What I'm reading: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin (don't laugh; I never read it). And I'm reading it primarily because I won a copy of Pride and Prejudice: The Jewess and the Gentile by Lev Raphael, and figured I needed to read the original before the mashup.
I picked up more books at the Emerald City conference, and many of them are going into my Giveaway stack. Be sure you check the Deals and Steals tab for all the different ways you can enter the contest. I'm very close to Giveaway #2 with my "likes"
I hope you'll read through today's post, because I'd like some opinions, and I've asked a few questions at the end.
At Emerald City, I went to Angela James's workshop on Branding. She's an editor for Carina Press, which is part of Harlequin, and she made some excellent points. She also spoke about digital publishing in another workshop, which I'll save for another post.
As to Branding: it's more than a tag line. Branding is how you become known to readers.
1.
Branding is a promise. She used the example of McDonald's. When you go into a McDonald's, you have expectations, because they have a very strong brand. If tomorrow, they said, "we're going to become a vegetarian restaurant", consumers would feel cheated.
2.
Branding is how you stand out from the crowd. JD Robb makes a different promise to her readers than she does as Nora Roberts. Branding creates marketing opportunities.
3.
Branding draws consumers in. Angela spoke of seeing a store in a shopping center called, "Wine Anthology." It immediately called to her, and she thought it would be a great place to shop. Then she noticed that there was a sign saying, "Clark Circle Liquors is now Wine Anthology." The image of Clark Circle Liquors was totally different from Wine Anthology, calling up images of seedy men carrying open bottles in brown paper bags.
