S01E09: When authors loom large

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda take a look at the way other authors use branding across their platforms and books. 

By next week, Sam and Matilda will have looked at the importance of branding consistency.

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:

Colour theme from image (Adobe), which IS free: https://color.adobe.com/create/image

Rocket Expansion Author Branding Article: rocketexpansion.com/author-branding

Palette generator: https://coolors.co/

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 Sam Cummings, here with my co-host Matilda Swift, 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 sounds 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 how authors use branding.

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

Matilda, what is your win slash whinge of the week?

I am going pure win this week because I have started writing again.

So I took a break originally for six weeks at the end of last year, and then it turned out to be a pointlessly short amount of time, like six weeks really when you've got Christmas in the middle and you're trying to release a book and, you know, life happens.

Six weeks is not very long.

And I had that thing where I realized that everything I wanted to look into had a deeper and deeper layer.

So I decided to take off also January and February.

So basically I had a full quarter off.

It's been really nice, like really, really nice to just be able to focus on different things.

I've picked up some new hobbies.

I've, you know, explored different relationships.

I've had chance to just catch up on different things, which has been lovely to take a break.

And I do think I will take a break around Christmas every year, because I think it's actually a pointless time, because I'm so busy.

I love Christmas, so I'm very intensively invested in it.

I took a trip to Nuremberg to Christmas markets, which I'll be doing again this year.

I'll be going to some Christmas markets.

So yes, so break was fantastic.

I had felt a bit worried that I would forget her to write.

I would say I was quite worried about that.

I would just really, really feel incredibly rusty trying to get back to writing.

And that I would, because the last time I had some sort of like real break to my process was the pandemic.

And I had a break because I moved countries sort of unexpectedly, and it was a pandemic.

And so when I went back to writing, it was rubbish, like genuinely bad writing.

And I felt uncomfortable doing it because I was not, you know, cozy and charming and fun.

I was writing because that was my, I was writing almost like it was a job.

And it's not a job for me at the moment.

But I would like it to be so I want to treat it freshly.

So I was trying to keep going.

But it felt unpleasant.

So I thought I was worried that after this kind of break of a quarter, I would sit down to write again and feel rusty.

And I know I've been thinking about this series, this new series for a while.

So I was hoping that thinking about it and planning things around it and reading things around it and having done some mindset work, I would hopefully feel good.

But it felt really good to get back into writing.

I've got so many ideas and I found myself just constantly being a little bit excited.

And the idea of like, oh, I'd forgotten the thing I wanted to put in.

Let me go back and put that in.

Yeah, it was really nice.

And I think what was really interesting was that it really read like me, which I'm aware is weird that I would think it wouldn't.

But I did to an extent think that, again, because the books I wrote in the pandemic didn't really read like me.

They read like somebody struggling to write, I guess, over the edge of the word authentic.

And it was kind of nice to have that reminder of my style.

And I might, you know, when I write the first 10,000 words of books, I write the first 10,000 words, take a few weeks break and come back prepared to, if I need to, throw it all away and start again.

It kind of just gives me a sense of what do I want to have in the first few pages.

I often change the first couple of chapters quite significantly, because I try and put too much in.

But currently I'm in that stage where I think it's great.

Whatever I've written is great.

I won't throw any of this away.

It's all golden.

But I probably will throw it all away, which is fine.

And it is for the better.

You and I work so differently.

I really, I think a big part of my process over the past few years has been becoming comfortable with throwing words away.

And I would like a better phrase on throwing away.

I'm not even sure, maybe I don't, because I think it's fine to write words that you don't use in the end product.

I think it always, always makes it better to get rid of words and rewrite.

And I really love having books that I've started.

I've kept the same opening or very filmy edits.

And then, you know, at some point, I have completely rewritten the first couple of chapters and been like, oh, yeah, why was I hanging on to those chapters?

I knew it didn't work.

I should have changed them.

So I think that has been a big part of my writing journey, is like feeling comfortable rewriting stuff for the better.

But yes, that is my big one this week, is feeling great about starting writing again.

And I'm very excited.

I've been looking at the butter list.

I've been sort of doing fun recipe planning, and it is all feeling very exciting.

How about you?

I have got two wins and two whinges.

And I don't often whinge, but I'm going to, so I'm going to start with the whinges.

I'm not feeling well.

I feel like I'm on the cusp of a cold, and it was my fault, mostly because I had like, I went to a wedding this weekend, and so I saw loads of people.

But then I thought to myself straight away, I haven't been ill for a while.

Now, why would I do that?

What was I thinking?

So literally, like, I think it was Saturday morning, I thought I was a bit tired, because I'd been to a wedding, and I thought, wow, I feel a bit tired.

It's really weird I've not been ill.

And now I'm feeling like I'm getting ill.

So I'm whinging at myself for even saying that to the universe.

My other whinge is that I'm kind of at a point in my writing, I'm writing two things at the moment, and both of them are coming to the end, and I'm really bad at writing endings.

So my whinge is that I'm at the worst part.

