A Brand Thought…

Humans Know Brands… Authors Do Not…

Yeah, I know, authors are humans (for the most part), but they take nothing they know about branding and apply it to their own books.

Author… “I like designing my books and I want every one to look different.”

Same author/human in the grocery store searching for a favorite breakfast cereal. Say Cheerios. God help the store if they moved those big yellow boxes, or if someone in corporate headquarters decided they wanted Cheerios to look different, so they cut the size of the name down, put the name in some green and blue art near the bottom and removed all the yellow color.

No buyer would find it and if they did they would not trust it to be the real Cheerios. The brand and years of customer loyalty would be destroyed. All because someone wanted it to look different. (More than likely an author in a corporate job… sorry…)

Thankfully, from all of us who like Cheerios, no one in control of that brand is that silly.

Yet authors, working to build a brand (which is there name) will change the size of the name, the location of the name, the color of the font and so on, making sure that a reader who found their earlier books will never find their new book.

Your name is your brand.

This is not hard…

— Your brand (your name) should take up the top third of the book in huge letters out to the edges of the book.

— The font clear and thick and not changed much from book to book, no matter the genre.

— Title lower half, large and readable.

— Art picked for genre, not some scene in the book.

— Ideally, all your books look the same, only with a different title and a different piece of art.

I know, I know… You want to “design” your books, make them look cool. Move your name smaller and down into the art, and then wonder why you don’t sell many copies and readers can’t find your work, even though you have discoverability.

Imagine if someone did that to Cheerios. You would never find it and if you did you would no longer trust it was the cereal you ate before. Same goes for the consumers of books.

Change the art, sure, change the title and look of the title, sure. Leave your brand huge and at the top of every book.

Sample of a traditional writer’s cover who still sells more than 12 copies. Hmmm, wonder why.