Discoverability by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Author:Kristine Kathryn Rusch [Rusch, Kristine Kathryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction
Publisher: WMG Publishing
Published: 2014-06-12T04:00:00+00:00

Genre Branding

Don’t tell me you don’t know what I mean. Every time you see a muscular woman with her back to the viewer, looking over her shoulder while brandishing a weapon, you know you’re looking at an urban fantasy novel. Genre branding is so ubiquitous that in some genres, it becomes cliché. Then some traditional publisher changes up the genre branding, and everyone follows suit.

I’m not telling you that you need to put that sexy mean babe on your urban fantasy novel. But…

As an independent publisher, you must make decisions within your publishing house about branding. On this matter, your publishing company needs both a name that’s different from yours and it needs a logo. Keep the logo simple and small, so that it can fit on the lower spine of a paper book.

Then you must decide how your publishing house will distinguish between the genres you write. If you only write in one genre, and you only write a series, then it’s pretty simple. We’ll discuss that in a moment.

But if you’re a writer who writes in more than one genre, like I do, then you will need different branding for each genre you write in.

In other words, your stand-alone romance novel cannot look the same as your stand-alone mystery novel which should not look the same as your stand-alone fantasy novel.

I’ll be using a lot of my covers as examples here because I’m most familiar with them, and because Allyson Longueira at WMG Publishing is fantastic at branding. I’m not going to discuss all the elements she puts into the covers. But I will say this: she uses different font families for different genres, as well as different kinds of art for each genre as well.

When I did this chapter as a blog post, I was able to include covers from all of the books that I mention here. But because ebook formatting is different than web formatting, and because I don’t have permission to use any covers other than my own in this format, the best way to see the examples is to click here or go to my website at kristinekathrynrusch.com and click on the Business Resources drop down menu, hit Discoverability series, and then click on the link marked “Branding: Discoverability Part 6.” You’ll be able to see all of the examples.

You must brand by genre. Readers expect it. They want to know what they’re picking up. For example, many romance readers read the genre to escape the difficulties in their lives. They have enough tribulations; they don’t want those in their fiction. They would be horrified if they picked up Sins of the Blood, without some clue that it’s a horror novel, not a sweet romance like one of my other novels, The Death of Davy Moss.

You want to be discovered? Being discovered by genre is a fine way to do so. Make sure your listings on the various bookstores are correct as well. If you don’t know genre—and most writers don’t (even though they think they do)—then learn it.

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