Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
What’s it take to make a book successful? We don’t always think of the element I’m writing about today because it seems to be a bigger-picture focus than we have when we ask about a single book’s success. That element is brand building. Today we’re going to take a look at how brand drives sales by checking out the author Sarah Vowell.
But first, let’s acknowledge that an author has developed a brand when the reader expects a certain, distinct experience each time that person reads one of the author’s books. John Grisham has an author brand, as does Stephen King, as does Karen Kingsbury. And as does Sarah Vowell.
I first “met” Sarah Vowell when I saw a couple of interviews with her on television talk shows. I had a hard time figuring out what her books were about based on the interviews, which isn’t an auspicious introduction to an author. Still, I came away with the impression that Vowell was intelligent, insightful and quirky in how she saw topics.
So, when my book club decided to read Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation, I was pleased to take a look at her work. You might well ask what a book entitled Assassination Vacation would be about. Vowell visited the sites of all three of our presidents’ assassinations, as well as examining who the assassin was, who the president was (“insider” sorts of details), the affect the assassination had on the country, etc.
It’s a downright macabre subject. But in Vowell’s hands, the droll writing style entertains and instructs. Even reading about Lincoln’s assassination, which I thought I knew quite a bit about, was fascinating. I learned tons–and smiled a lot as I visited the sites with this witty history expert.
But the real surprise of reading Vowell’s book is that I unearthed a community of Vowell fans. Sarah has done her own brand building. Her significant cadre of loyal followers have come to expect an unusual look at history, an intelligent and subtle humor, and a reading experience that gives insight into Americans’ responses to their country’s history. (See how easy it was for me to define her brand?)
My first encounter with how well Vowell had become branded was when I boarded a plane and settled in to read more Assassination Vacation. I observed a passenger make her way to the restroom and then wander back to her seat, but she stopped along the way to talk to a stranger who happened to be reading a Vowell book. Both were Vowell fans. They chatted at some length about how much they adored her books, each recounting their favorite aspects of her writing. I knew that I could join their “club” just by showing my Sarah Vowell novel, sort of like a password to a secret club.
I might have dismissed that as happenstance except one week later I was getting my hair cut. My stylist and I love to talk about books since we’re both avid readers. I started to tell her about Assassination Vacation when the woman in the chair next to me interrupted our conversation with, “Oh, my gosh, don’t you love Sarah Vowell?!” Then she riffed on how fabulous every one of Vowell’s books were. She thought she had read them all, but I mentioned that I thought Lafayette in the Somewhat United States was my favorite of her odd duck books.
The partially-coiffed woman hadn’t heard about Lafayette and jumped out of her chair, scrounging for a piece of paper to write down the title.
My conclusion, based totally on subjective observation, is that Sarah Vowell has so consistently written in a certain style about American history as to become a brand with a loyal following.
How does a writer go about brand building?
- Consistency. You can’t develop a brand by being all over the map. Choose a place to “live” and settle in. I mean, really settle in. Work to develop a consistent, strong voice and write in the same genre time after time.
- Give yourself time. Few writers build a brand with one book. If often takes many books before enough readers find you and form expectations of what you’ll write.
- Don’t disappoint your readers. It doesn’t matter how bored you might be with your brand, find ways to go deeper within it rather than looking for other ways to write that would surprise but disappoint your readers.
Who is one of your favorite authors? What do you expect to experience when you read one of that person’s books? Do you think he or she was intentional about brand building, or was he or she branded by what the readers wanted and responded to?
TWEETABLES
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Andrew Budek-Schmeisser
Write what you love. Brand is the agora where you meet your readers. They decide the place. Just show up.
Andrew Budek-Schmeisser
But do not let brand become prison.
Janet Grant
You’re so right; the readers will tell you the place.
Shirlee Abbott
“Assassination Vacation” sounds like the perfect gift for #4 son. Thank you, Janet.
