Where Normal Need Not Apply
Branding and goal planning. Sample topics: deciding on your goals and priorities, branding issues, entrepreneurship, platform building and ownership, series vs. stand-alone stories, etc.
I’ll be going on the road for some upcoming blog posts while I endure enjoy time with extended family. Wish me luck. One of my guest blog hosts also asked me to provide my “author bio.” Uh-oh. I thought I wouldn’t need that until I was published. But if we […]
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When we think of pen names, we often consider the privacy or marketing aspects and assume that means using a name completely different from our real name, such as Samuel Clemens writing as Mark Twain. But they can also address the need to make our names more distinctive and Google-able.
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If someone does a Google search on our author name, will they find us? This issue comes up more frequently now as writers want to know if they should have a website and/or blog before they’re published. That’s a complicated question that doesn’t have an easy answer.
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Brand. Platform. Social media presence. How many of us cringe at those words? Whatever happened to the days when writers could simply write? But the truth is that as soon as we’re sociable as a writer, whether online with Twitter or in real life at a conference, we’re forming our […]
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Most of you have never met me in person, so I need to start off by explaining that I’m a very expressive person. All those smiley faces in my tweets and blog comments? Completely true-to-life. You’ll never see me take a bet to try to keep a straight face for […]
The comments for my last post were fantastic—thank you! The range of opinions really got me to think deeper about the traditional vs. self publishing issue. Many people wrote in with circumstances for when self publishing works (and possibly works “better”). Others noted situations where traditional publishing is the only […]
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Yes, it’s cheesy, but that picture is me right now because today is my last day in the deadline cave. Yay! As I’m finishing up my final push to the finish, I wanted to share this post from last summer. I think it’s still relevant today, maybe even more so. […]
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Disclaimer: I love Maureen Johnson’s “I am not a brand” manifesto down to the last punctuation mark. That’s not the approach to branding I’m talking about. An author’s brand isn’t about selling. It’s about recognizing that what we say and how we act affects what others think of us. It’s about then […]
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I’m being interviewed over at Rachel Firasek’s blog today. Me! I’m marking this day on the calendar for sure. However, before sending you over there, I wanted to share with you some thoughts about this “branding” thing authors have to keep in mind now. Yesterday, Roni Loren (my friend from […]
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I’ve now recovered enough from the RWA National Conference to talk about my experience. *takes deep breath* Er, or not… The word “overwhelming” was invented for experiences like this. I can try to describe it, but I fear I’ll run out of words (a horrifying thought for a writer!). It […]