Like, I'm terrible.

I'm bored of my own everything.

So then my whinge is out of the way.

My two whins.

The first one is I finally got one of our episodes up on YouTube, so if you're listening to this and you like YouTube podcasts, they are slowly but surely going to be on there.

I always have internet problems, so internet problems meant I could only do one, and I'll get more up.

And then finally, my last whim is that I finished editing the book that I'm publishing at the end of this month.

So now it's just a case of, I will need to email my formatter and do all of that stuff, but the edit's done.

The book's finished.

Completely done.

I probably need to just do a quick spell check, because that's always...

I always publish with at least one typo.

Don't know how every time.

But yeah, other than that, I'm happy.

I'm happy with the story.

Yeah, can't wait to publish.

Yeah, we have both touched there on our writing editing process.

I feel like we should do an episode at some point about that, because definitely we do it very differently.

And I think it is useful to talk about how we have come to our processes.

I'm not sure there is a right process.

I really like hearing what I think the process is, not because I think, oh, that's the right way to do it, just because I find it quite comforting to know that everybody else is also guessing and trying different things and has felt convinced they were right.

They found the right process and they realized it was terrible.

Yep.

It convinces me to keep trying new things.

Yeah, I love hearing what people do.

I'm really happy with my processes.

It's taken me a long time to kind of figure myself out.

But I love hearing what other people do.

It's so cute.

I just think it's like...

I don't know.

I don't think it's like really like a personality type thing either.

I think it's just fun to see.

How we all started at one point and we've all ended at another.

And I also think like how...

Yeah, how you got there.

Because that's the hard thing for me is like trying new things because it does feel a bit like lucky underwear.

I'm just like, I can't change my process because then I won't be able to write the book.

Yeah, it's like what maybe what kind of triggered you to try new things and that would hopefully maybe give people confidence to try something new in a different book.

Yes, I would definitely have things to talk about in terms of that.

So we'll pencil it in.

But today we are talking about how authors use branding.

So what do you look at when you're exploring author branding?

I took to Google naturally and typed in Google, how do authors use branding?

Doing the expert hard-hitting research there.

Yeah, like really like doing the Lord's work.

I just looked up, I found a couple of websites which just kind of went through different authors and how they did branding and stuff.

What I really focused on this week, which there's kind of like two sides to it that I focused on, which I just kind of stumbled upon naturally and thought, I'll go with it because it's what's interesting me, which was the physical aspect of branding.

So what people's books look like, and what standardization they go through.

So I've got loads of series from the same author, and also books from authors from different series and things.

So I pulled loads of books from my shelves and looked at what their standard covers looked like, whether there were any similarities, and do they always put their titles and their names in the same placements on the covers, and then what order of things they put inside the books.

Because to me, that's something that I'm always trying to figure out if I'm doing it right.

When I'm getting my books formatted, where do people put their acknowledgments?

Where do people put their author bios?

So it was a bit of a weird way to look at author branding, but that was just something that had piqued my interest, so I delved into that a little bit.

And then I also looked at, because I've been completing my author branding Bible, I was just filling in some more of that this week and looking at things like my target audience and really trying to figure out who it is, who I want to find my books and what I want them to see when they're looking at my books.

So just fun things like that.

So I've looked at...

Let me have a look.

I have done a colour palette, obviously, so I did all that fun stuff of typography and colour palettes because that's the fun part when you're thinking about branding.

It's like logo, colours, typography.

I mean, interestingly, that is, I think, very fun to you.

I'm sure lots of people don't like that.

I find colour palettes frustrating because I think I find it hard to look at it just in a small swatches.

And yeah, I like colour, I like design, but I'm more of a big picture person.

So do you think that you are approaching it through the things you like?

Yes, things that I visually like.

So I use a couple of websites that help build colour palettes.

So you can kind of look through examples and stuff.

I think I used an Adobe, I think my actual colour palette that I've got, I used an Adobe, let me see what it was called, Colour Theme from Image.

So what I did was uploaded some of my book covers and picked colours from my book covers to figure out what my vibe is, and then went from there.

Have you got websites you recommend on that front?

Yeah, so this one was Colour Theme from Image by Adobe Colour.

Is that something you hit subscription for?

I potentially, because I do have an Adobe account, so you may need to be logged in for it.

I didn't look because it probably just, if you do it, I would have automatically been logged in.

But I did use another website, which was actually really fun.

Like, you press the space bar and it toggled through loads of different colour palettes and you could lock in colours and then keep kind of shuffling.

Like a fruit machine.

It basically, oh, ew.

I don't know if you have one in the US.

I don't know.

It seems very like English pub, a fruit machine.

I guess they have them in casinos, right?

They have them in Vegas.

Yeah, yeah.

So I don't know if I've still got this colour thing up, but it was like, yeah, it was like generating palettes, so then you could lock in the colours you liked and move them around.

So I'll have a look, and I'll put it in the show notes because I'll be able to see it in my history.

