Keeping your brand clean is important. Not clean as in
"squeaky clean, nothing dirty" but clean as in "clearly
defined" Authors with successful brands stick to their genre and don't
confuse their readers by venturing too far out in a different direction. If I
had a huge following of fans for my paranormal romance switching my next book
to a western suspense novel might throw some of them for a loop. Yet when some
genres fall closely together, yet are totally different what do you do?
A) Hope
your fan base follows you along on this new adventure.
B) Create
a new brand for this new side project.
There really is no C option. Those are your choices, take it
or leave it. So I guess in a way there is a C option, it's called just don't do
it. I am considering publishing some stories under a totally different genre
and because of that, if I do it, I will do so under a pen name. But I have
another dilemma, even though I am an indie author I also have been picked up
with Ellora's Cave, and I do enjoy writing submissions for smaller anthologies.
But those anthology submissions don't always fall into the paranormal
romance/paranormal erotic genre. So the question becomes, what do I do? Do I
still write outside my genre if it is only for smaller anthologies? Do I just
say screw it and write what I want without worrying about my brand I am trying
to build?
Right now I have no answers for myself. I do know if I go
too far off my path it would require reconfiguring my brand, I think for now
dabbling in the shallow end with small submissions might be okay. It's a
question of branding vs. getting my name out there for people to take notice.
And this early in the game, getting my name out there might be the more
important piece of the puzzle.
How do you feel about authors jumping from different genres
under the same name? Would you prefer they stuck to one genre and used a
separate name to write something completely different? Let us know.
No comments:
Post a Comment