← The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
The Creative Penn Podcast For Writers
Brand Something Beautiful: How Authors Can Stand Out In A Crowded Market with Steve Brock
01:17:50
How do you stand out as an author when thousands of books are published every day? What's the difference between having a logo and having a real brand that sells books? Is it possible to maintain your authentic voice while appealing to genre readers wh...
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A
Welcome to the Creative Pen Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more@thecreativepenn.com and that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show Hello Creatives, I'm Johanna Penn and this is episode number 832 of the podcast and it is Friday 10th October 2025. As I record this in today's show, I'm talking to Steve Brock about author branding and standing out in a crowded market. The difference between just having a logo and having a real brand that sells books and is it possible to maintain your authentic voice while appealing to genre readers who seem more loyal to categories others. Also, if you enjoy this chat with Steve, he is also on my Books and Travel podcast talking about his wonderful book Hidden Travel. That is a very different discussion, but still wonderful. So on this show, the interview on branding is coming up in the Interview section. So in writing, publishing and book marketing things, Jane Friedman has a roundup in her newsletter the Bottom Line about Baker and Taylor, which is shutting down at the end of the year and laying off staff the company distributes primarily to libraries. The blog Shelf Awareness reports that Baker and Taylor is rumoured to owe creditors, mostly publishers, as much as $26 million. Jane says book wholesaling and distribution operates on razor thin margins and consolidation has been happening for years. Ingram is the biggest player in the US and has acquired numerous smaller companies. In 2018, Ingram attempted to buy Baker and Taylor, but the deal fell through. Publishers Lunch reports that Ingram has added 40 to 50 new staff on the library side to handle new business. So I thought this was interesting and I know many of us have our books in Baker and Taylor because it's just included in much of the catalogues that we sort of publish. If you publish print wide, probably in there, but the book business is challenging for everyone that is for sure. And it sounds like Ingram will pick up this business anyway, but the unpai bills in the millions there just another example of change in the business and how we all have to watch our cash flow. Also, a great article from Tracy Cooper Posey on her productive indie fiction writer blog called Too Late for Holiday Promotions. Not even close. 9 smart ways to make the most of Q4 sales now I thought this was really good to share because there is a bumper book sales season ahead and I am terrible about this kind of thing. I just don't think about it early enough. And if you want to do things for the holiday season, you really have to. Well, you should have probably done it by now, but that's why I thought this was a good article. So definitely go have a look at Tracy's site, but the ideas include repackaging an older book with more holiday flair. You could recover something with Christmasy vibes or do a limited holiday edition promotion. You can do bundles for gifting and binging. If you have your own store you could create some limited time bundles and of you can bundle ebooks, audiobooks and print books now if you have your own store. So that's kind of cool. I like this idea. Run a reader advent calendar so every single day in December. Fun things like deleted scenes, bonus chapters and more to keep people coming back. You could also pitch your book for gift guides and book site roundups which people are preparing at this time of year. I think we might be getting to the late stage of that, but lots of ideas at Tracy's site productiveindifictionwriter.com and if you'd like to level up your writing skills this season, check out the new Writing Story bundle available for a limited time. Includes business essentials for writers, creating character arcs, books on world building, writing tropes, long term success, podcasting, collaboration, co writing, productivity pacing, million dollar professionalism, and my second edition of how to Write non fiction. So if you haven't looked at storybundle before, it fantastic way to get a bundle of ebooks with super useful books at a great deal. And it's essentially another version of selling direct as all the authors in it get a share of the money and a charity as well. So that is a good thing. Just go to storybundle.com writing and if you don't know storybundle.com, they do bundles every month with different genres and interesting stuff. So definitely worth checking out. So moving into AI things An article on Publishing Perspective this week. Now Publishing Perspectives is mainly a traditional publishing focused site. I mean 99% of what it covers is traditional publishing. And this week an article from Richard Charkin, who has been in publishing many decades. If you're here in the UK you probably know his name, but he was CEO of Macmillan Publishing, Executive Director at Bloomsbury, and has held senior positions at Oxford University Press and Elsevier and past President of the International Publisher Publishers Association. So I tell you that because Richard is yeah, he's an older guy and well respected in the industry. He now runs his own publishing company. But the article is around adaptability to change. And he's about to head off to Frankfurt. Frankfurt Book Fair coming up, one of the biggest in, well I think the biggest book fair in the world. And this article amongst other things addresses AI. And in fact he was one of the first traditional publishers here in the UK to try AI narrated audiobooks. And he says we must not treat AI as the enemy, but as a commercial partner. A commercial partner. And it actually shocked me to read this from a traditional publisher just so blatantly. But it has been three years since AI became more easily and commercially usable with the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. So IndieAuthors had a head start, at least those of us who embraced it because we don't have to ask for permission and we don't have over engineered IT departments put a brake on things and we try new things. So I wanted to just encourage the rest of you. So three years after ChatGPT going mainstream, traditional publishing are embracing these tools across the business. And remember, it doesn't need to come anywhere near your writing but consider using it for the publishing marketing admin. Because if old school traditional publishers are treating AI as a commercial partner, then indie authors better be doing something because we have this head start. We did have a head start. I mean we still have a head start in trying new things, but this is not a new technology anymore. I mean, yeah, it's changing every week and things are getting better. But yeah, I was really quite interested in this. I mean I have paid attention to Richard Charkin over the years. I, I think he's one of the people who does really keep an open mind. And so this was interesting. But yes, AI as a commercial partner. Now on this theme of commercial partner and help with direct sales, after last week when I shared the news that ChatGPT is bringing in chat shopping to the app and Shopify will be next in line. And also Google has shared this week that they are further rolling out AI overviews to more countries in search. I'm taking this new form of book discoverability more seriously. I think the rollout of Shopify in chat is going to be interesting to say the least. And if you think about it, if you think about the keywords and categories, the limited number, so it is three categories and seven keywords or keyword phrases, but really not very much. Now this has been in place since Amazon launched KDP and has been in the publishing industry for many years. If you think about BSAT categories, if you think about these sort of very blunt instruments of categories and keywords, I mentioned last week that I think we're moving into the long, long, long long long tail. But it is about bloomin time that this I've said for a long time I think the book itself should be the metadata and that may be where we're going. But for now I think it is interesting to think about updating metadata if you run your own store. So I have already been Getting referrals through ChatGPT thanks to Kate who emailed this week and said ChatGPT recently recommended your arcane series to me. After I asked it for book suggestions, I asked it for novels with the feel of the TV series Warrior Nun. A good fit. Except I've already read your series so thanks Kate. And I love Warrior Nun so that is awesome. It's a shame you got cancelled, but it is what it says on the tin Warrior Nuns. So yeah, religious action adventure, lots of globe trotting and I like this a lot because I don't think I actually use Warrior Nun as a reference anywhere official, but it certainly resonates with my religious action adventure thriller vibe. So coming back to updating metadata, I am going through my stores, I'm updating metadata and collection descriptions, generally enriching the information around my books on Shopify and I am using Claude. This is a classic example of where