S01E08: When branding bites

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda had set out to complete their branding manifestos/bibles, but things didn't go quite to plan...

By next week, Sam and Matilda are going to look at how other authors use branding, and see if that helps them figure out their own branding plans.

Where to find Sam and Matilda:

SAM IG: @sammowrimo

Website: www.samantha-cummings.com

Book to start with: The Deathless - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deathless-Frances-June/dp/B0915V5L6F

Most recent book: Curse of the Wild (Moons & Magic Book 1) https://amzn.eu/d/fVXwW3j

MATILDA IG: @matildaswiftauthor

Website: MatildaSwift.com

Book to start with: https://books2read.com/TheSlayoftheLand (book #1 of The Heathervale Mysteries)

Most recent book: https://books2read.com/ButterLatethanNever (book #3 of The Slippery Spoon Mysteries)

Mentioned on the show:

Joffe Books: https://www.joffebooks.com/

How to Build an Author Brand: https://publishdrive.com/how-to-build-an-author-brand.html

Transcript:

Welcome to your next step of the Self Publishing Mountain.

I'm Matilda Swift, author of Quintessentially British Cozy Mysteries.

And I'm Samantha Cummings, author of Young Adult Books about Magic, Myths and Monsters.

I've written the books, changed their covers, tweaked their blurbs, tried tools from a dozen ad courses, and I'm still not seeing success.

Now, we're working together to plot and plan our way from barely making ends meet to pulling in a living wage.

Join us on our journey where we'll be mastering the pen to snag that paycheck.

Hello and welcome to Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

I'm Matilda Swift here with my co-host, Sam Cummings, and we're here to write our way to financial success.

We're two indie authors with over a dozen books between us and still a long way to go towards the quit the day job dream.

If that sound familiar, listen along for our mastery through missteps journey.

Each week, we cover a topic to help along the way.

This week's topic is going to be writing to brand guidelines.

But before that, let's do our wins and whinges of the week.

Sam, what's yours?

My win is that I went to the theatre on Saturday night with a big group of friends, like some people I knew, some people I didn't know, made a new friend and saw Hamilton finally lying on stage.

Four rows from the front, smacked out with a call.

Where did you go see it?

That was at the Palace in Manchester.

It was the last night, so closing night is always so fun at the theatre.

So everyone was just top performances, and you could see everyone was having a great time.

So yeah, I feel like I spent a lot of time feeling like I should always be working, working, working.

And this weekend, I was like, do you know what?

I'm just going to go and have some fun.

And I dropped tools and I got the hell out there.

Oh my goodness, that's so exciting.

Yeah, I did want to go and see it, but this is where I'm going to sound a bit like a...

It's a real brag.

Like I went to see it in New York and I thought I can't go and see it anywhere else.

Yeah.

It's like, oh my goodness, I'm so privileged.

I ruined Hamilton for myself.

Yes.

But it was so good.

It's not the original cast, but it was just phenomenal.

And you know, when you see something in its home, I just feel like if I, like I've been to the palace in Manchester a number of times, like where I went, you know, as a kid, I've seen Rocky Horror there, I've seen Les Mis there.

I feel like I've only seen Hamilton at the Richard Rogers and now it sort of belongs there, but it isn't convenient, because I do really like Hamilton.

My Win This Week is also theatrical.

So my birthday is back in October.

And for my birthday last year, my brother got me two Agatha Christie related events that were on the same day in London.

So I had to get the train down to London on Saturday night.

Got to stay with my friend, who in fact I stayed with when I went to see Hamilton, because she's lived in New York, and now she lives in London.

And I stayed with her and got to see her and her husband and her baby who were back from the US just a few weeks ago, and they're back to stay, which is great.

And then I went to an Agatha Christie walking tour and made some great Agatha Christie loving friends.

It was so much fun.

That sounds amazing.

And then I went to, it was so good, yeah.

And then I went to the old courthouse in London where they stage wits for the prosecution.

It was amazing.

I was literally, I could not have been more front and center in the stage.

And it was not a very high stage.

It was like front row felt great and very engaged.

It almost felt a little bit scary because there's a lot of scuffling and I felt like someone was going to fall on me, but in a good way.

It was so good.

I have a terrible memory of props generally.

So I'm pretty sure I've actually read with the prosecution, but I didn't remember it.

It was very on brand for Agatha Christie.

