First of all, why should you build a brand? Aren’t authors all about writing books? Brands are for merchandise, aren’t they?

Well, no. Not these days.

Or perhaps a better way to look at it, is that authors (and our books) ARE merchandise, or at least, merchandisable.

In fact, taking it a step further, if you follow (and if you don’t, why not?) well-known authors, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, https://kriswrites.com or her partner, Dean Wesley Smith, https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/ , we should all be considering licensing our products – from ideas, to worlds, to characters, and everything in between, for future merchandising that we control.

So today, the first step – branding, courtesy of Dakota Krout (if you missed it, read more about his phenomenal success and his advice in this earlier post.

STEP ONE

Decide on your public face.

Pick a few things about you that you feel represent you as a…