you want AI to help you because it is a lot of words generated around your own work. And when you have as many books as I have, you not doing it yourself is is a great help. So you can use Claude or you can use ChatGPT or Gemini or Grok, or you can pretty much use whatever service you primarily use. But I used a prompt I want to optimize my book metadata on Shopify. You could also use the same for your website for discovery by AI search. What do I need to do? And then it's going to tell you what you need to do. And obviously you're going to need to upload your book if you want it to create all the metadata for you. And I am happy to upload my work and do upload my work regularly, but as ever please read the terms and conditions so you are happy with what it will do with your data. So the tool will pull out loads of stuff. It will pull out whatever is the most useful and then there are ways to automatically do this. But I'm checking everything it does. So obviously I know my own book so I can look at the metadata it generates and decide whether or not it's appropriate. And it is probably about 95% fine and then I'm editing it and then I'm using a bulk update app on Shopify to do the metadata for each collection. I am using the Hextom app. So H E X T O M and they have quite a lot of well reviewed apps on Shopify, but there are others you can use. But essentially I have a lot of books, so updating metadata is a bit of a pain and I wish Ingram had something like this. Maybe they do. If, you know, if Ingram have something, I would love to know about that because I know my metadata on Ingram for older books is out of date, but as ever, this just takes a lot of the grunt work away, especially for backlist books. You might have even forgotten what was in them anyway. So I'm just doing a little bit of this sort of every day. I quite enjoy it really because it brings up new ideas and all of this kind of thing. But if you have a store that you control or a website that you control, maybe start looking at how you can have more rich metadata tags and all of that. But your favorite AI tool will tell you what to do if you just ask it. So this also relates to an article from Kevin Kelly this week. Now I've had Kevin Kelly on this show. He's pretty famous for the Thousand True Fans blog post, which is from 2008 and was very prescient and in fact is still relevant even now. Kevin was part of the founding team at Wired magazine. He's a very forward thinking guy and this article says a lot of the things that I already think, so I wanted to read some of it. So Kevin says in an article paying AIs to read my Books, he says some authors have it backwards. They believe that AI companies should pay them for training AIs on their books. But I predict in a very short while authors will be paying AI companies to ensure that their books are included in the education and training of AIs. The authors and their publishers will pay in order to have influence on the answers and services AIs provide. If your work is not known and appreciated by the AIs, it will be essentially unknown. Kevin says, I'm an author, so I checked the anthropic case list. I found four out of my five books published were included. I feel honoured to be included in a group of books that can train AIs that I now use every day. I feel flattered that my ideas might be able to reach millions of people through the chain of thought of LLMs. And he goes on in this vibe and I completely agree with this. And it's great to just read his very well thought out article some more of it. He says AI agents are used not just to give answers, but to find things, to understand things, to suggest things. If the AIs do not know about it, it is equivalent to it not existing. It will become very hard for authors who opt out of AI training to make a den. There are authors and creators today who do not have any digital presence at all. You cannot find them online, Their work is not listed anywhere. But they are rare and a minority. As Tim O'Reilly likes to say, the challenge for most creators is not piracy, illegal copies, but obscurity. And I add, the challenge for creators in the future will not be imitation AI copies, but obscurity. Yes, and obscurity has always been an issue for us, which is why we have to do things like marketing. Kevin says if AIs become the arbiters of truth, and if what they trained on matters, then I want my ideas and creative work to be paramount in what they see. I would very much like my books to be the textbooks for AI. What author would not? I want my influence to extend to the billions of people coming to the AIs every day. And I might even be willing to pay for that, or at least do what I can to facilitate the ingestion of my work into the AI minds. So yes, as I said, I upload all my books into all the AI services. Well, at least ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, and there are many more obviously out there, including open source services, including a whole load of ones from other countries. And I want them to know about me and my work so they can recommend it. You know, I've been putting my work online for free since I started, and this sort of freemium model is the foundation of my business, which is, you know, this podcast comes out for free to you and you get to choose whether or not you give me any money in any way. But thankfully this model works by enough people giving me enough money that I can continue to do it. So even if you join the Patreon for $2 a month, or if you buy one of my books or you use one of my affiliate links, that helps me do this. But most of the work is free. So Kevin ends with what the AIs learned today, they will probably continue to know and their impact today will have compounding influence in the decades to come. Influencing AIs is among the highest leverage activities available to any human being today. And the earlier you start, the more potent the value of an author's work will not just be in how well it sells among humans, but how deep it has been included within the foundational knowledge of these intelligent memory based systems. That potency will be what is boasted about. That will be an author's legacy. This is great. Again, I completely agree with everything he's put in this article, but as with blog posts like a thousand true fans, it might take a while until people realize this, but I feel like this goes against much of what the creator community is talking about. But as I said, I want my work in the AI models. I deliberately upload my books. I am making my websites better adapted. As I just mentioned, I'm trying to clean up all my metadata. I want it to be easy to find my work by the AIs and I this is like the early days of the Internet, the early days of mobile and I'm not spending time arguing with people anymore, I'm just getting on with it now behind in the Patreon community I obviously share a lot more because the paywall keeps out the trolls, but it feels like an exciting time to be an independent creator. And if you're like no way. I would never pay an AI service to ingest my books Book well, we never thought we'd have to pay Amazon to do book marketing and now most of us do. We never thought we'd have to pay meta back when you just uploaded something in a group or on your profile and it went out to the people that actually follow you. I mean do you if you've been around a while you might remember organic traffic which is just something that we are now at with chat GPT. It is organic traffic. I don't have to pay any of the AI companies to surface my work, but inevitably things go from organic to paid at some point. Something to think about. I'd love to know what you think. Email me with comments. Joannathecreativepenn.com but it is. It just seems inevitable to me that we go from easy organic reach to a lot harder reach later. And we've all been waiting for some kind of disruption for a while now. The book marketing space has been been stagnant I guess for a while. So yep, interesting times. So in personal news and exciting physical things rather than digital, I went up to the Book Vault printing factory this week to sign my special hardbacks for the Buried and the Drowned and it is always such a privilege to sign beautiful books and these are my first with pattern sprayed edges. So thank you if you back the campaign. I love the book it means a lot personally as I expanded my author's notes in there as well as adding new stories and ones I wrote over a decade ago. And I am so proud of the physical product as well. We are lucky to have brilliant printers like Book Vault who make this possible. There are pictures on my Instagram and Facebook fpenauthor and also while I was there the guys at bookvault, thanks to Alex and Curtis, showed me the new Spot UV and also the new foil options which are blue, red, copper and pink alongside gold, silver, holographic and green. So I think if you write romantasy that pink is. It's kind of a pinky purple but really, really super romantasy vibe. I thought the copper was more like a sort of rose gold that you get on Apple devices, so I could actually see myself using that for the more muted. Maybe for non fiction. It's just a sort of. Yeah, different vibe. But definitely have a look at foil options and Spot UV for our beautiful print books. I'm also working on my Masters and this week I was reading in fact on the train up to Peterborough I was reading the Critically Reflective Practitioner, a