But that was like, if you're somebody like me who just likes to press buttons and see fun things happen, like so easily entertained, it was fun.

I spent a good, like, probably a good hour living a different life.

Time productively spent, I'm sure.

It made me feel good.

I also looked into, well, I tried to just like really delve into my, the voice that I want to use online, which for me as a young adult author and somebody who reads young adults and still considers themselves a young adult, I'm not.

It's a mindset.

It's a complete mindset.

So I'm kind of happy with the way that I use, that I talk online anyway, but it's just nice to write down rules of like, rules of conduct, the things you'll talk about, the, like the phrasing that you'll use and the use of language.

And I came up with three pillars of content.

So like three specific things that I'm going to post about on social media, which means that my posts will always be consistent.

And I'm not just like randomly posting.

It's so difficult to know what to post on social media.

And it's now like one of the biggest parts that you, like the biggest aspects of your brand that you have.

So trying to like narrow myself in to three particular things, means that I don't often, I won't have to try and guess what to post.

I can just look at my three pillars and be like, well, I haven't posted that for a while, so let's throw one of those out.

Yeah, that's definitely what I want to do with social media as well, is like really stop having to take the decision.

I'm just full of decision fatigue with social media, and I want to take that out of it.

I recently wrote myself a list of like, here's everything that I could post about that is kind of brand related.

I did this maybe a couple of weeks ago, and then I realized it's nothing to do with my brand.

It wasn't like I thought it was brand related, so I thought it was kind of like related to like a cozy mystery audience.

And I realized maybe when we were looking at the podcast last week that I had left out anything that was like quintessentially British, which is what I want to make my brand.

So I need to go and have a rethink.

I had thought about if I'm really, really broad, like what can I post?

I'm so desperate for ideas rather than a brand.

No, no, no.

So something that I read online on, let me see if I still got this open.

It was rocketexpansion.com forward slash author dash branding.

This will go in.

We may have already used this link.

I'm not sure, but yeah, rocketexpansion.com forward slash author dash branding.

Okay, I'll add that.

It's not like they're not coming at it from a particularly like new point of view, but it's just they've listed everything really, really clearly.

So like defining your target audience.

And like one of their rules is, I'm pretty sure it was on their web page.

Now that I'm wondering whether I've just made this up.

But it was, don't go wide, go narrow, effectively.

Figure out your target audience and go for them.

Don't try and appeal to everybody.

Just try and appeal to your readers.

And I think that's something that you kind of feel like you're, well, this is how I feel.

You're trying to convince everybody to read your book.

Everybody that might come along, like, oh, even if you don't read Young Adult, read my book.

It sounds like a great idea, like, oh, you should be trying to convince people, but there are people out there who don't need convincing.

And they're the people that you should be targeting.

So that's, it's always just mindset.

It always comes back down to mindset.

It's being prepared and having the right mindset.

So, yeah, I've got, like, my three pillars of posts, my social media stuff.

And even though I haven't written this on my branding thing, which I really will, it also ties in with, like, the emails that I want to send out to people, like the things I want to talk about in emails, because that's another thing that I think a lot of authors don't know what their emails should be about.

And I think once you've figured out your target audience and your, like, pillars of content, it really helps you figure out your email subjects.

So I've got, like, a huge list of things that I want to send emails about.

So I'm feeling really like I am, like, really, like, feeling, starting to feel comfortable in what my brand is, which has, like, this week, I just thought, just, like, doing this document, I am starting to feel like it's helping and I'm not just writing in things that I already know, like, I have, I have written in things that I didn't really think about before, looking into, like, what the, my target audience's other interests are to try and, like, take that into consideration.

Yeah, I just feel like I'm winning at some point.

Like, I do feel like it's coming together, the plan's coming together.

And I have a feeling that you have done completely different things to me this week.

So, I've got some very visual stuff, so you tell me what you've done.

So I, I sort of haven't done what we said we'd do, right?

But I've done what I needed to do from, from kind of this area.

So, you know what I was saying last week, I was kind of still not feeling convinced that I had got in my mind that my idea for this like brand guideline, the Matilda Swift Manifesto should be.

And I was like, I feel like it's something bigger than I'm conceptualizing, and I couldn't get the concept down.

And so what I did was I took the idea of like looking at all the brands really literally, and kind of looking at what we're planning to do next week, which is about like how you are on the social website and your consistency online.

And actually, I looked forward to that.

And I looked at some people that I look at quite often, so some not necessarily comp authors, but authors that I think have got a really, really good readership, like a very loyal fan base.

And looking at them, and I often look at them like I think it's really useful to have people that you come back to a lot just to get really familiar and notice new things every time you come back.

And I was really looking at them trying to figure out what is their sense of branding?

Because I think in my head, I was still really striving to think about branding as like a really businessy concept, you know, like I'm wearing right now a hoodie with a logo on.

And I think when I think of branding, I do often think about the visual side of it, and that wasn't really helping me because to me, that's not how I think about my books, and that's not how I really connect books to readers.

