Fiction Branding… Part 13

Branding Is Fun!!

No clue if any of these branding posts go into any kind of order. I will figure that out down the road if I decide to do something with them. At the moment I am just learning and thinking.

I realized a while back that branding a series was fun in a bunch of ways. Ways that hit me where I write and live, actually.

I realized this when I found myself doing a “chart” of a brand on a series. (More like a rough spreadsheet.) Not anything for public consumption or a sales tool to a licensee. Just sort of me, for fun, keeping track of things.

Let me use my Bryant Street short stories as an example.

— First I put the brand name at the top and if there is an image that represents the brand, I put that there as well. (Image is everything in brands.) Bryant Street and the sign image on the Kickstarter in February.

— Second a rough list of the stories in the brand.  (I put about 70 short stories.)

— Third was a general publishing history… (I put magazines, anthologies, online bookstores, collections, and Smith’s Monthly.)

— Fourth I listed date brand started… (for Bryant Street it was 1982)

— Fifth I listed strength of mark. (For Bryant Street I listed “strong” and a solid record of income for 42 years under the mark.)

— Sixth I listed in general active licenses granted… (Magazines and collections and online bookstores… nothing else active.)

— Seventh I listed the value of each story using the main accepted method of income 70 years past my death with factors… You can google this kind of thing if you want to visit some rabbit holes, I came up with a general number per story and multiplied by 70. (Big number.)

— Eighth I went down some rabbit holes searching for valuation of brands. They tend to fall into a combination of valuation of trademark, copyright, and business, with good will tossed in for good measure. (No clue other than the rough value I came up with was far larger than the value of all the stories combined… very large number. Would I take that amount right now if someone offered it to me for the brand? I would have to think about it.)

The last two don’t interest me that much on this chart because those could change in stupid ways upwards if a game company or streaming show picked up the brand, something I will be working toward this next year or so.

Now, for a presentation to a licensee, I will need more besides those top six things, but again I was just having fun taking a look at one of my brands.

You might want to start thinking at times of some of your work as brands. It will make you rush even faster to get an estate plan, that’s for sure.

Speaking of a brand, take a look at this video done by Kris for my new Kickstarter on GHOST OF A CHANCE BOOKS.