The books range on length from novels (60-130,000 words) to novellas (20-40,000 words). My books do have sex between consenting adults. The novellas are mostly ♥♥♥. Novels are ♥♥♥♥. There is some violence and mild profanity.

------holding hands, perhaps a gentle kiss
♥♥ ---- more kisses but no tongue-- no foreplay
♥♥♥ ---kissing, tongue, caressing, foreplay & pillow talk
♥♥♥♥ --all of above, full sexual experience including climax
♥♥♥♥♥ -all of above including coarser language and sex more frequent

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Creating a brand

Last year I know I wrote about this because it's what I was told was important to a writer. Create a brand.  If someone writes eleven books as I have (and that doesn't include the five historicals that I am putting off publishing-- nor the ideas for future contemporaries), and if they are not in a series, aren't typical for the romance genre, how do you establish a brand? I recognize one when I see it-- the series all written in a small town named say Adeline (made that one up) or the name Louis L'Amour. 
 digital painting

If your books are in paper, out from a publishing house, they send you around to bookstores or events that relate. You sign books, give talks, and you become the brand to those who will now look for your next book because they know the kind of thing you are going to have in it-- even if it's not set in Adeline. If they liked what you say, they will buy your philosophy for those books, the influences that have inspired the writing.

For me, as an indie writer, who likes being an indie writer, how to do this has been an ongoing question. I guess I should say an off and on question as I tend to forget about it and then go -- uh oh I better do something. I do have a philosophy to my books, but I suspect they disappoint the most avid of romance readers as I'm not into producing angst nor flowery language. They also are not going to be found by the readers of pop fiction who might read many types of novels but gag at the thought of a romance.

That's why I do need to be the brand. I write these books with a knowledge of the life where they are placed. Always it's into some arena where I have experience. I place them in settings where I live or have spent a lot of time. I do know the type of people even if they aren't friends. Some of the books link together but even then they stand alone as something that could be read without the others.

When I looked around GoodReads, I saw where they have a place for videos. I suppose they expect them to all be from the books but would they really want eleven of them (which I do have on YouTube)? So instead I created something new about my last year and some of the influences in my life, some that became part of a book and some inspired the energy that I believe is at the heart of my books-- all of them.

With 2013, I might try to come up with other ways to brand-- short of the cowboy method, of course.