So I kept going round and round, like looking at these authors, trying to figure out like what it was that I was wanting to understand for them.

And when I was trying to write notes on each of them, I realized that actually what I'm finding interesting at the moment about branding and what I want to kind of pin down about myself is how your brand makes an emotional promise about your books.

Yeah, and that is what I think I want to take as my top layer of the branding pyramid.

And that is also a thing that I think I don't know about myself and I'm not doing consciously.

So the people I looked at for people slash entities, so three people and one publisher.

And I'm just going to read out who I looked at first and they're all fairly well known, but they all have some sort of self-pub connection.

So in different ways, or they're very self-pub adjacent.

So I think they're people that even if you're not reading a genre, you should know of them.

And if you don't, you should go look into them.

So first person was Elia Alexander.

Let me get my phone out.

Let me make sure.

I mean, they'll be in the show notes.

So I will listen to the show notes.

So first person is Elia Alexander.

She is a traditionally published Cozy author.

I think I've mentioned her before, because she has really good branding.

She markets like a self-pub author.

You would not guess she wasn't self-published, the amount of marketing she does, which is interesting that she does so much marketing for books that are not self-published.

She's putting in so much work for a tried publisher in a way that I don't think anybody else is.

She does have a book that's self-published, and she also now has a writing coaching service.

And I can imagine she will self-publish more in future because she's so good at the marketing.

Next person is Lucy Score.

It's very good.

Yeah, very good.

Very, very good on socials.

Absolutely engaging in the way that I would like to be.

Next person is Lucy Score, who started out as a self-published romance writer.

She had some small press thing with another indie author collective.

She's dabbled in different ways of publishing, but big, big self-published author, romance writer, and she has a trad print-only deal, which is the same for LJ.

Ross, who is a police procedural writer, very English location-specific crime books, incredibly chunky books.

Again, big, big self-published author who has a print-only trad-published deal.

And then the other people looked into are Joffey Books, who were mentioned last week, who are a digital-first crime imprint.

They've expanded, they're doing romance as well, and I think I saw they were just expanding into fantasy.

But digital-first UK company, very savvy.

So obviously what I looked into, I kept flicking between different things, so looking at their websites, at their newsletters, at their social media, at different social media platforms, and trying to figure out, because I know them all quite well, I know their books quite well, I know their social quite well, I was trying to figure out why they were doing the brand new things they were doing.

And obviously some of it is intuitive for them, right?

They've done the things that feel right to them, and that has made a connection to readers, and they do more of that.

I want to do it slightly more consciously.

And they all have a branding presence that is very aligned with the feeling you get from their books.

So I'll just kind of talk through what I looked up with them, and I think it is worth our people looking up online.

So the main platforms I looked at were people's websites, their Instagram and their TikTok, and then newsletter if I'm signed up for it.

So Ellie Alexander, she is the brand.

She is like sunshine on legs.

She is just so nice and engaging and warm and welcoming.

And her book is the same way.

She writes about female main character sleuths, who are all, you know, bright, making the world more interesting and exciting and adventurous.

And you feel that way when you watch her videos.

She is very welcoming, and she is taking you on a journey.

So whenever she's like, she takes you on tours around her town.

Through her videos.

She runs a test kitchen in her house.

Again, she makes videos about this.

She has quite a lot of authority, and she's very detail oriented.

It's the same in her books.

Like her books are very detailed.

They feel like you are being led through something that is calming, comforting, like, but also intriguing and exciting.

So the feel that she has in her branding really reflects the feeling that her books give you when you read them.

And yeah, and she's very likeable, but not...

but authentically so.

It doesn't feel like she's pandering.

So she's got a bit of an edge.

Like she writes books set in a brewery, which is unusual for a cozy.

People don't tend to drink a cozy, so she's really kind of able to own her own space.

Yeah, so that was really interesting.

And then I looked at Lucy Score, who is a romance writer, and her tagline is, writing romance so steamy, her family can't look her in the eye.

Which is a good tagline, but if you've ever read a Lucy Score, I would say if you've read Lucy Score and you've read other romance books, that is not a tagline you would give her.

She writes incredibly fun, sassy, rom-commy type books.

And there are spicy scenes, but they're not spicy books.

At least the ones that I've read.

I'm sure there are spicier ones.

Not so spicy that she's had to use a pen name.

She's not hiding her face.

She's not hiding her face, and in fact, her brother works for her.

So it's like a tongue in cheek tagline.

And I think she is a spicy writer for vanilla readers.

Not to judge anybody, but I think she is really, really in a specific space.

She doesn't hide her face.

She doesn't hide her real name.

She, in fact, posts on her social media in a very candid way.

Much more than you would imagine for somebody who is absolutely, you know, selling millions, making millions from her writing and is a very good businesswoman.

And she, yeah, she has a lot of things that make her seem quite wholesome.

Like, her husband is called Mr Lucy, and he's in a lot of her videos, and he works there.

He's mentioned in her newsletters.

He's very, very sweet.

Like, he's an absolutely lovely husband.

