Branding For Writers by Everett Maroon

The advice from people is varied--Emerging writers must work on their online presence. Emerging writers need to keep working on their craft. Don't query too soon. Read up on who will be the best agent for you. Start a blog. Never start a blog. Never write for free. Give some writing away to build an audience. Self-publish. Never self-publish.

There are so many tidbits of advice for the wannabe published author, and lots of it is contradictory or mutually exclusive. Somewhere at the start of all of this din on publishing, we fell in love with telling stories, with characters who hung around us like ghosts, with snippets of scenes and plots dangling in front of us. We've been led here, chasing literary carrots, but we've trotted into what amounts to a busy marketplace, on fire. If we're serious about bringing our work to that market, what do we do?

The good news is, there is more than one way to get there.

Thinking about it, multiple routes to success makes sense—we write fiction and nonfiction, with all kinds of attitudes and bents on our subjects, in different genres, for various audiences, age groups, and so on. On the publishing end of the equation, there are traditional, large publishers all the way down to small, using their own distribution network or using a third party, then there is the vast expanse of self or indie publishing, following any number of business models and print or electronic book emphasis. We write from any one of a nearly infinite number of backgrounds; we may live in a city with bus loads of other writers, in a suburb two minutes from Panera, or in an inaccessible countryside where our only writer friends are reachable online.

Why would we agree to one way of getting published or finding agent representation? When I looked at the "success" stories last year, I noticed some common moments, but there were certainly many roads to Rome. So it burns me to hear anyone declare that writers don't need to blog and don't need to worry about brand. Especially when what "branding" means to us writers is so unclear already.

Here's how I feel about branding, and I'll say at the outset (actually word 364 of this post) that I have some experience with the concept after working for years for a company that did marketing and market evaluation.

For writers, branding is closely tied to our reputation and our genre, but it winds up encompassing more than that. It has not been the case for me that branding is only about my genre. If that were true, how would readers distinguish between Bob Mayer and Tom Clancy, or Mary Higgins Clark and P.D. James? When I pick up a mystery by Patricia Cornwell, I know I'm going to get a specific character history, a dark, brooding thriller, a lot of forensic science, and a writer who I think personally is particularly egotistical. If I select a mystery by Ellen Hart, I'll get gay-infused storylines, a lot of food writing, a funny sidekick, and very little forensic science.

One could argue that these writers work in different subgenres, but look at two writers working in the same subgenre, no matter how narrow the category, and the individual differences will persist. Brands are about more than genre.

Moreover, brands only happen because writers put themselves out there on the scene. To tell Tom Clancy not to worry about his brand is one thing, what with the millions of books he's sold over his career, but to tell emerging writers to only focus on audience is dangerous, because it takes away agency from the author in making herself known to others, and puts it on industry professionals to discover her. And while I have great respect for Rachelle Gardener and the hard-working agents in publishing--especially given today's publishing climate--I think that more than ever, writers and agents/publishers need to be reaching for each other, and writers need support from other writers.

Yes, I need to focus on my craft and my audience, no question. I do that. I feel driven to write for a very specific audience, and I'd say that my audience attention is part of my brand. I'm not a science fiction young adult writer (well okay, I am), I'm a science fiction young adult writer who is transgender and who is writing books for LGBT youth and others who care about LGBT youth. And that is a mouthful. So rather than watch some agent's eyes glass over during an elevator pitch with that kind of lead, I make my mission more pill-sized. And that is my brand. Quirky, sarcastic, heartfelt, queer, fresh, precocious, funny, satirical, and out of this world; that is the fiction I try every day to create.

This means that when I put something out on Twitter I try to be engaging and land somewhere in that framework. I don't complain about traffic, I don't put down other writers, or act like a petulant child. I know that each and every tweet marks who I am as a person and a writer. I want to be collegial, helpful without lecturing anyone, nice, positive, and encouraging to my fellow writers, and I've found so far that this approach really works for me. I read other people's manuscripts and give them feedback. I participate in conferences, don't monopolize conversation, and try to support folks when they're about to walk into a ballroom and talk with an agent for two minutes. I blog about my writing process, have written for free on blogs to help expand my audience, and have offered an ear to others when they want to complain about how crappy the writing world has treated them.

Is this my brand, or is this me being me? It's both. Our brands shouldn't be something that is far afield from who we actually are as people. Every moment we spend in our careers goes toward or takes away from our brand image. I try to remember this when I engage people. In talking with a publisher last August at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association, he clapped a hand on my shoulder after something I'd said.

"What is it," I asked.

"You just sound so easy to work with," he said like he'd spotted a 4-carat diamond a foot away from where we were.

And now he's my publisher.