great book by sue and Neil Thompson. It is not designed for authors, but it has a lot that we could use in it. The idea is that you are not just a practitioner, so you're not just a writer. You also think about doing the thing and how you could improve things and you challenge your own thoughts and that kind of thing. So the importance of taking time to reflect on what you're doing rather than just doing so. The strategy of being an author, not just the writing the big picture, thinking about what you want, within what time scale, how you're going to achieve it, what's going well with your processes, how you need to change things, especially around keeping your business sustainable. So if, and what they say is if you're really, really stressed, the best thing to do is stop doing. Just stop and figure out what it is you need to change, then change it and then go do again. And of course I know this and I have done this for many years. This podcast is part of reflecting and my Lessons Learned post and my New Year's posts and it is good to set aside time for this. So my question for you this week is can you set aside some time to reflect on your creative and business processes as well as how they're serving your bigger life goals and your health, physical and mental? What might you need to change and how can you actually make that change going forward Again? You can let me know your thoughts joannathecreativepenn.com or leave a comment. Also this month I'm in a horror promotion. If you love horror, dark fantasy or paranormal, check out the deliciously twisted Halloween book sale running through october@ twistedtalesbooks.com Halloween link in the show notes and it features my story Catacomb amongst lots of others. So that is twistedtalesbooks.com Halloween. Please do leave a comment on the podcast show notes on the YouTube channel or email me joannathecreativepenn.com I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. And of course send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard. So today's show is sponsored by Draft2Digital who I use for publishing ebooks wide to various ebook stores including Apple and Nook plus library services as well as payment splitting for co writing books. They also do Print Are you an indie author in need of an easy and efficient print on demand service backed by a world class customer support team? Look no further than D2D print from draft to digital tool D2D print is ideal for authors who've already published ebooks but haven't yet experimented with print. With D2D print, you can convert an ebook to a Print on demand file with just a few clicks. Turn an ebook cover into a full wraparound print cover in seconds, choose from beautiful interior layouts, choose from industry trim sizes and formatting options, distribute worldwide. You can even use Draft 2 Digital's free ISBN. You can order author copies within 32 countries without the annoying proof stamped on your book, and you can use free change tokens every 90 days to make updates. All of this and more with no setup or recurring fees. And I'd also add Drafter Digital. Have a great help desk so you can actually have humans helping you. Print on Demand is a game changer for indie authors because while brick and mortar bookstores can't physically stock every book, they can check for the Print on Demand availability when a customer requests it. If you only publish ebooks, you could be missing out on a huge opportunity. Let's fix that with draft2digital print D to D print just go to draft2digital.com so this type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing. But my time in creating this show is sponsored by my community@patreon.com thecreativepenn thanks to the seven new patrons who've joined this week and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. Years. And of course you can always pop in for a month or two and pop out again. If you join the community you get access to all my backlist videos and audio covering writing, craft, author, business, AI tutorials and last week I actually shared an article with my tech stack. So all the tech and the tools I use right now and how I use them in my business, it actually took me a while to prepare that because it is amazing how many tools we can use as a one person business. So the Patreon is a monthly subscription description, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com TheCreativePen Right, let's get into the interview. Steve Brock is a non fiction author, photographer and branding expert. His books include Hidden Travel, which he has talked about on my books and travel podcast, as well as the Creative Wild Make Something Beautiful as well as Brand Something Beautiful, a branding workbook for artists, writers and other creatives which we're talking about today. So welcome to the show, Steve.
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B
Thank you Joe. It is pleasure to be here.
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A
Oh yes, so much to talk about. But first up tell us a bit more about how you got into writing and publishing and branding.
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B
All right, so in writing I've written all my adult life but is more in the realms of like school writing and then working in a branding and marketing agencies, doing a lot of marketing copy, ad copy, that type of a thing. And then it was in 2007 I think, where I had this sense of wanting to work on a book which was the one that ended up becoming Hidden Travel. It only took 14 years to get that from idea to publication. And then since then as you mentioned some other books. So I've embraced that and then the branding has come all along actually in parallel and it's a great point point of how one area of your life, particularly your creative life, affects the other. So branding fundamentally is about telling your story well. It's understanding who you are, what you do and what makes you kind of different. And so there's a lot of storytelling. So the more I focus and spend time on writing, particularly in the fiction realm, which has been mostly just short stories and stuff for me lately, the more that it has improved the work of branding. And so branding I find interesting seeing because it's honestly like we've talked about about travel, branding is really about exploration it's diving deep into understanding something that is hidden and bringing that to light.
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A
Well, before we get back into branding, you mentioned short stories there. Are you publishing those now?
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B
Those have always been a sideline. I have a novel that I started when I got stuck on Hidden Travel and it's about maybe a third done. So that'll be the next, next effort that I will be focusing on for the fiction realm. But now the short stories have always just been more for my own craft building and just the enjoyment of it. So I'm looking forward to actually reading yours. That's coming out or is it? Is it out?
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A
Well, as we record this, it is just finished. The Kickstarter's just finished. But yeah, depending on when this comes out, it may be so, yeah, the Buried and the Drowned as well, my short story collection. But I, I think it's interesting because you can play with short stories and you can explore, as you mentioned, they're exploring and looking at hidden things. And I think it's much easier to play around with short stories because you can just do such different things. But let's come to branding, because the word brand, it's a really difficult one and people are already flinching. They're like, oh, I don't want to think about author brand. So you mentioned a little bit there, but how are you defining brand as it relates to authors? And why should we even care about this?
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B
All right, so the word brand, I think applies to whether you're a major corporation or a non profit organization, or a single solopreneur or an author. And because it's all about perception. So a lot of people think of branding as being about your logo or your tagline or maybe the colors that you use in the background of your Instagram reels and having consistency there. And that's part of it, but it's such a small part of it. Branding is fundamentally about the overall perception that people have with you or your creative work in the case of a writer or an author. And so I say, for example, Stephen King, or I say James Patterson, or I say Toni Morrison. Right. There's going to be associations you have with each of those people and those associations are actually what makes up your brand brand. So the brand is a tricky thing because we think we can control it, but we can't. The brand exists in the minds of your audiences. So for writers, that means the minds of your readers out there. And so your job is to kind of craft it to know the story you want people to tell and be able to reinforce that over time so that they're telling the same story. Because if you do not know the story you want to tell well, someone else is going to do it for you and most likely in a way that's not going to be helpful to you. So just think of brand almost like your reputation. That's a helpful way for a lot of people. So what are you doing to build up your reputation? That's maybe the simplest way to think about brand and branding.