*Out here in not-yet-published land, it is easy to focus only on the first book. But it is Book 2 that really establishes the brand. So I must write Book 1 with Book 2 running on a parallel track.
*I enjoyed Jennifer Chiaverini’s Elm Creek Quilt books–history put together piece by piece, like a quilt. I was disappointed by “The Giving Quilt”, with its contemporary setting. It was like a quilt kit, less imaginative but still pretty. “Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker” went back to history stitched with a needle.
Lara Hosselton
Well, this is going to sound corny, but I haven’t had a favorite author/brand since Carolyn Keene’s, Nancy Drew series. I loved them as a teenager and read them aloud to my three girls, who are now collecting their own set.
*My reading tastes vary from MG and YA, to adult fiction and Christian Lit., depending on my mood, which is probably why I don’t tend to follow one author. I used to live for the next book in the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich, but I fell behind after book twelve and never caught up. I’m still wondering if she finally married her hunky, Italian boyfriend.
*I think both the aforementioned authors were branded by what the readers wanted and expected. At least by me, anyway. ?
*If I could successfully predict my own brand, then my loyal, YA followers would expect Christian fiction with a bit of edgy, real world grit and likable characters who ultimately realize God doesn’t want to zap them for messing up, He wants to help.
Carol Ashby
I’m like you, Lara. I got 56 Nancy Drews for my daughter. The whole family likes them, and we listen to audio versions of several as we drive long distances. Those books would be brutally criticized by today’s editors for too much tell instead of show and rampant use of adverbs, but people still buy and love them. Guess that shows how the standards for “quality” at the moment are not as rigid as some might have you believe.
*I love variety. I don’t want to restrict myself to a particular brand. I have several authors I really enjoy, but I get as much pleasure out of a classic written in omniscient narrator as I do out of a contemporary in deep POV as long as it’s not so deep there’s virtually no rich narrative description. I like some beautiful “tell” mixed in with the “show”.
Lara Hosselton
Carol, I’m sad to say I never finished building my N.D. collection, but I still have the books I bought as a tween. Sometimes I’ll pull one from storage when I feel like escaping from the world. I still love the fact that Nancy does her best sleuthing in “pumps” and a sweater set.
Jackie Layton
I loved Nancy Drew and still have my books. I hope to share them with my granddaughters one day.
Andrew Budek-Schmeisser
Frederick Forsyth, unintentional branding. Set out to write three novels and stop (Day of Jackal, Odessa File, Dogs of War) based on his work as a journalist. When he realized that he had a de facto brand built up by his readers, he wrote some more.
* But the earlier books were better. In those he wrote what he knew.
Lara Hosselton
Great final point, Andrew.
Michael Emmanuel
One of my favorite authors took a break from his out-of-the-box thrilling mind twisting books to write deep spiritual books with a thriller touch. The diff wasn’t conspicuous, though some fans claimed they stopped reading him then. Now, he’s working on another out-of-the box book laced with spiritual truths. I’m not sure which is his brand of the two.
And I do think we (readers and writers) determine brand. And as stated, Karen Kingsbury does have a brand.
Janet Grant
It’s telling that you can’t identify that author’s brand because he drifted from the core brand he had established. I believe every time an author does that some readers will drop out. Others won’t care. But who among us can afford to lose readers?
Andrew Budek-Schmeisser
I have a brand. Got it the day I learned you have to be careful getting off a hot Hog in shorts.
Carol Ashby
Too funny, Andrew!
Jackie Layton
Haha! I bet that hurt.
Carol Ashby
In any career, you want to be known for excellence in your area or specialty, but you don’t want to be a one-trick pony either. Being well known enough to have a recognizable brand would be great, but if that brand is too narrow, it could turn into a prison, like Andrew suggested.
*Even though I’m not yet published, I’d have to say I’ve developed a brand because I have an overarching theme that guides all my plots, but it’s not one that restricts creativity. They are all stories of difficult friendships growing into love coupled with the spiritual transformation of one of the protagonists to find faith in Christ. I’m hoping that will be a “brand” that resonates with readers when I start getting the novels into market.
