Monday, March 31, 2008

Branding and me: a recap

I have been thinking about branding. My website is going to have a makeover soon, and a slogan popped into my head -- Passionate about history, passionate about romance. It works for me. I suspect other people have used it but it does sum up my two passions in writing.
But it is still all about my books. And the tagline will never appear on my books. Therefore, it has limited use in actually driving anything at the Point of Sale.
As Holly Jacobs points out in her article in the most recent RWR -- Not Another Author's Article on Promotion her tagline has been Holly Jacobs: where love is a laughing matter... It has had to change as she is now concentrating on more angst emotion. She is now left with trying to reinvent her brand image. Her new tagline reads Holly Jacobs: where love is a laughing ...except when it isn't.
The problems with rebranding are well known and that is why sometimes authors opt for different names when they are writing different genres.
There are pros and cons to this approach btw. And it is a question of how a great crossover audience. One of the great all time multiple personalities/branded authors was Victoria Holt who wrote straight historical as Jean Plaidy, gothics as Victoria Holt and family sagas history as Philippa Carr. The stories are all very different. Barbara Michaels uses the pen name Elizabeth Peters for her crime novels and Barbara Michaels more for her gothics. She uses her real name for her non fiction.
Anyway, I like my tagline but I am not sure what I want to do with it.
I am not looking forward to redoing my website, but I suspect I could organise things better...
But ultimately the thing that will drive my book sales is writing quality books and I need to finish the first draft of this Viking. For one thing, I want to get to the emotinally satisfying ending.

3 comments:

Janet Ch said...

"My website is going to have a makeover soon"

For some reason your homepage comes up really big on my computer and I can't find a way of making it fit my screen. Was it designed this way or is there something I need to do to view it properly?

michellewillingham said...

I vote for having someone do it for you. There are many designers with reasonable rates, and really, it's worth it. Better to spend your time writing more wonderful books than worry about the website. :)

Donna Alward said...

Me too Michelle! THough I have to say I love being able to update myself without having to pay anyone, especially if I only have one bit of news I want to change. My designer set it up so I could update it myself, and she gives me tech support if I get into trouble.