This is something that's been coming up a lot for me lately since I've recently published my first book through Amazon and Smashwords. People want to know how to get their name out there, where they should go to do that, and how to market themselves and their name as a brand.
I'm not the first person to be an authority on the subject, but seeing as it's something I've been seeing everywhere, I wanted to know your thoughts on it, and I wanted to leave a few of my own.
I don't think about who the author is or what other books the author has written until I finish the first book. If I like the book, and especially if I love the book, I then scour the internet to find out everything about that person. This may be because I want to emulate their awesomeness, but I also suspect that many other do something similar.
When I know an author is the bee's knees, I want to know what else they've written and what they're like. BUT that's not something I care about if I didn't like the book first.
I would say that unless the author is scandalous (for typically bad reasons), I don't care who they are until I get to the end of whatever I'm reading. Branding for me is something that happens AFTER they've kept my attention for 200+ pages.
I'll go so far as to say that for me, I do not want to know anything about the author until I've made my own decisions about the book. I won't even look at what they look like, not that that would make a difference, but I want the book to be it's own entity, completely devoid of everything but what I see in front of me, until I finish it.
When I do end up looking them up, I always want to read the "how I did it" story. It's the story where they say, "I got this idea and blah blah blah." I love those. If I really like them, I'll search them out on Twitter to see if they say anything interesting (beyond just responding to people), and then I'll follow them if they are interesting. I'll almost always follow a blog if they have them, and I'll look around the blog to see what else is brewing for them.
That's my typical M.O. So as far as branding goes for authors, it IS important, but it shouldn't precede the book's importance to me. But if the author ends up being rockstar, I'd love to more about them AFTER I read the book.
What about you? Do you like to know about the author up front? Would it bother you if they didn't have a blog/Twitter/internet presence? Let me know below!
Now to leave you with a song to write by, "Breakdown" by Plain White T's. Intense, but still catchy like all of their stuff.
P.S. Here's where you can find me online, if you're curious :)
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