Branding,  Challenge

Branding… Part 15

June 22, 2024 /

What Do You Brand To?…

I got that question a few days back and it took me a while to really think about it. My first reaction was to say you brand to genre or sub-genre.

Then I realized that was just one focus of a brand to get readers, so was the answer that you brand to attract readers?

Well, yes, sort of, at times, sure, nope, maybe…

Turns out the question was a great question. And there is just not one answer to the question, other than… “It depends.”

So let me run through just a few of the really, really basic answers.

For all indie writers, we first want to build sales of books, and a great way to help increase sales is help the reader recognize a series (brand) to help them buy books.

You do that by the following basics…

  • Genre and sub-genre focus of art and fonts.
  • Series name.
  • Author name.
  • Sales copy.

Author name is often the largest brand you have to start with. If nothing else, be a “big name author” on your own books. But that will, of course, depend on genre and series.

So basic answer #1 is to brand to book sales to readers. Business to readers.

A second focus of a brand is the brand sales itself, as a unit. If you are presenting your brand to a streaming service or a gaming company, your focus would be on the look and presentation of the overall brand, the art, the overall nature and genre of the brand itself, not the units in the brand.

This is done in the licensing expo and a thousand other places and businesses. So the second major answer of what to brand to is business. The brand focus is business to business.

Okay, a few more things to not worry about early on. You brand for estate valuation, business valuation, and sales of entire brands as a unit. (Entire brand sales happens all the time in the music world and is coming to publishing. It is called “catalog sales.”)

Early on in your business you will not think much of these last ones, plus others that I am not going to mention. The focus early is branding to make more sales to readers. All good. Do that.

But as you do that, and learn that, remember the question that seems to have a lot of answers. “What do you brand to?”

Keep in mind that the brands you are slowly building now for readers might just be important in other ways not that far down the road.