What’s your brand?
You’ve probably heard the term “branding” and likely know that you need a brand of your own, but where do you start? What does that mean for you — the aspiring or established author — and how is your author brand different from your book brand? If all of this makes your head start to spin, take a deep breath and rest easy, because we’ve got you covered!
- Branding isn’t meant to overwhelm; it’s meant to articulate.
- Branding isn’t meant to be an afterthought; it’s meant to be all thoughts combined!
- Branding isn’t meant to be a tactic of a strategy; it’s meant to bring your strategy to life.
Every (business) brand — especially your author brand — tells a story. When done right, a brand tells the story you want to share in a way that inspires people to take action, exactly how you would like them to. It’s the connecting piece of your business’ overarching story, and even though it’s usually wrapped up with a logo, your brand is much bigger than you realize.
A Forbes article noted that “digital marketing experts estimate that most Americans are exposed to around 4,000 to 10,000 ads each day.” Each ad has a brand, each brand tells a story, and each story hopes to inspire action. With that many brands to compete with, you want to make sure your brand stands out (in a good way, of course!).
Are you ready to develop an author brand? Do you even know how an author brand can be different than a book brand?
The entire second season of The emPowered Author Podcast is chockfull of insights on author brands. We’ll help you determine how best to collaborate with a team to bring your author brand to life, while ensuring it tells a story that compels meaningful engagement.
Before any branding discussion, you should give some thought to your overarching goals and the strategies you currently have in place to achieve them.
To help you be prepared for a deeper branding discussion — with us or with another team of marketing experts — download our Branding Brainstorm Guide. This Guide will help you be able to articulate your vision for your brand, your book and your business so that you are ready to work with a team to bring it to life.
So, how is an author brand different from a book brand?
Great question!
Many authors see these brands as one in the same. But let me tell you, that is usually not the case. You, my author friend, are bigger than your book. Your book is an offering you provide, but you likely have other offerings, too, that you seek to share with the world (or are sharing already)! Your author brand tells a story — your story — and your story isn’t limited to your book. It’s bigger than it.
Your author brand …
- Helps you reach your target audience, allowing you to connect with them and build a story that relates to their wants and needs, all in a split second.
- Forms your foundation and is in direct alignment with your goals and your business strategies.
- Can be interconnected with your book’s brand — and your book’s cover — but should be able to stand alone, too.
- Makes a promise to your current and potential customers, clients and readers of what they can expect from you.
- Brings your business to life!
Meet the Team
Stephanie Feger
Stephanie Feger, owner and chief strategist of the emPower PR Group, is passionate about emPowering nonfiction writers, authors and authorpreneurs with laser-focused marketing strategies and tactics to help them write books that sell, promote their books to those who need and want them most, and build a meaningful business from a message that is emPowering. Stephanie doesn’t believe in movement without strategy, and always keeps strategy front and center. She has also seen how emPowered people emPower people. In fact, her business is built around it!
Madelyn Copperwaite
Madelyn Copperwaite is the emPower PR Group’s graphic design extraordinaire and author brand expert. Her work is a blend of creative genius and focused strategy, making her a key player in any design elements authors and authorpreneurs may need. While she loves developing marketing materials, she thrives in brand development. The challenge of taking a business’ vision and impact — something that is not easy to articulate — and creating a brand identity that captures the story in a single identity is a challenge she will take on any day.
Stephanie and Madelyn help authors and authorpreneurs in bring their brands to life. Depending upon your specific branding needs, one of these three packages will meet you where you are and help you get where you need to go.
Author Brand Basic
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Build an author brand with purpose and strategy. This package includes:
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A strategy session to kick off the design process as well as a follow-up discussion with insights and tips on how to best utilize your brand as an author.
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The development of three author brand designs options for your consideration.
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A brand package complete with fonts, color palette, and variations of your brand logo.
Author Brand Deluxe
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Build an author brand and marketing tools to reach and engage. This package includes:
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Everything provided in the Author Brand Basic package including a brand package complete with fonts, color palette, and variations of your brand logo.
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A business card to assist you with promotion of your brand.
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A letterhead template for sending professional printed and virtual messages.
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A suite of branded social media graphics to assist in branding and promoting your business consistently on social media.
Author Speaker Brand
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Build an author brand to to share from the stage. This package includes:
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Everything provided in the Author Brand Basic package including a brand package complete with fonts, color palette, and variations of your brand logo.
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Everything provided in the Author Brand Deluxe package including a business card, letterhead template and a suite of branded social media graphics to assist in promoting your business and your message consistently on social media.
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A template PowerPoint deck that is in alignment with your brand to make virtual and in-person speaking a breeze.
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A speaker kit complete with a one-sheet promotional flyer and associated tools such as a branded bio, book description and news release that can be used to pitch speaking engagements (and podcast interviews).
Frequently Asked Questions
Making the intangible tangible requires creative thought and collaboration. Depending upon your understanding of your brand, and where you want it to take you, the timeline to develop brand assets could be impacted accordingly. However, the Author Brand Basic package typically takes 3-4 weeks to complete and expect another 2-3 weeks to finalize the marketing materials outlined in the other packages. Prior to moving forward with the development of an author brand, a strategy session is held to ensure clarity on expectations, timelines and requirements needed to make a beautiful end product.
We want you to love your brand assets, and we realize that sometimes figuring out what you love requires you to see a few options to help you come to a decision as to what speaks to your brand. Our team creates three designs of your brand’s identity for you to react to, and we will finesse the finished product based on your feedback. You will walk away with one, strong design that tells the story you want told!
Absolutely! We’ve created branding packages with our authors’ needs in mind, but sometimes all you need is a PowerPoint template, a promotional poster or podcast art. Don’t worry! We can help make that happen for you, too. Let’s chat and see what you need and how we can support you.
Of course we can! Whether you have an author brand already or are looking for help to bring your vision to reality, we are in your corner, on your team, and ready to deliver something you are both proud of and will both speak to and reach your target audience.
We sure can. We realize that a book brand is many times different from an author brand, but just as important. Because, let’s be real, people really do judge a book by its cover. We’d love to connect to learn more about your book and your graphic support needs. Schedule a call with us.
Oh, great question! We realize that you will likely have various ways that you want to use your logo, so we typically provide several options and file formats. Depending upon the design of the logo, you may receive a stacked option and a horizontal option. If your logo has an icon, you will receive that as a stand-alone file as well. Your logo will be provided in full-color, black and white, and white only. And you will receive .jpg, .png and .eps file formats for each variation.
Our team wants to help you how you need our help. So, the short answer is yes. If you get your finalized brand assets and want support in effectively using them, we are happy to support you. Our model is twofold — we are happy to empower you with what you need to be successful and we are happy to help make that success happen. To discuss how we can help you, and what that investment may be, let’s chat.
Yay! We are so excited to get the chance to work with you. We’d love to chat with you to learn more about your needs and determine how we can best support them. Schedule a chat with us when you are ready to get started. From this chat, we will pull together a customize proposal for you. A 50% deposit and signed contract is required to get you officially on the schedule and begin our work together.
There are three package offerings to support author branding needs: Author Brand Basic, Author Brand Deluxe, and Author/Speaker Brand Package. Also, our team is happy to price out a la carte marketing materials as well, should you be interested. Email us to get a quote ([email protected]).
We require a 50% deposit is required to begin our work together, and the final 50% is due prior to us sharing the final brand assets and associated materials.
A 50% deposit is required to begin our work together, and the final 50% is due prior to us releasing the 6 episodes to you to move forward with.
