Lindsay Harrel, @LindsayHarrel

When I first started pursuing publication, there was a lot of advice out there, such as:

• In order to be considered a serious writer, you have to blog.
• You need to have incredible social media numbers in order for a publishing house to even look at you (even if you are a fiction author and have no idea what to post about because, well, you just go to the coffee shop to write occasionally or else are on the couch in your pjs typing away on your laptop…not much exciting about that!).
• You should pay lots of money to attend conferences and workshops, or you’ll never get published.

While some of this advice might have been valid in the past, new advice has generally replaced it. Advice changes with technology, with new innovations, and with the tides of the industry.

But one piece of advice that I’ve seen stay fairly consistent is to know your brand and stick with it.

This is the part where I always thought, “Huh?” What in the world is my brand?

At first, I thought it meant having some cutesy tagline on my website that would perfectly describe the books I wrote. But I never could come up with one that felt right. I felt in some ways like a failure, so afraid I was behind everyone else.

But here’s the thing: for a beginning writer, it’s perfectly normal to not know your brand, because in many ways, you’re still developing it. You’re still figuring out what genre you write, what you have to say, and what you want to talk about. You’re still finding your voice. In fact, it may take you several novels and many years to do that. And that’s okay!

I’ve heard it said that your “brand” is what distinguishes you from other authors, but that can be difficult to pinpoint. It made me feel like I had to have a gimmick of some sort. That’s why the idea of a tagline to encapsulate my “brand” always felt too difficult. Because even once I knew what kind of stories I wanted to write, I didn’t know how to boil that idea down to a few catch-phrasey words.

I’ve also heard that your brand is just you. Be yourself. That’s your brand. Okay…I get that, and I even like that definition, but it always felt a little amorphous to me. Like, what does that MEAN in reality? How does that guide me when deciding what to post to social media? Just be myself? But what if I like bird watching and that’s not really something my readers like (I don’t … it’s just an example)? Do I talk about it or not?  

So … what IS a brand? Even though others might define it like I’ve stated above, I personally like the way this Entrepreneur article describes it: “Simply put, your brand is your promise to your customer.”

Yes! This resonates with me. Think about it this way: What can your readers expect from you? When they visit your social media pages, what kinds of posts can they expect to see? Funny and lighthearted memes and videos? Serious encouragement and Bible verses? Pictures of your kids and talk about #momlife?

And what about when they read your books? Will they come away encouraged? Sighing happily at the hero and heroine’s kiss? With a heart full of emotions and a head full of thoughts about their own life?

I had to think about all of this recently because even as a published author I’m just beginning to truly understand my brand and how it fits into the industry. I proposed a story that was outside of my brand. Since I only have two books published and a third that will be published in February, I was still contemplating what I wanted to be writing for a while. And though I loved the story I proposed, I wasn’t really thinking long term about what writing it would mean for my brand.

Thankfully, I have others in my corner! My amazing publishing team and I hopped on a call to figure out where I saw myself and where they saw me. They were great in that they wanted me to write what I was passionate about. But they also wanted me to make a decision and stick with it, so that readers would know what to expect when they saw a Lindsay Harrel book on the shelf.

Defining “brand” like that—like a promise or expectation you give to the reader—made so much sense to me. I prayed about it and proposed a different story, one that fit exactly the type of books I want to place into my readers’ hands.

I challenge each of you to consider your “brand” in this light and see what you come up with! Hopefully the term doesn’t seem so frightening or amorphous now.