Create A Brand For Your Books (to sell more)

Creating a low content book, or any other book for that matter, doesn’t guarantee that you will get sales. You are competing with hundreds if not thousands of other books on Amazon. There are lots of things you can do to make sure your books are seen and drive sales. You can promote them on social media which is free or you can spend money and pay for Amazon ads. Creating your book is just the start of your publishing journey. You have to market your books and that is not always easy, especially if it’s not something that comes naturally to you.

However, there are things you can do to really build your publishing business and to make sure your books are seen. One of those things is branding your books.

How do you brand your books? And what exactly do we mean by that?

When people talk about branding, it can all sound a bit overwhelming. Where do you even start? But actually, branding is not that difficult, but it is going to take time and effort. It will take time to build your brand but is definitely worth doing.

We all know famous brands, and we instantly recognise some of them from their logo. But branding is not just having a logo. Branding is a way of identifying your business. It’s how buyers recognise your business. Your brand reflects your business style and should communicate to your buyer what your business is about. A good brand that is recognised positively is crucial in creating sales.

If you create a brand for your books, and your buyers recognise your brand from previous purchases, they will buy more confidently from you. If your brand creates a good customer experience for them, they will often be repeat buyers.

So branding your books is important if you want to earn trust from your buyers.

Should you build a brand for all of your books?

You can build a brand for any book but there are some type of books that are better for branding.  Branding is good for books that have a common theme or that are a particular type of book. Could you brand notebooks? Yes you could but there are so many generic notebooks that it would be a good idea to concentrate on a particular niche or a particular type of notebook. If I were to create a brand for notebooks, I would try and build a brand that has less competition. For example, you could build a brand for funny notebooks that can be given as gifts. A little bit like greeting-cards, but with notebooks instead of cards. Or build a brand for your notebooks, journals and diaries, all books that people can use to be more productive.

You can build a brand for the same type of books, like colouring books, activity books, puzzle books, journals, planners, etc. So it’s not a good idea to have a brand that mixes colouring books with planners for example. It’s much better if your brand is known for a particular type of book.

Examples:

You have probably come across Pretty Simple Planners when researching on Amazon, or Jade Summer for colouring books, Twig and Moth  and there are many others. They all have websites which is important when branding.

Why is that? Because a website allows you to have direct contact with your customers. When you sell on Amazon KDP, you are not the seller, Amazon is. You don’t know who is buying your books so you have no direct contact with your customer. This is ideal in the sense that Amazon does all your customer service for you, but it’s difficult to build a relationship with your buyers when you don’t know who they are.

A website is like a hub, where people can not only find your books (sending them to Amazon to buy) but where they can also contact you via a contact form, they can sign up to your email newsletter and you can also sell other items related to your books, like for example printables.

Setting up a website can also sound a daunting task but it’s not too difficult and you can do it yourself. There are lots of tutorials online and I will also make more tutorial on how to do that.

Can Social Media help?

A website can also link to your social media platforms. Why is this important? Social media is very helpful in driving traffic to your website and reaching people who might be interested in buying your books. It can be a very lucrative way of promotion as you don’t need to spend money on advertising. You can of course advertise on social media, but if you’re going to spend money on ads,  it is much better to do that on Amazon itself. People are not always ready to buy on social media, they may just be browsing or looking for ideas. Generally people browsing Amazon are more likely to be ready to buy. And as your books are listed on Amazon, it just makes sense to advertise there directly.

But if you haven’t got the budget to advertise or you prefer to grow your business organically, social media is a good way to do that. It does take more time to build an audience of followers, but it can really connect you with your buyers. This enables a relationship that is built on trust, since your buyers can contact you and get additional information about your books.

Which platform should you choose?

So you could have a page on Facebook, a Twitter page, a Pinterest page, Instagram or any other social media platform. However, posting on social media regularly can be very time consuming and overwhelming. My advice is to stick to one or two platforms that you feel comfortable using and start with them.

It will take time to gain a following on those platforms but it’s something that you’re building for the future. It may take a year to see any traction but any business takes time to build, and a book publishing business is no different. Just remember to build step by step and take your time. There is no deadline to meet, although I do understand that we’re all eager to make this business work as soon as possible. If you can have a patient mindset and know that this will take time and effort, you will build a business in time that will make all your waiting and hard work worthwhile.

Is there an easy way to brand your books?

If all of this sounds too overwhelming then the simplest form of branding is to create an author page in author central. This is almost like a mini website where you can list all of your books on Amazon. It provides your buyers with more information about yourself as the author and about your ‘brand’. A+ content on your book’s salespage is also a great way to ‘build’ your brand by cross promoting your other books and showing your buyers more information.

The whole idea of branding your books is to provide your buyers with a good impression of your brand and giving them a sense of trust in you. You are conveying to them that you will do your best for them. As a buyer, we like buying from brands we trust, and branding builds a sense of reliability, of familiarity with a product.

I will be making more video tutorials on the different aspects of building a brand, where I will tell you about which types of books are a good fit for branding, a simple way to brand with your author page and also how to get a website and promote on social media, create an email list, and more. Hopefully this will help you towards building your publishing business and take it to the next level.

You can also watch this video on the subject of branding your books:

Sharing is caring!