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A
And then for authors, I mean, for me, I have Joanna pen and I have JF pen. So for anyone who's writing under two names, are we thinking about two but brands?
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B
Yeah. No, I think what you're. Yes and no. Okay. Because I would simply say that you show up in a lot of places. For example, on this podcast, you show up as both people, not your products necessarily, but you as a person that represents both of those brands. So when you have an author brand with multiple pen names, there are elements of that you may want to keep discreet and submit separate. But on the other hand, in your case, the real divide there is between almost over, to oversimplify it, is JF Penn for the fiction and Joanna Penn for the non fiction. And so you as the person and the brand that you represent, though there's a lot of consistency between those two. Basically what you don't want to do is if those two brand names or author names, pen name names are different and they represent two completely different audiences, and you really want those. And so the example I give in the book is if you're writing both children's fiction, illustrated children's books, and you're also writing erotica, you do not want those two audiences to even really know that you're the same person. So you would keep those dramatically separate. It's the same in the corporate world where we talk about this. The fancy jargony term is a brand spectrum where you have. Have, for example, a branded house like BMW is a really good example of that. And then a house of brands like Procter and Gamble, which has a whole bunch of sub brands underneath that. And some people may not even know that Procter and Gamble was behind those. So if you have your pen names are really different genres, you're more probably like a house of brands. Whereas if you have a consistent kind of of vibe or theme or thing you want to be known for, you would be more like a branded house. Even if you have different pen names. Does that make sense?
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A
I like that. Yeah. Yeah. So I like branded house and I like brand spectrum that Feels more natural, I think, than because I. I feel like there's also two angles that potentially we can come at, so maybe we can take them separately. But one is new author or author wanting to start a new pen name, wanting to construct a brand from. From nothing, from scratch. Like actually control it and build it. And the other way is discovery branding, let's call it, where you look back at your. I mean, I still feel this way, really, for JF Pen is you look at your work and you go, I guess I've somehow created a brand. I just. I can't figure out really what it is, but I just keep writing stuff and it kind of is created. So couldn't you tackle those two ends of the spectrum of creating, creating it from nothing and then discovering it?
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B
Yeah, that is a great question, because I would say that the discovering it is probably more the common approach. So, again, not to get into the weeds on this, but one of the elements of your brand is your voice or your style. And I define those as three different things. Brand is the overarching perception. Style is the visual representation of the brand. Brand. And voice is the verbal or written. Right. So it matches up with what we think about voices and audible type of a thing. So I think that part of finding what your style and your voice, what those are, comes through discovery almost entirely. I think that if you try to overthink it, it's really hard. So I would say that if you start that journey of discovery focusing on a consistent and distinctive voice, and it kind of emerges naturally, it's easy to. Into that. There's a point, though, even on a discovery brand, as you name it, that it becomes intentional. And that's where you start to identify certain themes that have emerged that you want to be known for, and then you want to elevate those or amplify those. So then there's a bit, honestly, that's like discovery writing, right? Because I'm kind of a hybrid myself. I will do an outline, but then I'll go off of it, right? I do, and vice versa. So same thing here. You're discovering your brand, but once you kind of find, okay, that really resonates, that element really resonates with my audiences, then you want to amplify that and make sure that that gets incorporated into everything you're doing. Now if you're just creating from scratch, you can actually define what those elements are. And that's kind of what the book is really about, is how to create this, what we call a brand identity, which is just like A personal identity. It's like who you are, what are the elements, what are your characteristics, what are your personality traits, what's the promise that you make to your audiences? And if you craft that from scratch, you can be very intentional. But I would say even there, just like we talked about, a planner writer goes off script sometimes and starts going in. They find that their characters have a life of their own. And same way here is you can map out that plan brand, but still be able to change it as you start to find things again that resonate or that you want to lean to into.
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A
Okay, so one thing that I think of when it comes to brand is also book covers. So again, we think about this as authors for. For pen names. So even if I used exactly the same name, if I use Joanna pen for all of my books, my fiction would look quite different. Different color palette, different font, different design elements. So how can we relate book covers in particular to our brand?
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B
Brand? Well, again, it's consistency. Consistency is the key to all branding, whether it's for authors or anyone. And so as long as people can recognize, you think about branding where it came from. It came from as we know it, like the American west and branding cattle to know that they belonged to a particular ranch. Right. So a brand has evolved, but it is essentially about identification. And so it's like, I want to know what that brand stands for, who is it and who's behind it, and what does it stand for? So on covers, yeah, you want consistency, you want a through line. And really that's another way of thinking about a brand is what is that through line that you're going to find? Now this is a key for authors which doesn't exist completely in the same way in other industries. And it's this. There are many, many, many readers out there that will always be more loyal to a genre than they are to a brand. Okay, so if you have a reader who absolutely loves, you know, your thrillers, and then all of a sudden you decide you want to start writing something in the romance category, well, they may still like you and get your books, but they're not going to necessarily buy your romance because the brand's not as strong as the kind of loyalty, if you will, to the genre.
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A
Yeah, and it's interesting also because I feel like authors know publishers and know imprints, but most readers wouldn't even know. They don't know HarperCollins or they don't necessarily know an imprint. And so most readers are not loyal to those brand name publishing houses and secondarily they may or may not care about an author author brand. And as you say, they're more likely to be faithful to a genre. Most of us can't remember the names of the authors whose books we read. It's a sad, sad, sad truth. But some people will remember. And those are the people who I guess we're trying to connect with. Is that right? Or. Or are we also, with our covers and our consistency, we're just appealing to those people who read by genre as well.
- [38:10]
B
It's a little bit both because we're dealing with that really wacky, crazy, inconsistent thing called human beings. Right. And we're all that way and we're like Walt Whitman said, we, we contain multitudes and we do contradict ourselves. And so it's a little bit of a both and there. But the thing is, what you're really going after is the not really like Kevin Kelly's thousand true fans, but something close to. To that. It's finding that super fan. It's finding those people that are going to follow you no matter what you put out. And the nicest compliment I ever received was at a travel writers conference. So I did a workshop and the head of it just said he really liked the particular piece and he said is like, you're on your way to being that person of whom it is said, whatever Steve Brock writes, I will read it. I will read anything from him. Okay. And I am nowhere near there. I don't know if I will ever achieve that. But that's kind of the goal that you want to be for those particular super fans. Now, here's where the brand kicks in. You can still betray even the most loyal fan if you write something that is. Just doesn't feel true to who you are as an author. So, for example, let's think of one like, okay, Richard I. Osmond, Richard Osman, who wrote the Thursday Murder Club and all those. He. If he were to go and write a science fiction genre book, there would be a ton of people that would follow him and want to read that book. If, however, that science fiction book had no humor in it and the characters were downright mean to each other. Right.
- [39:51]
A
And it was really violent and graphic.
- [39:53]
B
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, you would. He would. He not only would lose those readers, but they would probably be hesitant to pick up the next book in the Thursday Murder Club series because he's kind of wrecked his brand.
