Author Branding

April 6th, 2006 · 4 Comments
by Jill Monroe

Whenever authors talk promotion, usually author branding comes up. Let’s be honest, my writing career is in its infant stage. We’re still paying off the college student loans, so throwing a lot of cash into publicity is just not in the cards for me right now. I’m just doing the standards of booksignings at the local bookstore, postcards to the family and friends, the (hopelessly out of date) website. The usual.

One thing I do is answer every e-mail someone sends me asking about publishing, writing romance, etc. When talking about my first book, Never Naughty Enough, I usually just shortened the title to NNE in blogs, e-mails, etc. I’d planned on doing the same with Share The Darkness. That is until I realized just what that spelled out.

I was actually a little bit horrified. I love the title. In fact, it took me over 20 submissions to my editor to get it. And the fact that Share is in the title, makes the whole STD image that much better!

I thought about avoiding the whole thing, but now I have people e-mailing me privately. “Hey Jill, you know the initials of your book say STD.” I’m just now going to embrace it. This has taken branding to a whole new level.

One way authors brand is to create their own catch phrase. Fellow Blaze author, Mia Zachary uses “Sensual Romance With A Touch Of Sass” Gena Showalter creates a different tag line for every book.

Share STD tonight.

Actually, I don’t want people to share STD. I want them to encourage their friends and family members to get their OWN STD.

Got STD?
Cozy up with STD!
STD now shipping!
When you think romance…think STD!

Then my good friend booksquare suggested the following. I really like it:

Jill Monroe — catch her STD.
It’s an STD that’s good for you.

Feel free to come up with your own!

File Under: Jill's First Blog

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