The twists were not, you know, unexpected, but they were good twists.

They were done really, really well and just very pleasing.

And it's, I hope that's what I like about Agatha Christie.

It's like a real comfort.

Like she's never a million miles away from her niche, but she's always really doing it satisfyingly, satisfactorily and yeah, and really fun.

So it was excellent.

I'm just such good staging, really good production.

I would go and see that again.

It sounds like when you say like she's, it's really like to her niche, like it's almost as if it's to her brand as well.

Yes, exactly.

Yes.

It's interesting actually, because when we were on this walk into her in the morning, we were talking about all the different things that she's written.

And she's written a number of plays.

And I would say playwriting is not her greatest skill.

I think her novels are better than her plays.

I have been in an Agatha Christie play as a suspicious foreigner.

So obviously a criminal and everyone thought I was a murderer.

And I will not reveal if I was a murderer or not, but people were suspicious from the off.

Yeah, so I think playwriting is not her forte, but she absolutely loved it.

And it's interesting that she never set a book in the theatre, which you would think she would because she was obviously there a lot.

She liked the world.

So yeah, I think it was maybe she's stuck with her brand of upper class gentry, actors and actresses could wander into that world, but you couldn't set a book in that world.

So that was quite interesting to think about.

But yeah, definitely in her brand.

And then in fact, going to the theatre tonight again, that's why I'm slightly dressed up.

I don't know if you can see.

I'm going to a local theatre to see Hey Fever, an old cow play, which she was very good.

I've got a couple of friends in that.

So I'm rushing up straight after this.

Amazing.

We're so just, you know, women of the town going to the theatre.

We're getting better.

Do you also have a whinge for this week?

I don't think so.

I feel like my whinges are always just like about time management.

So I just keep those to myself because it's just purely a me thing.

Yeah, that magic you have not for all time in the world.

Yeah, exactly.

I don't know if you watched when you were a kid, did you watch Bernard's Watch?

It's like the little kid that's got a watch that can stop time.

I would love Bernard's Watch.

I think about it so often.

Think of the things we could get done.

Yeah.

That would be amazing.

Yeah, so do you have a winch this week?

I think my winch is going to come up very shortly because it is my failure to complete the task we assigned this week.

Okay, so yes, moving swiftly into that.

Did you happen to come up with a better name than Brand Guidelines this week?

Or I think my name is more whimsical to me and doesn't necessarily encapsulate the idea of Brand Guidelines, but I thought I'd rather have something that was for me.

So I'm calling it the Matilda Swift Manifesto because I love a bit of alliteration.

That is a delight.

Yes.

It doesn't work for everyone.

And to be honest, it's not, it sounds a bit like I'm going to, you know, take over the universe, which I'm not currently in the plans.

It sounds a bit militaristic for a Cozy Mysteries author, but I like it.

A manifesto.

You can have a manifesto of change.

It's a manifesto of my brand, so that's what I'm going for.

Did you come up with a better name?

That sounds, well, I just went with, well, I already have a document which is called My Author Bible, which is like the place where I stick all of my research into like do's and don'ts of my brand and my genre.

So I just went with Brand Bible, because it fits in, and I love the idea of, like religious connotations aside, just the idea of having this like, this Bible type document where like, I apologize if this is insulting to anyone, but I just like, like, worship my own brand of Bible.

I don't know if that's blasphemous, I apologize.

I wonder what the etymology of Bible is.

I love etymology, that is one of the things that's going in my manifesto, is things connected to etymology and like wordplay, because I have that in some lots of stories, and I have a number of friends that I just swap etymology links with, and it's, I'm just leaning into my little old lady, my internal Miss Marple.

I'm a huge etymology person, I'm constantly, whenever anybody says anything about words, I'm like, why did that word come from?

Straight on etymology online.

Oh, I love it.

I love it.

My last, just as a quick segue, my last one was looking up where tofu came from, where the word tofu originated and stuff.

It is Japanese.

I think one of my friends said that it was Chinese, and I was like, no, I think it was Japanese.

Or maybe it was the other way around.

I see I've already forgotten.

I didn't write it down.

That is a problem with etymology that I absolutely also always forget.

It was to do with like, well, obviously, the two parts of the word, so, to, with dough, and it stood for beans, and then fu, which means fermentation or fermented.

So it's like fermented beans.

And I just love it.

So sad.

And that's like, obviously a vegan.

