Building Your Brand

You think selling a book is hard, wait until you have to start building your own brand. :) Interesting article on NYTimes.com about self-promotion.

The Most Fascinating Person in the Room

I'm an instructor at a local college and we're starting a new quarter tomorrow. My students' first assignment is to tell me why they are the most fascinating person in the room. And of course, I'll start things off by telling them a little about myself: I was a professional clown, I'm forty years old, I have a four-year-old daughter, and I write books for other people.

I'll tell them that I hope they learn as much about themselves as they learn about "writing." And that's the truth. There are so many people in this world who know very little about themselves. They don't know their passions. They don't know their beliefs. They don't know what makes them tick.

That's the amazing thing about writing: it gives you the chance to learn about yourself and the world around you. If I can encourage just one person in the classroom (and on this blog) to dig a little deeper, that will be enough. Why are you the most fascinating person in the room? What is your passion? What are your beliefs? What makes you tick?

Being in Your Element

I'm reading "The Element" by Ken Robinson, Ph.D. The subtitle of the book is How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. It couldn't be more appropriate. With the arrival of the new year, I am realizing more and more that we have to be led by our passions; we have to believe in who we are; and we have to promote our personal brand with that very same passion. And doing less than those three things is a disservice to who we are and to everyone around us.

But What Do You Do for a Living?

Before I left the corporate world, one of my major frustrations was that I felt like I had lost my identity. And it wasn't the corporate world (although this can be argued) that took it. I don't know how many times (when I identified myself as a writer) that new acquaintances asked me "But what do you do for a living." Naturally, this was after I revealed that none of my novels had been published. I finally quit telling people I was a writer. Instead, I gave them the same old schtick that I worked in "Office Services" (code for mailroom) for a rather large corporation and I crocheted in my free time.

I can't be alone in this.

It was only after I "edited" a few books for other people and left the corporate world to "write for a living" that I rescued my true identity and didn't feel like a fraud when I identified as a writer. Keep in mind, my novels still remained unpublished. And one could argue (and my wife would be one of those people:) that I wasn't really "writing for a living"...because money was tight and our new lifestyle barely qualified as "living."

While it can be argued that I "write" more now that I don't have another "job to pay the bills," I don't know if that would be accurate. I just go to bed earlier now. When I was in the corporate world, I still wrote...I just wrote after working a ten-hour day sorting mail and making sure the back office was running smoothly.

I tell that really long story to serve as an example of what "NOT" to do.

It's all about branding. If you write (whether you are paid or not, published or not, renowned or not) you're a writer. If you're a writer, identify as a WRITER. Join an organization. Join a writer's group. Dump your unpublished fiction onto a blog. Start building your brand. And do whatever you have to do to pay your bills. There is no guarantee that you'll ever be able to "write for a living." But I can assure you that if you quit identifying as a writer...if enough years go by, you'll stop writing. And that would be bad for all of us.

Starbucks: Too Sexy for Their Name?

Okay, I'm sure you've heard this by now, but the new Starbucks logo has changed. And it no longer includes the words: Starbucks Coffee. I can't imagine what genius had that idea; perhaps the genius that thinks Starbucks should start making bluejeans and doesn't want "coffee" on their bluejeans. I'm thinking it's not the best idea. Turns out that the Gap had the same idea just recently and changed their logo. There was such a backlash that they reverted back to their old logo within the week. I'm guessing that we may very well see the old Starbucks logo reappear and the genius who came up with the idea will probably be having a lot of conversations with the guy who decided to change the Gap logo.

But all of this talk about logos got me thinking about branding...and writers...or branding and creative types in general. As a whole, we're not good at it. And we should make it our business to start getting good at it. While I have plenty more to learn, I've been thinking about "personal branding" in connection with my writing for some time.

I've been known to "ghostwrite" a book or two (or three or four) and have had the offer for my name to appear alongside my client's name on more than one occasion. At this point--outside of sharing writing credit on a screenplay--the answer has always been a very polite "no thank you."

And it's not because I was ashamed of the project at hand; I can truthfully say that I have been extremely proud of every project that I have been involved with. What concerns me about putting my name on a project that is not 100% my own is BRANDING. I am a novelist. I am a poet. I am a short-fiction writer. I am a BRAND. And while I don't have the kind of brand recognition that I hope to have in the future...it is definitely something I think about. And it's something that we will continue to explore.