Believe in Happy Ever After: Author Branding is More Than Genre

August 20, 2018 | By Amanda J Evans | Reply More

Believe in Happy Ever After: Author Branding is More Than Genre

Believe in Happy Ever After. This is the tag line that appears in the header of my author website and a lot of people ask me why. It took quite some time to come up with an appropriate tag line, a sentence or phrase, that would let readers know exactly what they would get from my books, and I hope I’ve done them justice.

In this article, I’d like to discussion author branding and how it is so much more than simply stating the genre you write in.

Author Branding is more than just Genre

About six months ago, I was watching a video on author branding and there were a couple of things that stood out for me. When I thought of author branding, like many other new authors out there, I assumed it was my name followed by paranormal and fantasy romance. That would tell readers what type of books I wrote.

I was wrong.

There is so much more to branding than simply stating your genre.

In today’s digital world there are probably thousands if not hundreds of thousands of authors who write in the same genre as you, and yet all books are different in some way aren’t they? Your author branding is all about the image your name brings up with your readers and you need to look at how to make your books stand out. Having a tag line can really help with this.

What makes Your Books Different?

What makes your books different is the question that will help you with your author branding. Below are a couple of questions that I found helpful.

Do your books delve into particular themes?

Are you focused on a particular emotion or struggle?

What can readers expect from your books?

What is the main theme that runs through all your stories?

Do you have strong female leads?

Do you have specific character traits?

These are just some of the questions you can ask. Remember sometimes you may need to dig deep. If you have a number of books this becomes a lot easier.

When I analysed my books, and took a closer look at the themes that flowed through them, one thing stood out. All my books focused on death and grief and how my characters struggled whilst always remaining hopeful of a happy ever after. That’s what my books bring to readers. They take them on a journey with a character who is struggling emotionally and yet determined to make things work.

In Finding Forever, my first novella, we have Liz. Liz is a broken woman, taunted by the cruelty of her abusive father. She’s never made a decision for herself. She was never allowed. In the opening scenes Liz wakes to find what she believes is her husband’s dead body and what follows is her journey to trusting and believing in herself and making decisions that matter. In order to find her husband, she must face her fears and step into her own power.

In Save Her Soul, Kate is grieving the loss of her sister who was brutally murdered a year ago. Kate is a strong and feisty character who is hell-bent on getting her revenge. Drake is thrown into the mix and Kate has to make a number of difficult choices between getting revenge and choosing to love.

In Hear Me Cry, Isla is what Irish people know as the Banshee. This story is about death, but I wanted to give it my own take. I wanted to remove the horror aspect and instead create a story of a love that transcends time.

All my books have a happy ending and this is what prompted the tag line, Believe in Happy Ever After. The stories involve struggles, heartache, grief, and strong emotions, and yet all the time, there is that belief that love will conquer all.

What Prompted My Love of Happy Ever Afters?

I am a soppy romantic at heart and love the idea of good versus evil and true love winning in the end. I grew up watching Star Wars and even Luke Skywalker maintained the belief that his father was good, even though the audience could see that he was pure evil. Of course, Luke was right and we all got to watch him return his father to the good side in the end. I believe that good wins over evil, that love can conquer all, and most of all, I believe everyone deserves their own happy ever after.

For me writing and reading is all about the journey. Delving into a character’s mind, becoming them as you turn the page, feeling the despair, the loneliness, the heartache, and then fighting alongside them for the happiness they deserve. If I can bring these emotions to the surface for my readers then I feel I’ve done my job.

Final Words on Author Branding

Your author branding needs to make you stand out from the crowd. Take a look at the central themes and use these to help you narrow down the main focus of your stories. If it’s crime do you write gritty crime, female detectives, real-life drama, etc? Use this as your branding.

Think of it like this, your brand is your promise to readers. It lets them know what they are going to get when they pick up one of your books. It’s also a way for them to recognise you and know what you stand for.

Even if you write across multiple genres you’ll find there’s a common theme that runs through your stories. This is what you use for your brand tagline. Your tagline should provide more information about your book in a short, bit-size phrase. Your tagline is the feel of your stories and potential readers should be able to read it and say, “These are the books for me.”

Three great examples of author taglines are:

Heartfelt, Homespun Fiction – Cynthia Herron

Heart, Humor, and a Happy Ever After – Heather Thurmeier

Romance Novels with Big, Beautiful Heroines – Pat Ballard

All of these let readers know what type of stories they’ll get from the author and they work. Now it’s your turn to create your own author tagline and branding if you haven’t already.

Author Bio:

Amanda J Evans is an award-winning Irish author of paranormal and fantasy romance novels. Growing up with heroes like Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones, her stories centre on good versus evil with a splice of love and magic thrown in too. Her books have all won awards and her latest novella, Hear Me Cry, won the Book of the Year Award at the Dublin Writers Conference 2018. Amanda is currently working on a paranormal romance novel that she hopes to submit to agents and publishers in 2019. Amanda is also the author of Surviving Suicide: A Memoir from Those Death Left Behind, published in 2012. You can find out more on her website www.amandajevans.com.

Hear Me Cry

A forbidden love, a torturous curse, and a loss so great it destroys.

Isla is a warrior of the Summer Court. She has one mission, to keep humans out of Faery. Kill them on sight. When she inadvertently saves one and triggers the mating bond, her life changes forever.

On the run and hiding from her own people, Isla must protect the one thing she’s been trained to hate. With magic now flowing through her veins, she must learn to control it if she is to survive.

The faery are coming. Her once commander leads the charge. Will Isla be ready in time? Can she harness her magic and resist the darkness?

As both sides clash, Isla learns that her kind possesses a cruelty she could never have imagined. Her loyalty will be tested. To save the one she loves, she must give up everything, including her life as she knows it.

Find out how the banshee came to exist in this dark fantasy retelling of an old Irish myth.

Praise for Hear Me Cry

“A fabulous, mystical read with an unforgettable ending.” Claire Allan Bestselling Author of Her Name Was Rose

Hear Me Cry is available in ebook and paperback from all online retailers

Amazon: https://mybook.to/hear-me-cry

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/hear-me-cry/id1369095032

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/ie/en/ebook/hear-me-cry

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1128428975

Social Media Links:

Amanda J Evans
Romance, Paranormal, and Fantasy Author

Believe in Happy Ever After

http://www.amandajevans.com