As you all know, my biggest fear is that I’ll fail to do something properly during the marketing part of being an author and my books will fail and I will be laughed out of literary circles from now until forever.

I don’t tend to like Podcasts; for some reason they just can’t hold my attention.  But there is one that I listen to whenever I have an appropriate moment (doing dishes, working out, or mowing the lawn, usually).  And that is the one for Publishing Crawl.

So after I posted last week I happened to begin listening to the 24th PubCrawl podcast: Author Brand and Platform.  The timing couldn’t have been more perfect.  One of the things they say is “A lot of new fiction authors panic about this.  Don’t.  Platforms are grown organically, not forced into existence through sheer willpower.”  (paraphrased.)

That was fantastic to hear.  They also defined a few terms and broke it down in a way that I found extremely reassuring.

They talked a bit about how your brand is your image- the bits of yourself that you reveal to your audience so they form a picture of who you are.  Like John Green, or Rainbow Rowell.  Or J.K. Rowling.

Apparently you should start by thinking about who you are as an author.  Like, Rainbow Rowell is nerdy and posts about interesting geeky things. (I don’t follower her, but that’s what PubCrawl has told me.)

Having given it some thought, I think I can be best described as “flailing newbie writer.”  On the bright side, that means (hopefully) other new writers can learn from my flails.  Hey, if my anxiety and overthinking can help someone else, I guess it’s worth it!

(But seriouly, PubCrawl is awesome.  They do recaps of everything they covered- that’s what I linked- so if you want to get an idea of what the ‘cast is like, check them out!)