branding

How a book can expand your client base and establish you as an expert

How do you stay competitive and differentiate your company or brand at a time when cutting through the noise is harder than ever? To get consumers to take notice of you  over your competitors, you have to not only demonstrate your knowledge and expertise—you also have to broadcast it.

A book is a great medium to integrate credibility and intellectual capital into your current branding and business development efforts. It acts as a persuasive advertisement for your business, your consulting services, or your personal expertise. When you pick up a good-looking book on management (or sales, or health, or leadership) that’s sitting on the shelf at an airport bookstore, you automatically attribute a certain amount of credibility to that author. A book helps speakers, consultants, and business owners differentiate themselves and their brand from all the other companies out there doing the same thing.

Is a book a good next step for building your brand or growing your business? Here are a few factors that may point to “yes”:

• You’re a consultant in leadership, management, sales, or customer service, and you have years of experience in the business and want to make yourself more visible to potential clients. A book may be a good way to share your take on best practices or new approaches based on your experience.

• You’re a health professional, MD, dietitian, or fitness expert, and you want to publish your winning methods, breakthrough research, or health plan while simultaneously building a wider platform for your services and products.

• You’re a marketer, publicist, or social media expert, and you already have a following online. A book is a logical extension of the platform you’ve already built, and you can pass along your knowledge to other marketers while opening up a new channel of communication for your brand.

These are not the only folks who may consider becoming authors, and there is a wide array of circumstances that may prompt someone to write a book. Other alternative options for sharing your expertise that you may consider are

• Creating white papers or case studies

• Starting a blog or a newsletter

• Producing booklets, workbooks, or pamphlets on your industry or topic of expertise

Though these type of products won’t have the reach of a book, they all provide useful content that you can distribute to current and prospective clients.

For more on books as a branding tool, check out this article from the personal branding blog.

You may have heard your book publicist or another marketing guru talk about the importance of building a “tribe.” This doesn’t mean traveling to a secluded island and recruiting a selection of indigenous craftsman to start a new culture. A tribe is a devoted group of followers, people who believe in your idea, values, and message and who participate in a community with other followers and evangelize your efforts as an author.

Why do you want a tribe? Because they are your consumers, advertisers, research and development team, and marketers all rolled into one. They help you grow your brand, hone your message, and create an ongoing relationship of service and value—not to mention that it is direct purchases from this group and their referrals that drive the majority of your sales, both of your book and of any other services you offer.

So, now you know what a tribe is and why you need one. But how do you get one? Start by doing the following:

1. Provide value: People don’t follow self-serving rhetoric or empty ideas. They follow trusted advisors, information sources, and value-based ideas they can believe in. Build on the ideas in your book and your message as an author, and grow your value by continually providing your readers with tools and information they need.
2. Provide community: Tribes thrive on community. So, establish forums, blogs, and other ways in which followers can interact with you and each other. Start conversations based on topics in your book, and even gather new ideas for follow-up books and seminars.
3. Provide content: People are always looking for what’s in it for them. Provide free information, resources, and tips to help them improve their lives, and people will follow you. This content could be a repackaging of material from your book, but it should also at times go beyond what you’ve already written. With every post, interaction, and article, give your readers something they can really sink their teeth into.
4. Tell people about it: It doesn’t do any good to lay the groundwork for your tribe and then never promote it. Get involved in social media, networking groups related to your industry, nonprofits, and communities both online and off. Mention your efforts, share free resources, and entice people to connect with you and your tribe.

Building a tribe takes time, so be patient. Above all, building a tribe means sticking to a clear and consistent message and continually providing value, without asking for anything in return. It will pay off in the end, not only in terms of followers, but also in terms of book sales.

Here are also some additional resources to help you with your tribe-building efforts:

Trust Agents by Chris Brogan

Tribes by Seth Godin

Who Moved My Cheese?, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Chicken Soup for the Soul—their covers make self-respecting graphic designers cringe, yet they have astronomical sales. It’s common sense that attractive covers invite book shoppers and ugly covers repel them— so why do these unsightly titles consistently outsell their better-looking shelfmates? (And why do their creators keep producing similar-looking books?)

The simple answer is that, in a hypercompetitive, overcrowded market, branding trumps beauty.

What Is a Branded Book?

What exactly is a “branded” book? Well, a successful brand must be

• memorable,
• easily recognizable,
• attention-grabbing,
• and distinct from its competition.

But branding is more than a look based on a typeface, a color combination, or a trim size. These are merely symbols of a solid brand. In essence, branding is a perception. A branded book is perceived as having something special that nothing else can offer. When someone who knows the Chicken Soup brand walks into a bookstore to purchase an inspirational book for her teenager, she doesn't say, "Can you tell me where I might find an inspirational book for my teenager?" She says, "Do you have a Chicken Soup book for teenagers?"

A brand is an implied promise to the consumer that they'll consistently receive a particular experience. This is why publishers don't like authors to change their writing styles or cover designs too much, because change might upset the consumer who feels that the author’s brand hasn't delivered. This is especially true for nonfiction and genre fiction. Think of Sue Grafton’s A Is for Alibi series—even if you only saw R Is for Ricochet, you’d immediately know B through Q were also available, all with the same suspense trademarks. And you’d know what you’d expect them to look like.

A consistent look tells the consumer that your new book has the same or more merit than your previous book. But that still leaves us with the question of why so many successfully branded books look so bad.

How Ugly Books Are Born

The typical scenario goes like this: Author writes book. Book becomes huge seller. Book goes into reprint many, many times, keeping the same cover for recognizability’s sake. Author writes second book. To capitalize on the success of her first book, she and her designer develop a similar cover. By this time, trends have changed, and the original cover and title are out of date.

But that doesn’t really matter. Or, more accurately, it doesn’t matter as much as the brand equity the first book has gained over the ensuing years. The look and title may not be attractive by the day’s standards, but they are familiar and capitalize on consumer loyalty. The publishers aren’t relying on the cover to attract a consumer—they’re using it to remind the consumer.

That’s why so many “ugly” books are installments in powerful, consistent series—because the customer remembers and recommends the first book and associates it with the following books. If the first book doesn’t build a significant base, the design is much less likely to be repeated, and there’s little danger of it going out of date.

Why Their Brands Won’t Work for You

Many people see the ways brands work for well-known series and decide that’s the look they want for their books, too. But your book’s content is original, and it deserves a cover tailor-made to market its unique message. Imitation is not branding. Nor is it a sound strategy for marketing a book in an overcrowded industry. A copycat cover may do more harm than good by making a book indistinguishable from its competition.

Do what the bestsellers did: Take a great book, give it a unique look, and never disappoint your customers. Take the lead and soon enough others will want to copy you.

How to Brand Your Book

STEP 1: Create a great product.

STEP 2: Figure out what makes your brand unique and stick to it.

STEP 3: Be consistent in marketing your brand. All aspects of your brand need to communicate one core message. Your book’s content and visuals need to back that message up.

STEP 4: Deliver on the brand. Consumers are fickle. If you disappoint them, you'll lose them. Whatever your brand image, make sure that it signifies quality.

STEP 5: Continue to evaluate, build, and refine your brand. The only way you'll know you're doing it right is by the success you achieve. Trends come and go. Amend your look only when what you have in the bookstore is inconsistent with your brand.