- [40:08]
A
Yeah. And it's so interesting and I'm going to blame you Americans for this because we're not so sensitive here in the uk but swearing is a really interesting thing. So when I wrote my first book, I mean, in my private life, I do swear sometimes. And in my first book, I had naturally written as a British person, had included. Included some words. And then with the response I had from my American readers who were not bothered by the violence. And I don't write graphic violence, but, you know, I write thrillers, so there's some body count. And the reaction to the swear words made me decide, this is back in 2009 now I was like, okay, I won't swear in my books. So I don't use swear words at all. And it's so interesting how, like you mentioned, there are a lot of different genre elements that might put people off. But if you use a swear word that you, that you wouldn't normally in your books, that can make readers disappear and never come back.
- [41:08]
B
It's honestly in today's world. And again, yes, you can blame America, but it has spread everywhere in. In terms of just how divided we are and how prickly we are in terms of topics and issues. So that basically anything you do can upset. It will upset somebody. So you can't worry about that. And this is again why it's like you have to kind of focus on Persona of that one true fan, right? Your best fan, so to speak, that you're writing towards. Because if you kind of try to write towards every possible criticism, you're gonna mess up. So just stick to, to that. Know that people out there, not everyone's going to be happy. The example we give, like, in a lot of corporate branding workshops, there's always a good number of people sitting around in the conference room with a MacBook or some Apple product. And I mentioned to them, like, do you realize that there are far more people in the world that absolutely rabidly hate Apple than there are people that love Apple? Just sheer numbers. Just because if you look at their numbers, like I think PCs, just for example, Apple has maybe a 8% market share. All right? And so he goes, is. Is Apple a bad brand? Because so many people hate it. And the reality is, no, it's a great brand because those who do love it are even more passionate about. About it. Okay? So you're not gonna be able to please everybody, but if you can please those who are in your tribe, then you're going to actually succeed. And I mean, after all, we're in a kind of, you know, what's the line about niches are rees. Right? Niches are riches that the more you niche down, the more profitable it is in today's world. So don't be afraid of being true to who you are, but also being sensitive to who that audience into this.
- [42:59]
A
Yeah. And I wasn't saying don't swear. I was saying if you decide to swear or not swear, stay consistent. Like exactly that. And the level of sex and the level of violence. I think if you're writing fiction, those three things are things that people's preferences generally stay pretty similar on, I think within a brand. So the thriller, mainstream thriller, niche, those things. You could read a lot of mainstream thrillers and they would obey those rules as well, I think. But you mentioned their niching down and thinking about that. But one of the things you had in the book, and you have some really big questions in the book because one that is very difficult is say you're writing action adventure thrillers. So my arcane series, a bit like Dan Brown. And Dan Brown has a new book out, the Secret of Secrets, and I'm reading at the moment and it makes me feel both happy because I write similar books to him, but also. Oh no, I write similar books to him and you've. You tackle this. How do I make my work distinctive and stand out amid all the noise and is so much noise. And I'm not competing with Dan Brown, by the way, but in terms of action adventure thrillers, there's tons of them. So how do we stand out when we also need to please genre readers?
- [44:14]
B
I would say by knowing what it is that makes you distinctive. Right. So part of it is your voice, part of it is your interest. Part of it is just the way you go about framing sentences and plots, et cetera, et cetera. So. So like take going back to Stephen King as an example is part of it for loyal fans, they know this and they don't necessarily like it. But part of his brand is he doesn't end his books well. Right. He's known in a lot of circles as just having pretty mediocre endings. Okay. But people don't care because they know that the journey to get there was really rewarding. So I would say things like that, that like being known for just a surprise ending, being known for, you know, they like the O. Henry Awards. Right. We have, we look at O. Henry simply because he was so good at those surprise twists at the end that we actually use his name today associated with that. Or even like Hemingway, his style, the short Kurt sentences, all that. So there are elements of your book that are going to be unique to you and I think so. For example, example your Voice, your human voice that comes across in your brand here, that's the main thing that I think people will identify with, is separating out you, the. And your products from you and the person. Okay. And that can get kind of complex. But one of the key things to me is recognizing that your products are going to have a certain voice to them. And that voice in those genres may be different from genre to genre, but you as the author, as you're interfacing with the public, will have a consistent voice. But it's still different from you, the person, from Joanna Penn, the person, versus Joanna Penn, the brand. Those are two different things. And that's hard for a lot of people. But if you think about, like an actor playing a character, it works pretty well. We as authors, when we're publicly speaking or talking, there is a character that represents our brand. Brand that is going to be in some ways the best of our personal characteristics. Right. But it's not us. And that gives you some padding, if you will, some distance from it so that you can separate that out and be able to address it. But the reason I, going back to your point, knowing what the distinctives are of your own personality and the brand there, and being able to identify those and call those out, that's what helps you be distinctive. If you do not know what those, those distinctives are, how you're different from Dan Brown, in this particular case, it will be very. And by just reading Dan Brown, it starts to seep in, right? And you might start writing like Dan Brown, and you don't want to do that.
- [47:00]
A
I don't know. Getting banned by the Vatican was the best marketing move he ever made. But on this, like you said there, if you don't know what makes you distinctive from the side of many authors listening, I don't think we do understand what makes us distinctive. It is very hard. We have this thing in particularly, I guess, the fiction community of finding your authority, author voice. And the reason we say finding it is because it's so hard. It's not obvious, and it takes practice writing lots of words, and then something kind of emerges from it. And so I think the question of what is distinctive, this is where AI can help, I think, and I've certainly done this, if people are happy uploading their work into ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, read the terms and conditions, as I always say. But you can then have a discussion, discussion with it as to your what, what makes you distinctive? Where do you fit in the spectrum of different authors? I've actually found that the most useful tool, even though I've been doing this for a couple of decades, because it's so hard to figure it out yourself.
- [48:04]
B
I totally agree with your last statement there. And I think that that is a really good tactic for doing that. I would just add to it another thing that seems like, obvious, but I know so, so, so many authors who have never done this, and that's this. You ask your audience, you ask your readers, you take a dozen readers of any of your series and you ask them, okay, why is this book different? What do you love most about this? What makes it distinctive from others? Now, they're not always going to be able to give you a clear idea, but pretty soon it's really, really interesting how themes start to emerge there when you start doing that. So it's going to be like I mentioned, like Richard Osmond. So that example, just the idea of that he has a really good sense of humor, that his characters are all caring about each other, that he addresses age in a fresh perspective. Perspective, okay, I could just whip off those as just three characteristics that make his books different. Many, many, many, many other authors all address those three type of elements, but not in quite the same way. So in the same way with you, there's going to be elements that are going to be similar to Dan Brown and others, but that combination of those, that's something that only you do, I guess.
- [49:30]
A
We've been talking a lot about fiction. Is there anything that non fiction authors need to think about, about differently or do all the principles apply?
