What is Author Branding?

For an aspiring or published author, the writing quality and the storyline are crucial. Just as important is building an Author Brand. Only an author brand will guarantee that the book reaches the hands of your readers every time you publish a new book. However good the book may be, it has to move from bookshelves or online stores to your readers, and author branding helps.

 Author Branding is the process by which an author positions himself or herself as the centre of attraction and seeks to be the preferred choice in a given genre. In the mythology genre, which author leaps to your mind first? Devdutt Pattanaik? That’s because he has built up a strong author brand around his name and has positioned himself as an expert on Indian mythology.  Another author who is now pushing to strengthen his author brand is Amish Tripathi. With the release of his latest book, Raavan- Enemy of Aryavart, he too has built a strong author brand. People will go to a book store and ask for Amish Tripathi’s book.

An author brand rightly focuses more on the author than the book and aims to ensure that the author’s personality (style of writing, themes, genres) encourages readers to pick his/her books over any other author in the same genre. Top of the list of Indian authors would be Chetan Bhagat and Devdutt Patnaik, Amish Tripathi.

Author Branding is a powerful phenomenon that famous and well-established authors use to keep their books on top of the readers’ mind.  The interesting point is that even when they are between books i.e. the time period between the launch of one book and the other, they seek ways to stay top-of-mind of their core reader base and keep them primed for their next book. Chetan Bhagat writes articles, and appears in TV shows, Devdutt Pattanaik has TV shows he participates in, and posts regularly on social media. You can set up a website with all the information related to you like the author’s name, all details of authors’ published books, a contact page, a request for talks page, a page for fans to interact with the author etc.

A Powerful Author Brand to Connect with the Readers

Building a powerful author brand is an essential part of anyone’s career as a writer. This can be done through building relationships with influential people, creating valuable content for readers, leveraging social media to reach new audiences, developing a consistent writing style, and connecting with booksellers and libraries. Once you have established yourself as an authority in your field, you can build on your brand by attending conferences and participating in other activities related to literature and publishing more books.

Establish a Professional Website. Having an official website is an excellent way to ensure your name and work are readily available to people seeking it out. Ensure your site is regularly updated with fresh content showcasing you, your writing, and any relevant data about events or books. It will also be easier for those reading your work to quickly find important information about you.

2. Use Social Media Profiles. Creating social media accounts for yourself as an author is one of the best ways to keep connected with a large audience of readers and put forward your brand on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and more!

3. Have Consistent Brand Messaging. Consistent messaging across all pieces of content is essential to create a strong and unified presence online. For example, this means creating themes(horror, romance, fantasy), voice tone (friendly and approachable? Serious?), and the use of colours (bright colors vs muted hues).

4. Engagement & Interaction is key for your author brand to stand out from the crowd. Interact with followers through various mediums when possible —engaging in conversations through social media, participating in Q&A sessions related to your genre, reaching out via DM’s/emails etc.

5. Utilizing SEO Tactics One crucial factor when building a branding strategy that many overlook revolves around SEO tactics—selecting appropriate keywords/phrases based on trends and specific genres/targets. Links to blogs/articles published.

6. Utilize Media Coverage & Interviews to prime television networks, magazines, journals, newspapers,

In an age where personal brands have become very powerful in every business sphere, upcoming authors and writers who want to impact their writing careers should start developing their author brands without any further delay.

Once you know what is an author brand and, the following question on your mind is, what are the benefits of building an Author Brand?  There are several benefits of creating an author brand and you should be aware of all of them.

Giving author interviews is another way of branding. To read some author interviews, click