The Importance of Author Branding by Tracey Garvis Graves

[Note from Frolic: We are so excited to have author Tracey Garvis Graves guest post on the site today. Take it away Tracey!]

When people find out I’m a published author, one of the first questions they ask is, “Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?” I answer by telling them that my debut novel, On the Island, was a bucket list item I was fortunate enough to cross off, and I’ve been writing full-time ever since. Inevitably, the next question they ask is, “What kind of books do you write?” I’m currently the author of eight titles—with a ninth in the works—and as someone who writes novels that share elements of two different genres, it can be difficult for me to answer this question succinctly.

Although I should have been thinking about this from the beginning, I was a few years into my writing career when I first asked myself the same question: What kind of books do I write? The more I write, the more I grow and change as an author. But if I don’t know the answer to this question, how will my readers know what to expect when they pick up one of my books? Author branding can seem like a daunting task, but an identifiable brand can help readers decide whether or not an author’s work will fit in with their specific tastes and preferences. 

When your debut novel is the book you’re most known for, it can create challenges when it comes to writing subsequent books. The incredibly high expectations that go along with following up a breakout book can be a huge creativity killer. For me, that bucket list book was written in a vacuum. There’s something very liberating about writing a novel that has zero expectations attached to it. But that made anything I wrote after the first book subject to more scrutiny. I experienced the (very real) sophomore slump when my second book landed much closer to the women’s fiction end of the spectrum and was not, in fact, the fast-paced, plot-focused romance novel readers were hoping for. In order not to make that mistake again, I realized my brand needed some serious identifying and refining to help readers know what to expect when they pick up one of my titles, and to help me choose the premise for my next one.

I took the first step toward author branding when I worked with a graphic designer to come up with social media images, a logo, and a tagline. What did I want readers to think of when they saw my logo? What tagline would best explain the kind of books I write? What did I want to be known for? After giving it a lot of thought, I decided that ‘contemporary fiction with a happily-ever-after’ was the best way to explain my author brand. You might be wondering what that tagline means, exactly. I like to think of it as a mash-up between women’s fiction and contemporary romance. A story that is solely focused on romance does not always appeal to me. I need more of the heroine’s journey outside of her romantic relationship. Conversely, a book labeled women’s fiction will often leave me pining for a romantic aspect and a more uplifting ending. I’m all about the female journey, but why can’t there also be a happily-ever-after at the end of it? I read to escape and when I turn the last page, I want to feel happy and hopeful. The risk, of course, is that my particular brand of storytelling won’t completely satisfy either camp. There may be readers who don’t want romance with their women’s fiction, and readers who don’t want elements of women’s fiction with their romance. But the books I’ve read and loved the most have a little bit of both. I’ve found my reading preferences definitely shape my writing style because it makes sense that I’m going to write the types of books I also want to read.