He's a book boyfriend husband.

So I think you see her life and you get the feeling that her heroines have.

She's a little bit spicy, a bit sassy, but she has a nice husband, and she has the brother she works with, and she has a really lovely house that she shows, and she goes and gets excited at book tours.

And all of her TikToks are like handheld videos that she has made of herself.

Like, you know, somewhat edited, but they're not produced.

They feel very authentic.

Like a Carrie Bradshaw-ish kind of vibe from her.

Yeah, which I think is really in line with her book.

So I think she creates a sense of which, like, she's writing safe, spicy books, which is a really big audience.

Like, a lot of people want that.

I think that's a great sort of book, really enjoyable, and you know exactly what you're getting when you engage with her.

Her website is very interesting.

Actually, her website looks incredibly professional, like, much less approachable than you get from other parts of her brand.

And I don't know if that's maybe because if you're coming to someone's website, you're less likely to be trying to engage on a personal level.

You're more likely to just be like, you know, a publication researching somebody, or, you know, some sort of journalist, perhaps researching someone, or someone who has just heard the name and wants to Google, like, you're a bookseller.

She's in bookshops.

So it's quite a professional front on there.

It's got a picture of her full body, you know, warm and welcoming, but very professional.

So really interesting to see that, but all her socials really give you the feeling of, like, this is not going to be too spicy, but it is going to be fun.

And her book covers are in that flower trend.

Yes.

Of sort of exaggerated cuteness that suggests something a bit naughty inside, but, you know, it's not that interesting.

It's definitely in the covers.

So you know what you're getting from that.

And then another, the other author I looked at was called LJ.

Ross, who conspicuously doesn't use a woman's name as a police procedural writer, which I think is a really common branding technique, people who write police procedurals.

Her is a very location based.

Her name is huge on the covers.

You'll have seen an LJ.

Ross book because her name is half the cover.

She has a really beautiful location based picture.

She is also a very good business woman.

And I think what's interesting about her is she is not really the brand.

Most of her posts are about author success and success for her books.

She doesn't have a TikTok, which she does, but she shouldn't use it.

On Instagram, it is very more like a publisher's page than an author page because readers of Police Procedure, they're wanting that authority, that sense of upright confidence, and that's what you get from her socials.

Her website is fantastic.

It's really engaging.

It's got some great features on there, but it looks very slick in a good way, in a way that makes you think, yes, I will trust her to write a Police Procedure that will go through all the motions like hit all the beats that I love.

It will cover all the procedure accurately, and I will feel happily resolved at the end.

She's got some family things on her socials, which sort of gives that sense of like, it's a real person, but not as much as I think many self-populated authors do.

And then the last people I've looked at was Joffrey Books.

So they were interesting.

Obviously, they've got a social media team.

They are, you know, small but powerful and up-and-coming company.

They have different feels on different social media platforms.

So their TikTok is very...

It's a bit like if you're on threads right now and you're reading all the social media managers' unhinged posts about like, nobody's looking at what we're doing here.

It's got kind of that vibe.

It's run by just like different, very media savvy young women usually who are posting like trending sounds, kind of funny, currently a lot of Taylor Swift face videos.

And there's sort of a feeling of it being a bit of a secret, a bit of like a joke here on secrets.

But then if you look on their Instagram, it's some of that but also much more professional book publisher.

Like here are promotions of our serious authors.

And their website looks more professional.

So they've done a really good job.

They are really constantly on trend.

So they kind of want to create that vibe of like being on trend.

But also a lot of their book catalogue comes from older authors who had extensive catalogues that were being ignored by traditional publishers that were just like not really being promoted enough.

And they've bought those up and promoted them like crazy.

I mean huge amounts of money from, you know, 20, 30 book catalogues of authors are quite old.

So they have a really interesting mix, which I think covers the audience well.

Like their audience is people who want those books by older authors.

They might even be older readers themselves, but also they're definitely jockey books doing a big good job of welcoming in the newer, younger mystery readers that are big in the genre right now.

So I looked at all those to really think about, and I don't have an answer to this, to really think about feeling, and I don't know what my feeling is.

I think it's really hard to be dispassionate about that and consider what your own brand feeling is and articulate and present that.

I think that's such a great way to come at this, because I feel the same.

It's so difficult to...

I mean, it's because you're so deep in your own stuff.

You can't see it from that side perspective.

So you don't know what the emotion...

I've read that a lot about figuring out what your readers' values are and projecting those values in your brand.

Like, that's...

Like, the emotion-based stuff is the hardest part, and you want to be sincere and authentic.

But how do you figure out what emotion...

Yeah, that's a very, like, head-scratching thing.

Yeah, I think part of it is reviews are helpful.

There is a time when I would say, if you can read reviews, read your reviews.

I recently...

So I do read my reviews, because I also think I actually quite like bad reviews, because bad reviews are usually someone disliking the thing that you know that other people like about your book, so it's fine.

Also, you don't have to be for everybody.