My last word, which was yesterday, was mortis.

Like a mortis and tenon joint in a piece of furniture, which I thought was going to be death related, like the mort, because you call, just recently learned, you call the part of furniture that's like, the part, like if it's a cabinet without the drawers put in, like just the frame, you call it the carcass, which sounds horrible, as a vegetarian, does not sound great.

But so I thought, and then I thought like, oh, maybe it's something to do with the death of the carcass.

It was not.

It was from, like, I hate an item online.

It was from like mysterious roots from another language that we're not quite entirely convinced.

I love the fact that, okay, chest of drawers without the drawers was a carcass.

I love that.

Yeah, I think it was the fancy word for frame.

But it does make me think like my kitchen is full of carcasses, which I don't adore.

Just tell everyone you mean.

Yeah.

I mean, I love technical words.

I love, I love, yeah, language and vocabulary.

And that is definitely going in my manifesto about finding ways to have wordplay.

My new series is going to be set in a sort of book town, which I feel like I need to find a way to explain book towns really quickly and easily.

I can need like an elevator pitch because I'm going to research like are they more common than that I'm aware of?

Because there are book towns in the UK.

There's one in England, one in Scotland and one in Wales.

And they are just like officially designated towns full of book shops.

And they're not even that full of book shops, I would say.

Like I've been to one and it just had quite a lot of book shops.

And some of them are quite new.

And they were just sort of tourist ventures to attract people to a certain area, but they're great.

I've been to Hay and it was wonderful.

I could live there.

So Hay on Wine, that's in Wales, but it's right on the edge of Wales.

It's very accessible kind of from anywhere in the UK.

But yeah, so I'm having a book town.

And within that, I want to have a bit like if you've ever read the Jasper Ford series, the Thursday Next, like lots of literary references and sort of like wordplay around books.

Yeah, so that is exciting.

I'm going to start that soon.

But I think that will maybe give an indication of how far I've got with my manifesto, and that it is currently up in the air and it's up in the air for good reasons.

This is one of those topics which we talked about, I think, right at the back of the start of the podcast, where it turns out to be a bigger topic than I thought it was going to be.

And actually, I've had to spend the first week just researching, get my mind around like, what does belong in brand guidelines or my manifesto?

What belongs in it?

What aspects do I need to decide before I can even start doing the deciding?

Yes.

Yeah, because I hadn't got a document like this before, and I've seen drafts of various kind of similar things for me that look really good.

I'm really cohesive, and I really struggled to figure out like what it would be that wasn't just a style guide, like just visual, like logos and colors and things and fonts, and kind of a sort of Pinterest board of inspiration.

But we shared quite a few good articles this week that were on the same on the topic, which we'll put in the show notes, because they were really helpful and lots of them were specific to authors, and some of them weren't.

And they were really good about kind of thinking what belongs under your brand.

And I actually want to keep thinking about that, because when I was looking at different ones, I kept having ideas of things that were slightly outside of what I thought was a brand topic.

So one was even like pricing and discount strategies.

I think that's a part of your brand that actually I hadn't...

I hadn't considered and even like the formats that you have available.

Like if your brand appeals to older readers, you would definitely want to have large print and audio.

And that can be part of...

And again, it's like how much is that part of your brand?

And how much of it is just like a thing that you do?

I think that's where I'm sort of still mulling a bit before I start making something.

Did you have any thoughts on that connection?

I have put together a very like brief brand Bible, as I'm calling it.

And like you say, the things that I covered were things like my logo, my strap line, my typography.

I am going to be redoing my website.

I probably dived more into it because I'm going to be rebranding and redo my website.

So I had some actual solid stuff that I wanted to look into.

But I also had to really think about voice and personality of my forward-facing persona as an author for writing emails, blog posts, social media posts, and really think about who it is I'm talking to and how that will dictate the sort of language I should be using, the sort of personality that I should be putting across.

Have you thought about that before?

Was it previously just being yourself?

I am being myself, but I have also made an effort not to...

I don't swear a lot in my real life, so I probably swear a lot at home, but not out and about.

But I would try not to swear so much in my social media posts and use language that is not fit for my target audience.

So it's things like that where I had already thought about that, but writing it down and actually making a rule of the language that I would use and the topics that I would talk about has just refreshed in my mind what I'm doing.

It's just been a nice reminder of what I'm doing.

