Brand,  Challenge

Kill a Brand…

Indie Publishers Kill Brands All the Time…

Indie publishers will spend all the time and money to build up a brand, then let it just coast until dead. Why?

Numbers and numbers of reasons… Here are just a few.

  • — Indie publishers have zero idea what they are creating when they publish books and stories.
  • — Indie publishers seldom even understand copyright, let alone brands and trademarks. 
  • — Indie publishers just don’t care unless it helps them make a few extra sales on some Amazon measure. 
  • — Indie publishers seldom understand licensing or what a brand might get the publisher in yearly financial return.

Thus indie publishers don’t often know they even have a brand, let alone what to do with it.

And granted, to most of you right now I am making no sense, and to the few of you who understand brand valuation and how to even calculate it, I am being stunningly simplistic.

Without a doubt, this level of topic is silly for me to even talk about. But I watch for brands all the time, not only in what we are doing at WMG, but also in other writer’s stuff. And when I see a good one, I point it out to the writer/publisher. My hope is that the writer pays attention and learns how to care and feed and nurture a brand to help it grow and make them more and more money,

So if you are wondering what in the hell I am even talking about, you can always Google brand creation, how to kill a brand, how to value a brand, and so on. Not easy reading.

But the surface level for us new small-business indie publishers with brands is make distribution deals at the licensing expo. And other places with our brands.

And create even more businesses along the way.

But first, you have to be aware of what you are creating.

2 Comments

  • Brad D. Sibbersen

    Absurdly, I have three series, one properly branded from the very beginning (Pulp: _____ ), one only properly branded in retrospect when I redesigned the covers (Mad Science U), and one that isn’t properly branded at all (Adventures in Diagonal Time).

    And I wonder why my sales are so wonky.

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