And also, I think it is useful to know people, if a book didn't hit, it's good to know why.

I don't take it personally.

Somebody asked me today, like, oh, what's your favourite plot that you've written?

I was like, I can't remember them.

How would I know that?

Absolutely, once I've written a book, it's gone.

I don't remember book plots in general, but I particularly don't remember mine.

I can, at a push, remember things about them, but I often don't know how they end.

Yeah.

So I do read a few, because I think I can comfortably feel, yeah, dispassionate about them.

And I do think, I think it is worth doing it.

I think it's worth putting out the common words, which I have done, but I think I have not done with enough focus on feeling.

And I really want to do.

And I, what I worry about is like, what's the word, you know, where you're biased to see what you want to see.

Yeah, there's a word for this, but I can't remember what it is.

But yes, right.

I do worry that I will go through views and pick out like, oh, I really, I think I'm very funny.

So I think I will, I'm aware it's not something you should think about yourself, but I do think I'm very funny.

I think I grew up, I have a very funny brother, and I think we're very funny together.

So I think I really value that in myself.

It's like one of my favourite things of my friends is to laugh and joke.

And I think I consciously am very, I try to be very funny in my writing because I love laughing at a book.

And I especially love like that about Cozy Mysteries.

I like sassy dialogue.

So I do try to do that.

I love sassy dialogue.

But that's one of my things.

I always say that about my stuff.

Yeah.

But I think there is a real stigma to saying I'm very funny.

Oh, no.

I say to everyone, I'm the funniest person you'll ever meet.

I'm not shy about it.

I'm a middle child.

I have grown up to be the funny person.

And I tell all my friends, you'll never be as funny as I am.

I think that as well.

I think people wish they were as funny as me.

Yeah.

We're two of the funniest people anybody will ever listen to.

That's why this podcast is such a laugh-a-minute.

That's why we should leave this have a side gig as a comedy podcast.

Yeah.

I mean, it keeps this podcast from being too serious.

Yeah, but so I do think I am biased towards finding reviews that say, oh, it's so funny.

Because that's what I want to hear.

Yeah.

But if that helps you to lean into that, then you can like, that means that you are like, you're seeing something you want to see, but at the same time, that's not a bad thing sometimes to see that.

I lean into it.

Yeah, definitely with this new series, I have been consciously trying to push things a bit further.

And I think, think like, what is the next, like, what's the next joke?

Like, what's the further funnier idea?

Like, what would add to this?

Rather than sticking with your first ideas, or rather than necessarily spending too much time thinking about, or limiting yourself by worrying about, they're like, oh, that's silly.

So I literally just wrote a scene where someone's life alert alarm goes off under the floorboards, and I was like, I need a siren, I need a chapter saying there's a siren.

I was like, what if it's someone's life alert under the floorboards?

Because there's tunnels under the street, and someone has never left the street, and they just walk through these tunnels as they're exercised.

I was like, yes, I'm going to yesand myself into a funnier book.

Yeah.

Why not?

Yes, so I do think I'm consciously trying to up up the funny in them, because I think it's a skill in my tool belt.

I don't have all the skills, that is a skill I have, and I want to make more of it.

So maybe that is a thing, maybe I need to really say like, my brand is funny.

Yeah, I think that's a really good conclusion to come to.

If you already know that your genre and your branding is like quintessentially British, but quintessentially British comedy or humorous.

I want the feeling, so I don't necessarily want to say like oh, I am the funny cozy writer, but I want you to know that if you look at my socials, you should know this will be a funny book.

Yeah, there's going to be some humour in here.

Yeah, I think that that's essentially tongue in cheek.

I think that British humour is very tongue in cheek and sometimes it's kind of very wry and I mean, everyone knows British humour is very sarcastic, so I think that there are so many things that you can pull from, from what's expected from a British writer, particularly if a lot of your audience are Americans, they're probably looking for that or they'd be excited to see that, because Americans love to talk about how funny British people are and how different our humour is.

I mean, two of the funniest British people right now, living in our time.

Which, yeah, gosh, and we found each other.

I know.

Isn't it crazy?

Yeah, the universe.

I mean, it's amazing.

But yes, I think that is right.

I think what I need to do is do more about thinking of what my pillars are, but I want my pillars to be feeling based.

Yes.

I also think we should have a podcast called Pillars to Post, because I almost cracked up thinking about that earlier.

If you're turning your pillars into social media posts, this joke needs more workshopping.

Oh, yes.

That could be...

Well, we could turn that into a side hustle.

We can sell planners that help people.

Yes.

Pillars to Post.

Oh, my goodness.

I think we're genius.

We're funny and smart.

Copyright.

Nobody take it.

Nobody steal that idea.

But I think we did that with this podcast, right?

With this podcast, I think we came on really having a very clear feeling straight away.

The feeling is we're just giving it a go and we're really happy to admit we're making mistakes and we're trying things and we are just talking around our problems.

We're not expecting to be polished.

And I think all of our socials reflect that.

The parts we put out are about like here's some things we've been thinking about.

