Ten Years of Author Branding! Maybe I Made Good Choices

Hi, my name is Carla de Guzman. I’m a romance author from the Philippines, and this photo tells you everything you need to know about me. I write contemporary romance that I like to think makes people laugh, I spend too much money on stationery and coffee, and I practically live at Magdamag Market Cafe.

Branding, done.

Kidding. Obviously there is so much more that goes into branding yourself. You need a personality, you need a website, you need a particular look, a particular style, you need to end every post with “and just like that,” you need to use Calibri in every social media graphic, and all your covers need to be blue, because that’s your ~signature.

Actually, you don’t. I mean, all of those things are nice to have, and when you’re stuck in a rut of what you’re supposed to post, it helps. But it’s not everything. Not at all.

I’ve written over twenty books, created book covers for myself and for other authors. I studied marketing in college and I do all the visual marketing and promos for Magdamag (with more of that kind of work coming up on my plate, whew). So I suppose I am qualified to say a thing or two about marketing yourself as an author.

It’s all about choices.

Everything you choose to present to your audience becomes a part of what they know about you. So more than the brand book, the flashy graphics and the ~voice, I like to think an author’s greatest way to brand themselves is through the choices they make. Are they the kind to start drama? Are they the kind to help encourage others? Do they just reblog whatever’s out there and see what sticks? What genre do they write in? What are their characters like? Who do they align themselves with? What do they stand for?

I noticed that the authors I love to read the most end up believing in the same things that I do—in advocating for agency and choice. In voting for not murderers, not felons and not sons of dictators, said with their whole chests. The authors I love to read talk openly about hiring editors they trust, can name their beta readers, encourage their communities, and love to talk about what they read. All of that isn’t part of the technical definition of “branding”, but when you’re in an industry where your identity is a part of your work, it definitely becomes a part of it.

Choices also come into play when it comes to your presence. If you want to choose dark colors and tiny script fonts for your social posts, then that’s all you. If you want to make all your book covers blue, that’s fine, too. But more than the aesthetic of it all, I think it matters more to—as an author—know that what you write falls into place as your brand. Consciously or not, you’re projecting your tastes out into the world, and that’s what people see.

Here’s how choices work to your branding.

These are all of the covers of the books I’ve written since 2015, kind of sort of separated into the accidental eras of my time as an author. Looking at it, you would think that I was following branding guidelines that changed for each intentionally chosen era.

But, they were actually just me making choices according to my taste, to what I felt fit the books at the time. I like to think that the choices I made were good enough that when it’s other people stepping in to make covers without my input, the result closely resembles what I’ve been (unintentionally) building so far.

At first, I just wanted to make pretty covers. Then I just wanted to make pretty covers with Filipino faces on them. That eventually evolved into our current era of pretty covers, Filipino faces, Filipino artists. All of which are choices that are authentic to me, and by extension, is part of what people know me for.

Where do I start?

Start with what you know! What do you like to read? What do you like to watch? What excites you? Who do you think has something in them that you would like to know more about? As creators we’re all conscious about how other people project themselves into the world, so it’s easy enough to look at what you like and find out why you align yourself with that. If you’re following with baited breath the word of a single Facebook Carrie Bradshaw aspirant and take it as gospel, well, then maybe you’re better off with just a Facebook page. That’s for you, I guess!

There’s no one way to brand yourself. There are as many ways as there are authors and people, at the every least. So go forth! Make your choices and have fun! T