I think that is quite a good thing about having a target audience which is quite age-specific, because I would say it's the same for Cozy Mysteries.

Like Cozy Mysteries, there's no swearing, there's no graphic violence, there's no nudity or anything.

And that really kind of gives you a quick and easy shortcut to, okay, this is the style in which I write.

I also, I don't swear in my day job because I work in education, but I probably do swear a fair amount around the home.

I'm English, it's very hard not to, it's hard not to swear.

It's just part of our punctuation.

But I would never swear in anything related to writing, like in books, in social media.

And I would, I very, very rarely even post things about an alcoholic drink, because I think, you know, the readership is quite varied in their kind of attitudes, that sort of thing, but I wouldn't want someone to feel alienated and that they didn't belong because I had posted things that felt very far from their own experiences.

And, you know, it's not difficult to just, like, select the parts of myself that belong most in that.

It also helps me feel a bit more branded.

Yeah.

And like, it's, because you're, like, as an author, you are the person who is, like, it's all you.

You're doing everything.

But choosing, like, the person that you're going to put forwards does at least, it gives you a nice clear line of, like, who you are at home and then who you are professionally.

Is, like, I think that's quite an important line to draw.

Because, like you say, you wouldn't act or speak in a particular way in your day job because there's a line.

So it's, yeah, it's, like, quite a...

I hadn't really thought about it that deeply, but this week I have been thinking about it, like, oh, yeah, that's an interesting way to think of myself.

I also did a Venn diagram just for fun.

I mean, that's the most fun you can have.

It's mathematical programming.

So I made a diagram.

I also did some, like, keyword research, which I call my essence research because it is, like, the things that people will expect from, like, what I'm talking about.

So I've just kind of given myself some good key, like, buzzwords to use when talking about my books and, like, when thinking about planning future books as well, like, the keywords that come up for young adult books, what people are expecting.

I've made myself a nice little list that can hopefully help me navigate any future stories that I'm going to write.

So I feel like I have done some, like, some really good work, but I do feel like it's all very surface level and, like you're saying, with, like, price points and formatting.

And even, like, covers and stuff.

Well, can I just also, can I ask you about what you're saying about how it's going to help you with the books that you're going to write?

Yeah.

I do, I feel like some of this has felt like, because you do do all the jobs yourself, and one does all the jobs oneself, it sort of feels like I already know all this.

And often if you're writing, like I work in a publishing team as part of my day job, we do kids books for kids that are learning English.

And for that, we have a star guide so that everyone can check it rather than ask one person over and over again.

It's a mutually accessible document, which is for all of us to access.

And almost after my branding manifesto, I'm just telling myself things that I already know.

And I think that's part of maybe also what's stalling me.

I think I want to use it more of an exploration and a learning experience of putting it together, because I know what I write about.

And obviously part of this is repeating things.

We've done this exercise to an extent already.

We're looking at niche niche niche work, figuring out like, what are my areas of focus?

Like, what do I post about on social media?

Because that's my area of focus.

There's a lot of overlap in that.

And I still, I feel like I'm, there's something I could do that would go deeper with this that would help me more than just putting together like a guideline for me to reference of things I already know that feels a slightly unnecessary exercise.

And I feel there's something else in there that I'm not quite getting to yet.

Have you had any thoughts like that?

I do feel like I have been just going over things that I already know.

It's a bit helpful because I like, my brain is very 4D.

I've got everything going on at once.

It's like, it's a crazy world up there.

So it's helped me...

Like putting all these things into one document has helped me feel like I have captured something and I've tagged it down to the ground and it's not going to float away.

So that's just how my brain works.

I like to write things down or put things in a document because to me that effectively means that I've made it real.

It's not just thoughts buzzing around.

But I do feel like I haven't grasped the importance or the usefulness of the document just yet.

And obviously in future, you could, you know, the hope is that you would have like so much work to do because you're so busy and important and successful that you have a virtual assistant and they use them.

So that is great for your future self.

But like I'm someone who doesn't even have...

I hate saying this.

I don't even have a serious Bible.

I'm such a bad author.

I have got a book.

Like, and Cozy series are ongoing series.

Like, you could write 20 of a book in the same series.

I've currently got a series with seven books in it.

And I have to search each time to find things out, like what someone's eye color is.

I'm not even sure I know most of the characters' eye colors.

I probably have written them down somewhere that I've forgotten completely.

