How To Build Author Brand

Did you know that creating an author brand is crucial for your author career? But, how can you create a brand that stands out and create impact with the books you write. In this post, I’ll show you how you can start, plan, and launch your author brand to create impact.

Creating an author brand is easy to establish at the beginning stages, but the hard part is sticking to it for the long – term. Building an author brand can take a couple or more years. I know it sounds like a lot, which it is, but you got to start somewhere, right. 

So, how can you start and establish your author brand? 

Here’s what you need to start: 

#1: Create Your Foundation With Ideas 

#2: Write Your Books 

#3: Start A YouTube Channel 

#4: Start A Blog and Newsletter 

#5: Create A Podcast 

#6: Start A Membership 

#7: Create A Etsy Shop 

#8: Instagram Account 

#9: Publish, publish, and publish 

#1: Create Your Foundation With Ideas 

I find it’s extremely helpful to have summaries of story ideas, stored in notebooks you can go back on. Over the course of many years, I have created idea after idea and filled many notebooks. The next step is to develop all of those ideas and start writing them, it’s how you’ll build not only your reputation, but also for your whole entire career. The whole idea of having a career as an author is to have a database of story ideas to continue writing books, it will showcase your skill for writing stories, your style and voice. You can check out my video on my channel on How To Create A Story Idea to get started on your database of story ideas.

#2: Write Your Books 

It’s important that you continue to write your book, no matter what. The name of the game is to write your story, complete it, and get it published. Writing is a labor of love, and when you start it’s going to be extremely hard, because the beginning stages is the hardest part of the journey in order for it to become sustainable and make a living out of it. But, it’s not impossible either. Eventually, your stories will get published, it will create a large portfolio of your best work, and build your audience. 

#3: Start A YouTube Channel 

Nowadays, it’s easy to get on YouTube and start making money. I highly suggest that creating a YouTube channel can be essential to your brand, it’s a powerful way to build your presence online. For some people, they will go for it, and others might pass on it, and that’s okay. You can choose which platform you feel is better for you. You can share your stories on Wattpad, start a Medium blog, use a different social media channel like TikTok, X (Twitter), and so on.

YouTube is a great way to reach a global audience, it’s the #1 streaming platform outing Netflix to #2.

#4: Start A Blog and Newsletter 

If you think blogging and newsletters are dead, they’re not, it’s essential to creating an author brand. By posting blog posts about writing increases your authority and credibility. While a email newsletter increases loyalty and trust. By doing both of these things is building a loyal fanbase and community around your content and your books. 

A great example of this, is K.M. Weiland, the creator behind her website Helping Writers Become Authors: https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com

K.M. Weiland has been writing for a long time now, she has a blog, podcast, a store, YouTube channel, and has a lot of articles on her website. Now, she’s become well – known author, she’s one of the many like herself, other examples are Jane Friedman, and Joanna Penn, to name a couple.

#5: Create A Podcast 

Another great way to establish both your online presence and your brand is to start a podcast. It’s very easy to get into, you can sign up at Spotify for Podcasters. If you have no experience in podcasting, or how to do it, you can always do some research on YouTube. 

A podcast is a great way to not only share your expertise, but to expand your reach for your audience, right now, more than ever, podcasts are gaining huge recognition for a ton of creators. It might seem daunting to get into the podcast sphere, but it definitely has a lot of benefits. It’s part of the brand you’re creating, your unique take on storytelling; if you really want to mix things up a bit to stand out even more, combine storytelling with something else no one has thought.

For example, on my own YouTube Channel, I offer how to write stories that read like a movie and combining movie making techniques to make your story into immersive cinematic stories.

#6: Start A Membership 

A great way to create credibility is to start a membership where you can offer exclusive content for a price. What this does, creates trust from your audience and that you get paid while doing it. A lot of writers do this or even offer services, like editing, or have a website where you can access through a paywall to access courses.

There’s this creator / author I have been following for years, her name is Abbie Emmons. I found a link on her channel, that directs to her Patreon membership, I joined her highest level where she offers live trainings and a vault of previous trainings to go back on and take notes, ever since I started to learn from her, I have gained tons of knowledge and continue studying the craft of writing.

Memberships are extremely powerful and creative, to create trust long – term, and offer something that you know can help other writers to improve their craft.

#7: Create A Etsy Shop

As you grow your email list, blog, podcast, social channel and audience, you can also start creating your own Etsy shop. This is where you can sell your books. Other benefits will increase traffic and new customers who will find your products. You can also do marketing for your book and or other products you may create for you’re your shop. 

This is the best part of the process, you get to be even more creative with your products, the way how you set up for a photoshoot, merch from your books, create packages, cute aesthetic digital products, putting it altogether. Some of my favourite YouTube channels are the ones who have a small business, watch them create, their process, and shipping their products. It might be a lot of work, but it looks like fun too.

#8: Instagram Account 

Speaking of marketing, you can also start a Instagram account to promote your books, create content around your membership, your Etsy shop, podcast, share your blog posts, and newsletter. As you create an audience on Instagram, you’ll expand a ton of reach and potential customers who can join your membership, and buy your products from your Etsy store. 

Instagram is a great way to promote all of the stuff that you create, and it gains lots of exposure.

#9: Publish, publish, and publish 

The last and most important final step is to go through the process of publishing your books. Overall, it’s about publishing your books, one after another, and keep going for years on end to have a full on career, that’s why it’s good to have that database of story ideas to fall back on.

With that said, I hope these tips were helpful. 

Thank you for reading and see you in the next post.