Janet Grant
That sounds like it’s a brand you could sustain. I think of Karen Kingsbury as a three-Kleenex writer. That might be oversimplifying, but she’s written on lots of topics with a variety of settings, but a box of Kleenex is always called for.
Carol Ashby
I always have Kleenex handy when I read. Sometimes I can’t stand the suspense and have to jump to the end to see if it turns out all right for the main characters. Then I go back and read with less stress.
*I go through 5-15 Kleenex just writing my own (I put both male and female through emotional wringers), and I even know how it’s going to end from the beginning. They always end with an aaahh, but it’s not always obvious how that’s going to be possible even 5 pages before the end.
Meghan Carver
Good afternoon, Janet! Thank you for the introduction to Sarah Vowell. She sounds like just the kind of writer our family would like and could be a great supplement to my children’s history textbooks.
I’m finally reading Miracle at the Higher Grounds Cafe by Max Lucado (one of the free books I brought home from ACFW a couple of years ago). I don’t know why I was surprised at the angels in the story. I haven’t read a lot of Max Lucado, but two of our favorite Christmas stories are An Angel’s Story (previously titled Cosmic Christmas) and The Christmas Candle. Both stories have varying levels of spiritual beings as characters. I don’t know a lot about Lucado, but with many authors, I wonder if the building of a brand is simply a result of who they are and what interests them that then is revealed in their writing.
Kristen Joy Wilks
I enjoy Joanne Fluke’s Cookie Murder Mysteries. They are cozies and always have lots of incredible dessert recipes inside as well as a fun mystery. I know she used to write thrillers and has written a couple of regency romances, but I suspect that readers responded to her Hannah Swensen cookie mysteries and that is where she settled. She did find a fun way to use the regency romances. The MC’s mother secretly writes regency romances under a pen name…the author’s pen name and so I looked it up and realized that they were indeed real books. I read both of them and loved them. Looking at the copyright date, I think that she wrote the regency novels first and then found a way to tie them into her successful cozy series. Pretty smart.
Janet Grant
With Joanne Fluke, we’d need to ask her which came first: the chicken or the egg. Did she have the MC’s mother writer regency romances and then thought, “Hey, I’d like to do that?” Or was she intentional when she had the mother use that pen name for her regencies. Either way, not every reader is going to discover her regencies via that name. It’s a grand leap from thriller to cozy to regency. I suspect she lost readers with each leap and had to find new ones, who then came to think of her as either a thriller writer, a cozy writer, or a regency writer. As readers, we’re not good at having–or wanting–multiple definitions of one author.
Jerusha Agen
This post is perfectly timed for me, Janet, as I’m in the process of having a new website designed that will help me to more clearly define and communicate my brand. Because of this task, I’ve been thinking a lot about my brand–what my books offer, what characterizes them, etc. I agree with you, that branding can take time. I had to write several books before I even knew myself what my brand really was and knew which genre I wanted to “settle” in. Lately, I’ve been disappointed when a few authors I depended on for a certain type of story departed from that “brand.” Two newer authors who are handling branding well, in my opinion, are Dani Pettrey and Sarah Ladd. Love their stories, and I know what to expect when I pick one up.
Janet Grant
Jerusha, you make a very good point: most authors discover their brand as they publish their first books. It can take a while to figure out what you enjoy writing; can write long-term; readers respond to.
Barbara Hannay
Thanks for the reminder. It was timely for me, as I was toying with a change that would have been a mistake.
Janet Grant
Whew!
Jackie Layton
Irene Hannon is one author I’ll read no matter what genre she writes. But mostly I pick a book with certain expectations of an author. It’s weird because I enjoy different genres. I’m not sure if some authors are stronger in one genre than another, but that could be why we prefer them to stick to their strongest genre.
You’ve given me a lot to think about tonight. Thanks!