Is having an author brand important?

To brand, or not to brand, that is the question.

Isn’t it just? Ha ha, okay, so I butchered the ‘Hamlet’ quote above in order to introduce the point of today’s blog post, but Shakespeare is in my head; GCSE English is a big part of my day work.

Having a day job is something that many (the majority of?) novelists and poets need to have in order to pay the bills that creative writing sadly doesn’t pay. With that in mind, is it important to have an author brand, especially to separate personal and professional aspects of an author’s life, as well as promoting oneself?

I would say, yes. Here’s why.

1. Having a website helps readers find out more about you

If I buy or borrow a book and love it, I will search for the author to find out any more books that they may have written. It’s important for an author to have an online presence, especially in this digital age, and often the first thing I will do after a search is to click across to the author’s website. Making sure your menu is labeled clearly is important too, so that readers can find links to your books all in one handy place. Thanks for being on my website right now, folks!

2. Having a logo helps readers to find your website too.

I suppose it isn’t essential to have a logo if you already have a website, but I find that my logo is a handy thing to appear on the back cover of my books and on my business cards with my website displayed on it. Here’s mine:

3. Having a tagline can help readers know what your books are all about

If you’re a multi-genre author like me, it might help to have a tagline to display on your website header and across your social media platforms to let readers know what they can expect from your books. Want to see mine?

I’d say a tagline is optional, but I use mine as a common thread tying all my poetry, novels and short stories together, since it’s the one thing they all have in common.

4. Having an author profile, gravatar or other image helps too

An image of some description to appear on your Amazon author central account (do make sure to set that up too, btw), Goodreads page and your socials is important too. I like to use the same author photo for all my profiles, so that readers know it’s me, even though I have an uncommon name. If you have a common name, there may be many other authors with the same name, so branding will be important. Even in my case with an uncommon name, readers can misspell it; Leilanie without the ‘e’ on the end, combined with Stewart brings up a variety of different profiles. It’s easier for readers to navigate through to my handles if they can see the same photo on all sites, associated with my books. This is my most recent one, taken a year ago. I will get round to taking a new one soon as my hair is much longer now, so I look a bit different.

What do you think? If you are a reader, would you agree that author branding helps you to find a writer’s books? If you are an author, do you have a brand, or feel having one is important? I’d love to hear your thoughts. ☺️