OWL | Author Branding: Why You Need It Before You Sell

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Course Dates: 2 – 29 January 2017

Cost: RWA-Member – $30.00 Non RWA-Member – $80.00

Presenter: Nikki Logan

There is so much more to effective AUTHOR BRANDING than a pretty website and a catchy tagline. Working out who you are as a writer and what you want to say is an important part of effectively communicating to editors, agents and (ultimately) readers. Branding is not something you need to leave until after you sell. This OWL course will look at author branding in the romance sector and will help participants identify what their brand is. By month’s end you will have a clearer idea of what your author brand is and the different ways you can express it. It will be delivered via YouTube (weekly video lectures you can watch in your own time and as often as you wish in the month) with an active (but optional) Q&A via a yahoo group across the month. You can do it easily, in your own time and lurkers/introverts will get as much out of it as more active participants! Author Branding is primarily targeted at aspiring authors who are carving some time away from their focus on craft-basics to start thinking about career.

This course is accessible and flexible, and runs over four weeks via YOUTUBE and an easy EMAIL LOOP discussion. The first three weeks consist of a one-hour video lecture (and lively Q&A via the email loop) and the final week includes interactive feedback on participants’ own branding ideas. There are a bunch of extra (optional) videos in the final week to demonstrate student brands in practice.

Commitment: The course is optimised to suit lurkers just as much as active participants. There is a weekly one-hour video to watch (with optional extras in the final week) and email Q&A type discussions to participate in (also optional). Interaction is not compulsory and you can do it in your own time during the month if the real world intrudes. You’ll be busiest in the final two weeks of the course (first developing your own brand and then watching select brands be workshopped).

Week 1: BRANDING – What it is. What it isn’t. The elements of a brand. This lecture will cover the philosophy of branding.
Week 2: Brand vs. Promise vs. Positioning Statement – Breaking it down into the different parts/purposes of author branding.
Week 3: BrandYOU – how do develop/establish your own brand that succinctly reflects your writing
Week 4: Your brands discussed – looking at the strengths/weaknesses of your branding decisions

About the presenter

nikki-loganNikki Logan has published 25 novels traditionally, digital-first and independently as well as one writing how-to, ‘The Chemistry of Reading’. She was President of Romance Writers of Australia (Inc) for two years and is an experienced public speaker/presenter with a long working history in advertising, public relations and communications. She has presented to community, corporate, volunteer, library and school groups ranging from six people to one-thousand.

In 2014, Harlequin’s head of Digital Publishing Malle Vallik identified Nikki’s brand, A Romance With Nature, as one of four notable examples of effective author branding in her branding masterclass at the RWAust Annual Conference. She developed that brand before becoming published and has maintained it passionately for a decade. She now manages a second author brand (Gwendolyn Beynon) in a very different genre and publishing context.

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Contact details: www.nikkilogan.com.au