- [49:39]
B
I think the principles are even clearer and in some ways easier to manage for non fiction writers because you can talk about the subject. So if you're thinking about non fiction, it's like, how do I become kind of the thought leader, expert on this? And then what are the distinctive ways I'm going to treat things so I can speak to it? Let's talk about from the standpoint of this book and from my own branding. I have been told by clients over the years, probably the best compliment I get is that we've hired branding experts before they come in, they tell us what they think our brand should be and then we fire them. And so we don't like consultants, but you don't act like a consultant. And you came in and you listened and you heard us and then you didn't tell us what we should be. You told us what we already know, knew, but we didn't have the words to use to explain that. Okay, so, so that tells me that my own brand is there's. A high degree of empathy, there's a high degree of listening, but there's also a, an element of synthesis. Okay, so I can start to unpack those and say, okay, this is why my non fiction book, our works in particular this book on branding for artists and writers is going to be different because it's. Another element would be simplifying. I've seen too many organizations, particularly working with nonprofits that fail because they've tried to take on too much. So a key part of this is making it simple so you can see, you start to understand what those elements, simplicity, empathy, synthesis, those, those things can become brand points, characteristics, distinctives that then I could apply to other non fiction works that I do.
- [51:28]
A
So then once we've got these, I guess, quite nebulous words around branding, how do we turn that into effective book marketing? So how do we go from this broader idea to specifics that will actually sell books?
- [51:45]
B
Well, I would say listen to your episode from, I think it was in August where you read from marketing for authors and you have the entire list of the specifics there. So those are the tactics, right, that you can do in terms of selling more books. So the marketing aspect of it. A lot of people conflate marketing and branding, but they're very different in the sense that marketing is downstream from branding. But here's how branding can help you sell more books. Two ways of doing it, internal and external. First is the internal. That branding gives you the clarity of the messages that you want to communicate because it gives you a sense of what it is that you're really about. So there's almost this idea of mindset that comes and the confidence that comes from having that clarity about what you stand for, what you believe. One of the examples in the book is this exercise of I believe and I exist to, I believe this thing, I exist to do this type of thing. Just that simple sense of knowing what your purpose is and your beliefs and values are, that alone can help provide that clarity. So there's clarity, there's mindset, there's confidence on the internal. Externally, your messaging becomes so much clearer because you know how to talk about yourself. See, that's the thing. As authors, we're great at telling stories, stories, but we're terrible at telling our own story, right? And so that's what branding is about, is helping you to tell your own story better. So it builds the confidence, gives you the story that you want others to tell so that they can in turn tell others about you. That's a huge piece of it's like the game of telephone. If you have a very clear and consistent message, they can tell others about you in a way that they couldn't before. But I think another aspect about this is, is that quite frankly, most authors can go out there and you can ask ChatGPT, give me 20 tactics that I need to do to market my book, and you'll get them right away. I mean, there's no lack of access to information on how to market your book out there. The problem is we don't do it, okay? And the reason we don't do it is because usually we're afraid. We're either afraid of what might happen, what people might think. We don't think we know enough to do it. We do all these things where we do not act. And so part of the beauty of the brand, you say it's nebulous concepts, but I would say that the nebulous concepts, the intangibles of life. So trust, relationships, love, friendship, hope, accomplishment, those are all nebulous concepts, but those are also the most powerful drivers that we have in life. And I think the same thing is here you get that nebulous concept of knowing what you're doing and how you're different and how to tell your story better, and that builds your confidence. So you are far more likely to engage in doing those tasks. Tactics that are going to help you sell the books.
- [54:44]
A
Yeah. And I wonder if it's also that in book marketing, we do rely a lot on things like paid ads, where the book cover is the thing that draws people in. And so having this sort of whole self approach is, is less used. But podcasting is a game, I think, where this kind of branding that you're talking about can really come across. So is that a good way for authors to think about, about sort of pitching different podcasts around elements of their brand in terms of their story behind the books? The person behind the books.
- [55:25]
B
Yeah, Anthony, podcast is one channel for that. I mean, your blog, if you have one, even your social media, all of those are ways for the audience to connect with you as the author. And you're absolutely spot on. Because the problem a lot of times with author marketing is we confuse the. Our author branding is. We confuse the author brand, which is a. Almost like the equivalent of an organizational brand, but you're just an organizational one person. We confuse that with product brand. And the book itself is a product. It has in some ways its own brand, so it has to relate. So just like I'm selling products on a shelf in A store, you're going to have one reaction to the product itself and you're going to compare that to other products on the shelf. But over time, if you find that there is a particular product from a particular manufacturer that you really like, you're going to be more loyal and you're going to start looking for other products in that line. So the podcast, the blog, all these other touch points give people a way to engage with you so they know what other products. Here's a key thing about all this is to think in terms of ecosystems. We tend to think in terms of one offs, like, oh, okay, I gotta work on this particular book. I'm launching this particular book. I'm doing the Facebook ads for this particular book and not thinking about how it relates back. So to your earlier question or comment about like the having consistency in the book covers, same type of thing, just you want people to know that there is this through line, that there's this consistent connection back to something more. And if they can connect that to you as a person through the podcast or other ways of having more, more of the personality of you and everything else, all the better.
- [57:14]
A
So I did want to also talk to you about the product itself, your book, which is this workbook. It's more than a workbook though, because I think I have called some of my workbooks, they really only just contain the questions, not the full text. And mine are also not designed and laid out as yours in. It really is a beautiful, beautiful product in the layout, in the way it's done, and it makes me want to do better with mine. So I wondered if you could maybe talk about this product of a branding workbook because I feel it's so much more than that and any other thoughts on multiple streams of income.
