Q&A with Jill Noble discussion

Have a question about promoting your e-book? Building your author brand? CREATING your author brand? Social media? E-publishing? Please post all general questions here.

Here's one. How can an author create a brand when they don't write one specific type of book--romantic suspense/urban fantasy/ shapeshifters etc.

Someone made a comment to me recently that they think my books are great but it's a problem I don't focus on one specific type.

I cover this in the book... Here's an idea. Go through your books and dig a little deeper than just genre or sub-genre. Look for something they all have in common. Are all your heroines sweet? All your heroes alpha? Do you always add a funny character (even if they only have a minor role)? Are all your books set in one area, or in similar areas? Or, do all your books have a certain tone? Dark? Sweet? Adventurous (even if they aren't technically action/adventure)? Find one common theme that ties them all together (even if the tie is somewhat tenuous) and work with that. If you end up finding they all have that funny character, for instance, you can play on that... "Hot with a hint of humor..." That's not perfect, but you see what I mean. These things take time. It'll be something you have to live with forever, so give it a lot of thought. Ask other people what *they* think ties all your books together (sometimes we get too close to our work and can't see it). Once you come up with the commonality, then you can work on tag lines and building the brand around that theme. :-) I hope that helps!

I've written all over the map, too, in regards to genre, character types, erotic/non-erotic romance, etc. I've come up with "tag lines" for my various pen names, but not sure they're really that accurate or help sell me to the readers. Is it better to be more specific to brand yourself versus too general?

Definitely better to be more specific. This is about you, and you want your tagline to accurately reflect what your readers can expect when they pick up one of your books.

Okay, I have a question for all of you. Do you have a tagline? If so, what is it?

I don't even know what a tagline is lol. So I guess that means I don't have one. But I've only self- published one book, so I suppose now is the time to start thinking about that.

I've had several, but mostly I use
"Where no one genre has gone before..."