I just try not to reference it, if I'm honest.

It doesn't go up often.

It depends on the sort of person you are.

Some people, I think, thrive with having that sort of level of information.

But I don't think it's important for everyone.

And if you want it to be important, I suppose that could be something you would build into all your process documents.

I don't know.

I started a new series.

I really thought about making a series Bible, because people talk about them so much, they think it must be really important.

And people do say, oh, it was so vital, I kept forgetting all these things.

But I just, I don't know what's going to be important in the next book.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, I think I love that people plan series and they have like, oh my god, that level of detail.

They're sticking post-its all over walls and they're moving things around and they're doing all this.

That is not how I work.

It's not for me.

And I think it's great.

I love it.

I love seeing people who are that organized and can have like such big ideas and like wrestle with them so that they put them into this shape and they've got like, to reference like JK.

Rowling, even though like obviously not the best person to talk about.

Famously, she posted a picture like years ago of how she planned the series.

And it was like one of the most intricate things I've ever seen in my life.

And I was just at that point in my writing career, I was like, I'll never, I could never do that.

But I've come to learn that that's just not for me.

So maybe it's just not for you.

Yeah, I definitely, and that is part of like a plotting planning journey is, I think, I always think it's a mystery, I should plan it out more.

But I just really have no sense when I'm planning things of like how big something feels on the page.

So I've had books before where like, I really have tried to experiment where I was trying to, I know we're going off topic here, but it feels kind of related.

I had an experiment where I was trying to write non-linearly.

So, and to do that, you obviously have to plan quite a lot.

So I was trying to like jump around a bit and speed up my writing by just writing the bits that felt interesting right then.

And so I'd planned this book really, really carefully.

I had, and I really like having a lot of side plots in my book within that keeps everything feeling more connected in a way that feels like it's a satisfying mystery, like you're tying to get lots of different threads.

And when I tried to plan that, I had to rewrite the whole book.

I had to excise like two enormous story lines because they just, they took up so much space for no good reason.

They sort of tied in, but not enough to warrant the space they took up.

There's like a whole family who, this is why I need a series Bible, because I can never quite remember if they're still in the series or not, because I'm pretty sure I read them from one book, and I do occasionally reference them.

Or I often think like, oh wait, I want to reference them, but I think they don't exist anymore.

Yes.

So I think, I think I kind of want to persist with the idea of trying to get more ideas in order.

So clearly, detailed plotting is not for me.

Like when I write a mystery, I write a relatively loose plot, and I will leave whole portions out, and then I write the first 10,000 words, and then I get a clear sense of like, oh, now I know what the book is kind of heading towards, because in the first 10,000, you should have seeded all those storylines, all the different characters are going to come together.

But even then, I actually don't, I try to plot in too much detail, because otherwise, it is wrong.

I'm incorrect.

Every time I'm incorrect about like, what's the catalyst?

What's the midpoint?

I'm wrong.

And I don't know how mysteries work apparently, until I have written one every single time.

But I think a branding guideline, I think the thing about it is, is I feel like it could be really useful.

And I feel like we could find a template that would work for lots of people.

To me, it feels like it's going to pull together.

It's a bit like a mystery.

It's going to pull together a number of threads that are in my head, like waving around like little loose bits of yarn, that if I can like weave them into a tapestry, do you weave wood into tapestry?

That's maybe.

Yeah, I think so.

If I can weave them together, then they make a picture and it's like, oh, now I see where I've been going.

So I feel like that's happening in the same way.

It's my mystery writer instincts.

I don't know if it's true.

No, that's how I feel.

The kind of rough draft that I've done of my Bible thing, I feel like I have started something that will eventually shape itself into the document that I need.

Right now it's not.

Right now it's just like everything that I already know.

But I know that that's wrong at the same time.

What I know about myself is fine, but channeling it in the right way, that's the thing that I'm trying to figure out.

Yeah.

I think I don't know how they tie together all the facts.

How does my pricing strategy tie together with my colours?

I think there's something there.

I need a murder board with lots of pictures on it and some red string tie everything together to solve this puzzle.

Like I'm in a police drama.

Maybe that's what my manifesto needs to look like.

I want one of those see-through whiteboards where you can see people through the other sides and write on it with the white pen and then stick, yeah.

I just want to be that woman who's like, think.

I've obviously got a big whiteboard and courtboard that I think will solve my problems all the time.