They're not overly polished.

They show us as authentic people.

I can hear you type in excited notes.

People can hear that.

What is my feeling?

Yes, what is my feeling?

Yes, because I think previously when thinking about branding, it has felt really artificial to try to be like, what's my font?

What's my socials?

Because I felt like I was plucking out of the air.

And this sounds so stupid.

Now I say it, it's like I hadn't thought about what feeling I was trying to convey.

Because that's all, at least to me, that's all reading is.

I teach literature and I spend every literature lesson saying, what's the effect on the reader?

And when I say effect, I mean what feeling do they have?

Yes.

I say this so often.

And I'm so annoyed at myself that I haven't asked myself this question.

What effect do I have on the reader?

And then how can I convey that through everything I do?

I guess maybe a good thing for us to do is to look back at our books, our own books, and try and come up with three feelings per book.

Or you know, just like, maybe even one feeling per book.

What was the overall feeling?

I can't think off the top of my head what mine would be, but I think that if I could do that, if I could look up my book, hold my book in my hands and think, what was this supposed to convey?

Which I haven't thought, because writing for both of us, we've been doing it so long, you know the process, and you know the story.

And personally for me, I assume that the feeling just comes out in that, but I don't try and shoehorn extra feels into my book.

My characters just do that work for me.

But I'm interested to hold my book in my hands and say, what did you make me feel?

I think it's worth to do that for your entire writing style.

Because like I was saying, I came to write after a few months absence and felt like, oh, this is a Matilda Swift book.

Yeah.

This reads exactly like I normally write.

I have not magically become a different writer.

So what is that?

What is a Matilda Swift book?

I have a really good friend who we saw her writing for critiques, and she should be a developmental editor because she is so phenomenal.

Rachel, I have told you this many times.

But she can always articulate back what you meant and maybe why you didn't quite achieve it.

So she can say, oh, I can see you meant the scene to do this, but here's where it's not working for me.

And she's incredibly insightful for that.

But she is someone who gave me my best advice for writing cozies.

And it's because I think I often rewrite the beginning of books, and it is because the book isn't charming.

And that is her word, and that's a word I always think of when I think of cozies.

Because cozies, the word cozy mystery, it really is a charming mystery.

It should make you feel charmed.

You should feel warm and entranced and amused, and you should feel a little bit in love with it.

Cozy, I think, is not quite the right word.

Cozy feels too mushy.

I feel like the word cozy has definitely changed its meaning over time.

I think these days people associate cozy with staying in and being comfortable.

And I don't think cozy mysteries are comfortable places to be.

They are charming places to be.

Yeah, I think that's a really good shout.

So yeah, maybe charming is also one of my feeling words, because I think that conveys so much for me.

It's like charming, funny, but there's something else there that I need to kind of capture.

And I think maybe I'll find it more as I'm writing this book, like what am I trying to lean in towards?

Yeah, what we're trying to do more of.

I mean, I really, really like eccentricity, and that is such an English thing.

And I think that those are the characters that I love the most are the ones who are just out there and really doing their own thing.

I love writing those characters, and it always amuses me to write these characters.

It's my favourite bit to do.

It's just a two-line script for someone you might never see again, but I will think about it for ages.

I really throw a lot into it.

What's the exact way to describe this person that you know 100% who they are, and they will stay with you, even if you never see them again?

And I try and often bring those characters back in in the background because I adore them.

So maybe eccentricity, but then how would I convey that in my branding?

Those are my words like charm, humour and eccentricity.

Those are all so quintessentially British.

I'm writing this down.

And I feel like, I know you should write these down.

And I know we don't really want to go on too much about this because we're going to bore people with how long this might end up being.

Quite a long one, yes.

It's not me though.

I feel like...

I feel like your social media presence, and just you in general, and the house that you live in and everything, is all of those things.

I think you just need to show more of it.

I think you need to show more of yourself.

Yeah.

I'm really, really trying to at the moment.

I think that is really like my 2024 focus.

So I am online dating at the moment.

And my main goal with it is just to be more comfortable with being authentic, because I think when I have dated in the past, I have really tried to present the quote unquote best version of myself.

And actually what I want to present is like the person who's quite sarcastic and loves roller skating and doesn't want to eat three central meals a day.

Yeah, you want to show the weirdest parts of yourself and see who that tracks.

Men do it.

I think I've been worried that like I don't want to know who that is with dating.

So I decide like every time I see somebody and like it might be for one date, it might be for more and it doesn't go any further.

Like once everything, something's reached an end, I'm going to add something to my profile that is more eccentric, that is more me.

Or ask the person that you were dating, what words did you describe?

I don't think I want to know that.

What feelings do you have?

Yes, what feelings do you have?

Just awe, amazement, astounding, actually more positive words to come out with.

Give me a feeling word.

I'm going to add it.

Yeah.

But I think maybe that is really what I'm focused on this year is authenticity.

And I have been thinking about that in my personal life a lot.

But I need to think about it in my life as well.

100%.