- [57:55]
B
So thank you for that. And I would say thank you also because unbeknownst to you, you were actually one of the reasons for this particular format because it was probably a year or so ago on one of the podcast where you said, okay, Amazon's pulling my workbooks because they're pulling everybody's works workbooks because they're finding that AI people are using AI to say, hey Claude, give me 40 different questions about this topic and some exercises and then they add in some few, you know, fill in the blank lines and publish it on Amazon. So the idea of that traditional fill in the blank workbook, I think it made me hesitant to try something like that. The other thing was I started this off as a course and so the course creation I had a lot of the graphics and different things in place. And it just ended up being that this, it became a hybrid. Right? So it's both a workbook and a book. But I think this is key and I would say for a lot of listeners, if you're doing something particularly like this in nonfiction to connect, consider this approach. It's not just a hybrid from a formatting, it's a hybrid in terms of the outcome or the goal of the book. And so here's the thing I say in the book. The goal this book is not to make you an expert on branding. The goal of this book is to help you create your own creative brand. And so this book, I do not care after you're done with it, you filled in in. It's a artifact of your learning. Every other book I've worked on has always been about educating and this one is about accomplishment. And I think people today, we have too much information out there. People want to achieve things and get things done. And so the more that you can think of formats that are going to help with that, I think the better. The other thing about it is breaking it down to smaller bites and takeaways, ways that people can use. I'm also mindful of just the positioning of it. I think it was Jonah Berger in his book Contagious who talks about venture capitalists and how when they're evaluating a company, they look at it and say, is this company a vitamin or a painkiller? And a vitamin is something that's very good for you and very useful and very healthy. But you can put it off a painkiller. If you got pain, you need it right? Right away, right. And my previous book, the Creative Wild on creativity, it was very vitamin like. I would actually say that even Hidden Travel was more of a vitamin. It's good for you, it's interesting, it's about meaningful travel, all that. But it's not a pressing felt need for a lot of people. I think this book on branding, for those who are struggling with marketing and everything position this one, it really is more of a painkiller. So the question, question for, for all of you out there listening is like, how can you make your non fiction work more of a painkiller and then look at other formats that are related to it. Another key aspect of this is that the workbook is there's a paper and there's a Kindle version. But then the worksheets, like what you're talking about, I call them worksheets, which are, I have two versions, a Google Doc version And a fillable or editable PDF version that are on my website that have all the questions. It doesn't have all the explanatory text, but it has all the questions in all the fields. But what I'm doing is I'm sending people to my website and they have to sign up for it. Okay. So now all of a sudden you've got them into the kind of broader ecosystem there and there could be follow ups. Right. So we talked about the branding is different in marketing. There could be a follow up book on marketing specific for that. But you've already written that book, so I don't need to do that. But I could. Right. You know, I could take any chapter and go into much more detail about it. I could do this. And there's a tiny, tiny, tiny element in this thing. On choose your own adventure. Right. There's ways of formatting a book so it's more of a choose your own adventure or a scavenger hunt, which is more of a guidebook that could help people, you know, go out there or just you can have additional merchandise that's related to it. All these different things. I have a friend, Naomi Kinsman, who has a, a creativity in a box type of a thing. Right. So these boxed elements, lots of ancillary products that you can add to that for multiple streams of income as well.
- [62:22]
A
Yeah. And I think your book also leads to sort of speaking engagements. I mean, it really is, it's beautiful. I do want to emphasize that. But you've also made it harder on yourself. So one of the reasons that we as independent authors have done, done more basic, I guess, workbooks and have done more basic books is because of the cost of production. And so I wondered, has this made it more complicated for you to sell or are there different versions of the print edition for say, Amazon print on demand versus selling from your website, for example, because it looks very high quality.
- [63:01]
B
Yeah, no, it's. But it is the same for all of us. Right. The more heavy lifting you do up front, the easier you make it for others. Okay. So yes, it has been a pain. I will not argue about that. I think the writing of this was the easiest book of all because it's just 20, 27 years worth of expertise that I could just. I didn't have to research anything. I just whip it out. Right. That part was easy. Formatting it, getting into all that pain in the ankle. Right. So yes. But I think that it makes it more accessible for people because a lot of people have the same reaction that you have that just, I mean, with the title, like brand something beautiful, you kind of want it to look that way. And that has been actually an allure to people. I don't think that a lot of the graphics got translated into the Kindle version of it. I mean, it's funny because the tablet version that's full color works the Kindle version. You have to scale down a lot. But that's okay because it still delivers the product as well.
- [64:02]
A
Yeah. I also think, you know, I love AI, everybody knows that and I use it a lot. But I also don't like the sort of mass produced books that are coming out. And so anyone who puts more effort into physical production of beautiful products is going to stand out. I mean, you mentioned about what is it that makes you distinctive. And I'm at this kind of point in my career where I also want to be known for making beautiful books. So I love that you've used it. Use the word beautiful. I want. We all love beautiful books and we buy stuff because we love covers and we love the foil and we love all the cool stuff. And just so people know, on your website, brandsomethingbeautiful.com you can see examples of the, the interior pages so people can see how that is done. Did you do this yourself or did you work with a designer?
- [64:55]
B
Worked with a designer actually though full disclosure is my son is a graphic designer and a brilliant one and so he did all the graphic elements. But what I did was. And this was again, this is like taking the extra step. I remember there was, I think it was Stephen J. Canal or it was some producer in Hollywood years ago who said, who's been dramatically successful. And he said, and then someone said, how did you become so good at this? He said, because I looked around the work that needed to be done and I looked at the level of effort that other people were making and I just did a little bit more. Right. And so I think on here I had up my game using Adobe InDesign for the layouts and things like that. But I would encourage people that, I mean there's so much you can do in Canva these days, but just diving into it and getting competent in it. But I think there's also times when you do want just some design, professional design help on it as well.
- [65:53]
A
Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned Canva because I'm sure you've heard me talk about my Gothic Cathedral book and over the summer and I was looking at my photos and obviously you're a photographer as well and you do Travel stuff. And I was like, oh my goodness, there's so many ways this book could go in terms of how the beautiful layout is done. And it almost just opens up a completely different form of creativity. Even though that's not something I'm focusing on right now because it feels like a whole other area, I also feel like it does help set us apart. As you said, it's that extra, extra effort in terms of making a beautiful interior as well as a beautiful cover. And I think non fiction this is easier because fiction, obviously the inside of a novel is plain text mostly. You can do some extra various pages or maps or whatever. But I think these non fiction books can have all kinds of elements of design that, that help people pull outs and quotes and diagrams and, and all this kind of thing. So it is a really cool creative process.
- [66:58]
B
It totally is. And I just read a book. We're about to head off to Portugal soon just for vacation. But I was reading a book that is kind of takes place in Lisbon called. It's a YA book. It's the Murderer's Ape. Like ape as in gorilla. It's about a gorilla who can speak and is an engineer on this guy's boat. But the long story of it is at the beginning of each chapter are just kind of these beautiful hand drawn pen, pen and ink illustrations. And just having that makes it such a richer experience, you know, little things like that. So there, there's a case where, yeah, if, if I had more time in my life and everything, I would be focusing on illustrated adult books which are fictional like a novel, but that I illustrate. What is it? The TS Spivit by. Oh, can't remember his name. They made it into movie like the. The life or the works of. Of TS Spivit Leaf. Anyway, he does that. It's a brilliant book because of the illustrations that are on the margins of almost every single page. So there are ways of doing that even in fiction.
- [68:09]
A
Yeah, I think we've all got to do more creative stuff in order to stand out and for ourselves as well as for the readers, it kind of just, it brings the material alive. So I think that's really cool. But you mentioned they're heading off to Portugal and you and I connected around our love of travel, hidden travel. I think it's a wonderful book and you've came on my books and travel podcast and we, we talked about that. But this is an interesting thing, right? Even for your brand because brandSomething beautiful.com to me does look like the same person who did Hidden Travel and the conversation we had around that, to me is a very different conversation to the one we've had today. So how does travel. We weave into your business, or do you feel like those two things are quite different?
- [68:55]
B
Oh, you called me out because it's like, you know, do what I say, not what I do.