If I just write stuff on here, that'll fix all my problems.

I'll be organised.

My courtboard, which I'm looking at now, is just like, yet another attempt at me trying to do something and not quite nailing it.

Like, I think it's actually quite...

God.

That's good to say.

I think if we keep going back to this, because I do feel like...

I feel like it's something that I don't see and I haven't seen a good model of, and I think there's a big model of it, of like, how do all the things that make an author go together?

Because if you were a publishing house, you would have your brand guidelines.

I think Joffy Books is a fantastic publisher to follow.

In fact, I'm just going to write this down as I'll show you, because I want to reference it in there.

I absolutely love Joffy Books.

Run by Jasper Joffy, a relatively new digital first crime imprint that I think that publishing houses have very, very comprehensive, clear brand guidelines.

Like I was saying, I do in my day job, we have a style guide, we have writing guides, we have visual guides for every series.

And so I think Joffy Books is a great example of a publishing house to look at, because they're quite new and they're very specific.

They are a digital first crime imprint run by Jasper Joffy.

I was very fortunate.

I had a real burning question because they do a lot of cozy mysteries, but their cozy mystery covers don't look like cozy mysteries.

And they are always top of the charts, and you can always tell a Joffy Books book because the covers are much darker.

You'll have seen they've got very black covers with a little cottage or a little village in a kind of glowing scene in the front.

Those are Joffy Books, and they have such a good advertising strategy.

Again, worth looking at their Facebook ads because they are very good at digital marketing.

They have such a good ad strategy.

They really, I think, are the only publishing imprint that I would consider submitting to at the moment.

They're definitely on my list of people to consider.

Just because they have a good split with authors, they do great work in the digital space.

But anyway, I met some of their, I can't remember if it was editorial or marketing team at SPS Live last year, and was able to ask them about their covers.

And it was less exciting than I thought it was going to be.

They decide which market their book is most likely to succeed in.

If it's English, it gets a more dark, moody cover.

If it's American, it looks more like a traditional Cozy.

So, I mean, I could have guessed that.

But still, it was good to have it confirmed.

Good to have my, you know, mystery solved.

But anyway, they are very good, and they have such clear, you can tell a Joffrey Brooks book from a mile away, even though they have multiple authors.

So that is such a good example of branding.

And because they've got a great reputation, people look at those books and they think, yeah, they might not think that's a Joffrey Brooks book, but they'll think, I've seen a book like that.

I really like it, and I'll buy that.

So, yeah, I think we do need these, like, brand Bibles, but I think they need to be bigger, like, almost like publishing house Bibles.

Yes.

That would contain everything you would have if you run a publishing house.

Yes, because that's the thing.

We often talk about ourselves as indie authors, but we are forgetting the fact that we're actually indie publishers.

And that in itself is such a missed conversation that all indie authors have or don't have.

We talk about ourselves, so we're just, like, it's just the books, there's just a series, the one-off books that we're publishing.

But we're, like, so much bigger than that.

And I think people start small, so people often say, I'm an indie author, then I'm a, you know, what's the next step?

Like, authorpreneur, and then you go up and up and up in terms of thinking of yourself in terms of scale.

But actually, I feel like from the beginning, you could do a thing as a publishing house or publishing imprint.

Even thinking, when you have a book idea, would my imprint publish that book?

If I had to buy that book from an author, would I buy that book and say it stands along the rest of my books?

Which I would say, for my first two series, they don't belong in the same publishing house.

It's nice to not have one because it's too late now.

And I like them both.

But I think this, I want to think of the new series that I'm publishing as my flagship series of 2024.

And it is going to represent the brand.

It is the Richard Osman of my house.

Yeah.

And I think that is maybe a halfway to think of it.

It's like what would belong in all the business parts and all the book parts together.

And I might just spend some time looking at Joffrey Book's website.

I think we often look at other indie authors as comps.

But I do feel like looking at some of the digital first publishers is a good example.

Because they are just doing what we do, but with slightly more things to think about that it would benefit us to consider.

Yeah, 100%.

So, obviously, I would probably...

like a random thing that's going to take us to next week.

But the thing that I have been thinking about in terms of all that is like, and I think this definitely will come up for next week, is something that I've been stuck on and I can't figure out is this thing that I read on the website that we'll link in the show notes, is author branding versus book propositioning.

