your newest books at the top of the page, but a series should always be presented in reading order.

Contact Page

To allow people to communicate with you.

Email Signup

This isn’t a page, but a form. Ideally, this should appear on every page, and should be a central feature of your Home page. We’ll talk more about email lists next week.

Other pages

Other pages, such as a blog, media kit, reviews, and writing advice are all optional. Which makes it a lot easier to set up a professional author website, and a lot harder to find excuses as to why you can’t!

Many authors procrastinate about building an author website.

It’s too hard. It’s expensive. They don’t have time. I can relate—but I still managed to build an author site in a week using the fabulous 5-Day Challenge from Shannon Mattern at WP-BFF.com. (Click here to find out more.)

If you’d like a little more support, consider joining my Kick-Start Your Author Platform Challenge. (Click here to find out more.)

What questions do you have about author websites? What is the best author website you’ve visited, and what made it good?

Building Your Author Platform | What is an Author Platform?

Building Your Author Platform: What is an Author Platform?

It’s a term we hear a lot: author platform.

But what is an author platform, and how do you build one?

Simply put, an author platform is any means by which you can connect with readers and sell books. And you build it. Brick by brick.

The size of an author’s platform is important to publishers, because it’s a broad indicator of how many copies of the book they might be able to sell. This influences their decision on whether they will publish the book … or not.

A book by a famous politician, sportsperson, media star or preacher? Check. A book by the son or daughter or spouse of a famous (or infamous) dead person? Check. A book by someone whose last book sold a bazillion copies and was made into a movie? Check.

Because those authors all have a platform.

A book by a new author no one has ever heard of … maybe not.

While an author platform is important for traditionally published authors, it’s vital for self-published authors. Self-published authors don’t have the marketing power or distribution networks of the big traditional publishers, which means there is no one to help. Self-published authors have to connect with readers and sell their books themselves.

And that’s where having an author platform is important.

A good author platform will achieve three aims:

1. Attract potential customers
2. Engage with potential customers
3. Convert potential customers into actual customers

Marketing gurus will tell you a potential customer needs to be exposed to something seven times before they buy. People move through several stages between first hearing about you and your books to actually buying one of your books. A well-designed platform will help them move through those stages.

This process is called a sales funnel. In Sell More Books with Less Social Media, Chris Syme outlines the six basic phases:

1. Discovery
2. Awareness
3. Research
4. Word-of-Mouth
5. Purchase Point
6. Conversion or Sale

How Do I Build an Author Platform?

You can’t build an author platform overnight any more than you could build the pyramids overnight. You build one brick at a time, starting with:

These blog pots address the what you have to do to build an author platform.

What questions do you have about building and maintaining an author platform?

Best of the Blogs: 28 October 2016

The best blog posts I’ve read in the week to 21 October 2016, on writing, publishing, and marketing.

But first: a giveaway

Can’t Help Falling, the second novel from New Zealand author Kara Isaac has just released, and I’ve got one Kindle version to give away. Click here to enter.

Here’s the description from Amazon:

A funny, heartfelt romance about how an antique shop, a wardrobe, and a mysterious tea cup bring two C.S. Lewis fans together in a snowy and picturesque Oxford, England.

Emelia Mason has spent her career finding the dirt on the rich and famous. But deep down past this fearless tabloid-reporter façade, there’s a nerdy Narnia-obsessed girl who still can’t resist climbing into wardrobes to check for the magical land on the other side. When a story she writes produces tragic results, she flees to Oxford, England—home to C.S. Lewis—to try and make amends for the damage she has caused.

Peter Carlisle was on his way to become one of Great Britain’s best rowers—until he injured his shoulder and lost his chance at glory. He’s determined to fight his way back to the top even if it means risking permanent disability to do so. It’s the only way he can find his way past failing the one person who never stopped believing in his Olympic dream.

When Peter and Emelia cross paths on her first night in Oxford, the attraction is instant and they find common ground in their shared love of Narnia. But can the lessons from a fantasyland be enough to hold them together when secrets of the real world threaten to tear them apart? Cobblestone streets, an aristocratic estate, and an antique shop with curious a wardrobe bring the world of Narnia to life in Kara Isaac’s inspiring and romantic story about second chances.

The first chapter is at the bottom of this post. But now, back to our regular feature: what’s best in the blogs this week.

Writing

Fiction authors need to show and not tell. It’s easier said than done (and easier told that shown!). Janice Hardy visits Helping Writers Become Authors to share an excellent article on 3 Ways Writers Can Instantly Spot Telling … which is the first step in eliminating it.

Book coach Jennie Nash visits The Book Designer to go Back to the Basics on Backstory. This is an excellent post which also contains links to five previous posts in the series, all written to help you write the perfect chapter.

Publishing

Anne R Allen shares 10 Tips for Choosing Your Book Title—there is some meaty stuff in this post.

Marketing

Draft2Digital have advice on How to Build an Author Platform. Despite the title, this post is not so much about developing an author platform. It’s more about how you can use some clever tools to improve your passive marketing—like putting store links in the backs of your books. It’s from Draft2Digital so they’re obviously pushing their own publishing platform, but why not? I’ve only heard good things about them (and I’m happy to be corrected on that).

Fun

I’m no athlete, but our family are fans of the TV show Ninja Warrior (although we prefer the subtitled to the US version. Sorry, American readers). Anyway, this dad also has a daughter who loves Ninja Warrior … but he’s taken his fandom a little further than most people: Baby Ninja Warrior

 And here’s the beginning of Can’t Help Falling:

Remember: click here to enter the giveaway