- [69:00]
A
Yeah.
- [69:03]
B
Because I totally feel that way because honestly, I don't. Yeah. For my own brand and what I'm trying to do, I probably should, you know, what is it? The cobbler's kids shoes.
- [69:14]
A
Yeah, the cobbler's children have no shoes or something like that.
- [69:17]
B
Right, right, exactly. Well, but the answer to that, that is. Yeah. What you're going to see over time as I start to build out, if you will, kind of more of particularly some of the social media stuff for brand something beautiful. And this goes back to the idea of confidence. So once the book is done, I'm into getting it out there. I'm like you. I do not like video, I do not like to be on video, et cetera, et cetera. So I've never done anything. But I decided for this book I'm going to do Instagram reels. And so one of the. The things and I did was. I think it was either Gemini or chat that I just said, okay, here are the themes that I want to cover. These are going to be like blog posts and substack type of things and LinkedIn articles over the next 12 weeks. Give me. And I'm going to be in these places in Portugal. I want to create reels that illustrate these points. Give me some ideas. And it came out with some really wonderful, wonderful ideas. Like the 25th of April, bridge in Lisbon, it said, like, the point is that you're. One of the points in the book is that the brand is the bridge between the making of something beautiful and the marketing of it. And most people, artists especially and writers, we hate marketing. But if you do the branding right, it's the bridge between it, so it makes the marketing easier. And so then have a shot of me holding the book in front of the bridge and blah, blah, blah. So.
- [70:43]
A
Oh, nice. That is great. Actually. That's a good. Really a really good prompt. Thank you for that.
- [70:46]
B
Yeah, yeah. And so. So those type of things are going to be. I'm definitely using those. So you will start to see a connection between the travel and the brand. But it will emerge over time because in a way, for. I mean, I have my brand, wallop.com which is the company, the agency I've run for decades, and but that's really more for corporations and non profits. So this brand, Something Beautiful is really more the individual brand type of stuff. And so it is. It's exactly what you're talking about earlier. There's some intentionality to it. I have not fully lived and leaned into that as much and the travel and adventure. Because the theme of my other book, the Creative Wild, was about what does it mean to create adventurously. It really is like a sequel to Hidden Travel in the sense of, like, what do we learn from travel that we can apply to our creativity? How do you create adventurously? What does that mean? What does that look like? How does discovery fit into creativity? All that type of things. And so that will all get woven in there. But the main thing of all is that even if it never shows up in my external, you know, artifacts and manifestation of the brand, it is affecting me as a person, as a creative. Because as you know, in fact, one of the quotes I paraphrase, I should say from you, I think it was on the. The Saint. Was it St. Cuthbert, the one you did in the southern part of England. The.
- [72:09]
A
The Pilgrim's Way to Canterbury.
- [72:12]
B
Okay. The Pilgrim's Way. You said something after that and won the podcast, which I have told so many other people because it is so, so true. Which was. And I always thought it was just me, right? So when I heard you, it's like, okay, validation. And it was this. It was. I went on this pilgrimage thinking I would have all this time walking and I would have all this time to come up with new ideas. And I had like, virtualized none on the trip itself. But then two weeks later, after I got back. Right. I couldn't stop the ideas. Right. There's kind of overwhelmed with all the new ideas that came. And to me, that's. The benefit of travel for all of us is not so much. Yes, you can use the sites for. If you're writing a novel. Right. For getting the research. And that's. I know you love doing that and that's a key piece of it. But just the experience of getting out of your comfort zone, being in a foreign place, particularly where your senses are picking up on things, you notice things better, you pay better attention. All of that is going to help you as a creative.
- [73:14]
A
Yeah, it's so interesting. And I'm glad we kind of finished with your own personal journey of growing into this other side of yourself as well, or trying to knit them together. I think that's brilliant. Certainly it shows that we're all on this. This is a Lifetime of experience and we just keep creating. So people, if you're like, oh, I just don't know, just keep creating and something will emerge, really won't it?
- [73:39]
B
It's absolutely true. It is absolutely true. And that would be one thing I didn't mention earlier really quickly is that relates to this is in terms of those other streams of income, this idea of combinatorial thinking, right, where everything you do affects everything else in a good way. And so to me in terms of multiple streams of income, the question is rather than thinking of these one offs but this idea of ecosystems, right, that you think about how it all relates to each other and how can it leverage, leverage that. And so I'm may do this, but I would say advice to anyone out there is instead of selling individual courses. No, not instead of in addition to selling like individual courses and books, start thinking in terms of membership programs. And there's a ton of membership programs out there, but most of those memberships or even like the subscriptions, like if you, you know, paid subscription on substack or something like that, or even Patreon is to, to treat those less as just like this gathering place for people that get additional content but it more of achievement oriented. What can I accomplish? Are there steps? Think in terms of the audience's pathways and their journey through that. So that membership has these elements of like I'm gaining something and I'm growing through this. And so key to that is gamification. Things like levels of rewards of access of, of just status. All these different things we can learn from gamification that you can be applying to that. And quite frankly, I don't think you have done this overtly or consciously Joe, but I think you do a great job of that. Like with your Patreon. You don't just say, okay, yeah, I'm gonna give you access to just additional content. Yes, you do that. But in addition, there's a sense of belonging, there's a sense of participation, there's a sense of access that you get to you. And all those little elements really are about the key last section of Brand Something Beautiful is all about creating experiences of delight. Rather than trying to see your audience as someone you want to sell to, it's someone you want to delight. And so what do you do? What can you do with every little touch point? And so all these little touch points add up. So whether it's travel and how that helps us to learn new things, or it's intentionally using your multiple streams of income, all the different books, merch all that stuff coming together, if you focus on it being about delighting your audience, it just changes the whole way you look at them.
- [76:03]
A
Fantastic. So where can people find you and your books online?
- [76:07]
B
Probably the easiest way is for this. The purposes here would be at brand something beautiful.com or substack brandsomething beautiful substack.com Brilliant.
- [76:20]
A
Well, thanks so much for your time, Steve. That was great.
- [76:23]
B
Thank you.
- [76:28]
A
So I hope you found the discussion with Steve interesting and that it sparked some thoughts on your author branding and your promise to your readers. And if you'd like to listen to us talk about curiosity, wonder and serendipity around another of Steve's books, Hidden Travel, head on over to my Books and Travel podcast for that interview. So let me know what you think of the interview or anything I covered in the introduction. Please leave a comment on the podcast Show Notes at the creative pen.com or on the YouTube channel, or email me joannathecreativepen.com Send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard next Monday. I'm talking about Performance Tips for Authors and Writing Climate Fiction with Laura Baggeley. In the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the Backlash episodes and show notes@thecreativepen.com podcast and you can get your free Author blueprint@thecreativepen.com Blueprint if you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and X at the Creative Pen or on Instagram and Facebook fpenauthor Happy writing and I'll see you next time.