And I think that is what fits under the whole, like if you're a publishing house, author branding and book propositioning or book positioning is like, they're the two things that I should have been...

like two questions I should have been answering rather than just looking at a brand guideline.

I feel like that's more it.

Yeah, I think that maybe that's the issue with brand guidelines, is it feels very all on one level.

And I think I want to get a sense of like the hierarchy of decisions.

So I want to have some sort of document that is three-dimensional, four-dimensional perhaps, it goes into face and time.

And it covers things like, you know, essentially buying guidelines, like what book belongs in your brand, and how do you position those books, and how do you market those books.

They're not all on the same level, those decisions.

And I think I'm trying to put it into one document in a way that doesn't work, but it's very complicated to think about all the levels and how they fit together.

And I do need a court book with some red string and some polaroid pictures on it.

What I need really is to see somebody else's document that's like specifically for authors who are publishing themselves.

But I don't think it exists.

It doesn't exist.

Like this is obviously, we've found a gap in the market here where we could probably start, if we worked on this, we could probably help a lot of people out.

Yeah, I mean, I think if we could make the template for it, it would be great to just do that legwork and figure out how the layers belong together.

Because I think that's it.

It feels like there's so many disconnected things being an indie author.

Like one day, because you have to change your prices, because paper costs have changed, you go and you change your paper prices, but you do that between lunch and going back to work.

So you rush and do that, but at no point do you sit and think pricing strategy.

Or maybe you do, but it's on a day that you decide, I'm clearing the deck to look at pricing strategy, and it is not in any way connected on an interval left with other things.

And I'm sure it is for many authors.

I'm sure there are high level authors who are there and thinking about those things all together.

I said they're being their own brand managers, or they have brand managers, I don't know.

I think they're being their own brand managers.

It just seems like it might have worked for someone who isn't necessarily a brand manager who wants to be an author.

So to hear how do we...

I do think that when...

I was going to say, I think that there probably are a lot of authors who have had somebody else do their brand guidelines, their brand books for them, which will probably...

They've probably hired a marketing firm to do their website, come up with the whole...

I've given them a hand-delivered package that they've paid for.

But I can guarantee you that costs a lot of money.

And that's obviously not where we are, and it's not where people listening are.

We're trying to do this, being as thrifty and spending money as...

What's the word I'm looking for?

I've already lost words today.

Carefully, yeah.

Carefully, yeah.

We're trying to make decisions that make sense, and not just spend money, because we're told to spend money.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm also, I think, we're very conscious of time.

So I feel like I can see myself, if I had started making this document earlier, it being like a procrastination tool of like, oh, I need to decide on my brand colors before I can write a word.

That's what I see today.

But currently, it doesn't feel like a procrastination, because I think, I feel like it's very hard for me to feel like I can take the next step professionally, while I'm still sort of like...

I feel like I'm just clutching a thousand straws all the time.

Like, I feel like I'm holding them close to my chest, and I'm going to drop them, and I'm having to hold them in my mouth while I reach out one hand to write a little book.

And I just need to put the straws somewhere carefully.

Yes, yeah.

Gosh, this only makes metaphors today.

No, I know, but it just makes so much sense.

Like, yeah, I can immediately know exactly what you mean.

You need to put the straws down.

Yeah, but they'll just fall if I drop them.

So I just need to, I need to find a way to organize all these mini straws I'm holding into some sort of shape, like build some sort of model with them.

Then I can go away and write a book and be like, okay, here is the shape, the house of straw I built.

Oh, like the little pigs.

It's all coming together.

Or, I've seen too much theatre and now we're living in fiction land.

Which, yeah, that's fine.

That is how I feel most of the time.

Yeah, I do find it very can speak because when I hang up people that are not readers, they're like maybe 90 cent references are just book, book related, constantly just all like child's TV, but it's like Bernard's watch, just make a lot of references to books that most people have not read.

But that was what's so nice yesterday about being in this I Get The Christy tour, which is like all I want to talk about was like mysteries and I Get The Christy was so lovely.

And someone, yeah, someone didn't show up to the tour and everyone was like, oh, is he dead?

I was like, I always think that.

I always think someone's dead when they don't show up somewhere.

People always think that's strange.

Yeah, and a few of all these people, they take their notebooks out, like in the last saw room.

In witness prosecution yesterday, you can be in the jury, so you can buy seats that are in the jury, and you have to give your verdict if you're in the jury.