This episode has felt like such a revelation for me.

It's been like a personal therapy.

I really feel like it's been a long one for everyone else.

I hope they've enjoyed coming on this journey with me.

But I feel like I have cracked the branding as a concept, as like my writer self and my regular human self.

Mm-hmm.

We're getting there, one step at a time.

Yeah.

So we'll wrap this up because we could, I feel like we could talk about it forever.

So let's take this off the podcast.

So next week's topic, we're going to continue with our series on re-branding and re-launching.

And next week, we'll be talking about how consistent we can be with our branding.

So branding consistency.

What does branding consistency mean to you at this moment in time?

So I think when we originally thought of this topic, we'd written, or I'd written in brackets in my notes, that we want to talk about kind of how to make your social media and your website consistent.

But I do now follow my epiphany thing that is to do with not necessarily having to be the same, but making sure you're very feeling focused, so that if you're trying to target people in one place, what feeling are you trying to convey to that?

And are you trying to reach a slightly different audience to another location?

And how does it tie into your overall focus on feelings?

Yeah, and I had planned to do some research into comp authors next week, but then I brought it forward because I really couldn't.

I was getting stuck this week in what I was trying to understand.

So I'm not sure what I'm going to do for next week in terms of physically looking at things.

Maybe I might look at my own work and my own website and social and think, how do I want to put this into play?

What about you?

What thoughts have you got in this area?

Similarly with socials, it's like how to be consistent on socials, which I have kind of been doing quite well on recently.

I've had a bit of a like a fun time on TikTok over the last week or so.

I was stuck in the 200 views category for ages, and I finally broke into like 700, 800 views.

So I'm tipping in the right direction.

That is from consistently posting.

One of the big things that I have struggled with over the last probably 12 months, and I know that we've spoken about this before, like at the start of this whole journey, was I kind of got sucked into the weird part of social media where as an author, I was talking to other authors.

And I think it's easy to get sucked into because you're trying to find like your community, but then you end up, the algorithm then starts putting you into that camp.

So I had to try and train my algorithm to put me into the readers camp.

That's kind of the consistency that I need to work on is remembering who I'm talking to, remembering who I'm targeting with my posts and all that fun stuff.

So that's kind of going to be where I'm coming at.

This one.

Yeah, that is definitely interesting.

And I think about that with posting things about this podcast.

I'm always a bit convicted.

How much I want to post it on my own social media, like my author branded social media, because it's not the same audience.

I think it might be worth for you looking into Ellie Alexander, who has added a coaching strand.

Her website is very good.

It instantly separates you off into which strand you are, whether you're a reader or a writer.

But her socials are really mixed.

And I don't know if that is just because a lot of Cozy authors are Cozy readers.

You know, a lot of people are into Cozy, like writing.

Yeah, I do find that...

Yeah, maybe less worry for her of overlapping.

But also she had spent a very long time building up an incredibly strong reader-based social profile.

So I think maybe she might have felt less like it was a danger adding writers into that.

I wasn't going to lose her or the reader audience.

But yeah, it is definitely, I think, useful to think about and how to make sure that you're focused on the right audience.

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely like a big, big hurdle that I've been trying to jump over recently.

I'm doing okay with it, but yeah, definitely need to figure that out.

So I will be, I'll look into Ellie Alexander.

I do, I've been on her, I've actually got a tab open with her website on and I've been looking at it over the last few weeks.

So I just need to sit down and focus.

Yeah, yeah, I think I'm going to go and write copious notes about my epiphany now and put myself in the back for being a hilarious genius.

Some more.

And yeah, think about what my, how I'm going to present my feelings.

I think it's again, and I don't want to go on too long, but I think it is again like that English thing of like really feeling hesitant to own something.

So it's like, if I said my feeling words are like charm, human, eccentricity, how do I own that without feeling embarrassed?

Like, yeah.

There's no room for embarrassment in this.

I actually, I know this is going to, I don't want to continue this too long, but at the wedding that I went to the other day, I can't tell you the amount of people who stopped me and said, I've been seeing you all on Instagram, like you're doing so well, your posts are so good.

And I was just like, I didn't think anybody was, what?

Like I didn't think anybody saw my stuff, please don't say you've seen me online.

But that's the thing, instantly I kind of felt like I wanted to recoil, but there's no room for that.

We've got to own it, we've got to own our own geniuses.

Yeah, maybe that's a thing to work on for next week as well, is like how to make sure that you're not shying away from your branding, because I think we can have all the ideas in the world and then not enact it, because we're a little bit shy of people's, of like tall poppy syndrome.

And I dislike that about being English.

I would like to be the tallest poppy in the field and I will not get mown down.

That sounds like fighting talk.

Yeah, fighting talk.

We're on it.

We will come next week with the rest of our details of our fight.

We will come with our war plans.

Yes.

Well, fantastic.

Thank you very much for this talk, and thank you everyone for listening.

And if I get this up online at some point, thank you for watching as well.

And we shall see you all next week.

Goodbye.

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