You get given a tiny notebook to make notes on during the trial.

I was not in the jury because I felt that would be too much pressure for me.

Oh yeah, that would be too much pressure, but how exciting.

Especially if you had maybe a couple of glasses of wine or something.

I think they had, yeah.

But they took it very seriously.

They have like a four, you know, a four person.

They had to nominate, they didn't nominate, they're in their seat.

And they have to stand up and sit down with the rest of the court room.

It was wonderful.

That sounds great.

Yes.

I feel this has been a really fun episode.

I'm just like, things that we, the giddiness of things we don't know is where I'm at right now.

Yes, a hundred percent.

I think that it's like a nice and really honest of us to talk about, because we could have come on here and tried to spout off like all this stuff that we've learnt and like why everybody else should be doing brand guidelines, because we've done it.

But that's not what this is about.

This is really about like the honesty of people trying and failing.

Like it's trying, trying, failing.

Real time trying to figure out what we need, rather than just follow a roadmap, because no roadmap exists.

So we just want to sort that out.

Yeah.

Okay.

So for next week, what are we doing?

Next week, we are, excuse me, kicking off a series of rebranding and relaunching.

So we're going to be talking about how authors use branding.

And I think, actually, I'm really, it'll be fun to look at other people's books and branding and stuff.

So yeah, we're going to talk about how other authors use branding and all that fun stuff.

So do you have any thoughts on that right now?

Yeah, so I'm definitely going to rather necessarily look at, or just other authors, look at some digital first publishers, look at some really good, innovative publishers.

Because they have to make a profit, right?

That is their business, so they have to make a profit.

Not necessarily from day one, but quite quickly, they have to have clear business plans.

They are much more ruthless in terms of, like, what books can we acquire rather than, like, I am, which is like, what book appears in my head?

I will write that one.

So yeah, they're just, they're like the next logical step up in professionalism.

And I also think I am going to look at some romance authors, because romance authors are the masters of the publishing universe in terms of branding.

They are geniuses among art regular folk.

How they do it, I don't know.

So I think they are on it.

Yeah, I don't know if this is true, but I think if I were a romance author, I think the confidence it takes to write and publish romance maybe gives you a certain audacity where you can be like, you know what, I'm doing it and I'm doing it really well.

I'm just who I am.

I'm 100% out there.

And I think that little push out into the world in terms of confidence makes them have a really clear brand.

Not all of them obviously, but like definitely the authors that you will know the names of, like, you know, I have seen a talk from Lucy Score, and she was so like a normal person, like seemed lovely and down to earth, but has such a clear sense of who she was as an author.

And she has got such a rabid fan club.

Like she is publishing for them, knowing exactly what they want and how to please them.

Yeah, and I think I am going to look at some romance authors and get a sense of how they align things across their brands.

I think because also they are a genre that more than anything else is based on feeling.

I think their brands do the most to create a feeling.

And actually I think that's what I am missing is a feeling in my brand that I really could do with.

Yeah, I think looking at it from an emotional standpoint, because that's really like the huge selling point of books is what emotion are you trying to get or give people?

So looking at branding as, yeah, what emotional triggers occur when you look at somebody's covers or on their website or just see the array of titles that they're publishing, what is it that ties them all together?

I'm really looking forward to looking at that and to looking at some different authors and seeing out of all of the titles they've got published, what is it?

Maybe it is a visual thing, and maybe our whole point of thinking, I'm only focusing on the visuals, feels really 2D.

But maybe that is, I mean, that's what we'll find out, but maybe that is what we're missing.

I don't know.

It's just so much work, isn't it?

It's just constant work, but I'm really looking forward to doing it.

Because otherwise, if we didn't have this podcast and we weren't talking about it, I wouldn't do it.

Yeah, I wouldn't either.

So it's good to be giving that extra shove into doing something that needs doing.

And if we look at these things next week, that will help me kind of crystallise some things about my Matilda Swift manifesto, which I shall keep going with.

Yes, same.

So yes, I'm looking forward to that next week.

I am dashing off now to go to the theatre.

Yes, have a lovely time.

I am going to just go and eat dinner and try and get some writing done because I realise the end of the month is coming up.

And I've got deadlines.

Excellent.

Alright, well I will speak to you next week then and look forward to catching up on everything.

See you then.

Yes, and see you later.

Goodbye.

Bye.

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