Writers, take note: A literary agent or a publisher isn’t going to open up your query letter, your synopsis or your book proposal and make a decision from there: they’re going to research you. They’re going to Google you.
And the first thing they see online needs to be a very clear personal brand with a relatable concept connected to your pitch or proposal. The two things: who you are, and what you’re doing in the world – must connect to the book you’re pitching!
If there’s any confusion or murkiness about who you are and how this potential book connects to your best work…you’ve lost the deal.
Personal Brand for Authors: connecting the book, the hook and the cook
If there’s one thing that I could clarify for non fiction authors looking to get a traditional book publishing deal and succeeding in the elite world of traditional publishing, it’s an understanding of how personal brand really influences your book deal and the success of your publishing deal.
Personal brand matters to nonfiction book sales
For nonfiction, a personal brand for the author is absolutely crucial.
But it’s not about brandING. Or marketing.
I think most writers have an idea that personal brand is about big multimillion dollar brandING, or being on social media all the time.
Personal Brand – your author platform – is just about YOU showing the BEST of your work online.
How I see personal brand for authors is simply tying in the book (the work that you are pitching: your legacy, your expertise, the material that you’re trying to sell) with the hook to that work, (which is absolutely fundamental to finding the gap in the market and the audience for it), and where it fills a need in that subcategory of nonfiction and where you are incredibly unique in how you have approached this work.
Digital platform is no longer an option for writers who want to get published. And your presence must be cohesive.
See also my articles on how to sell your book idea to a publisher or agent:
How to write a query letter in 15 minutes
The email that gets you published
For a book proposal or a query letter to show you have a book and a hook and the cook, (which is you) means having the best of your expertise and authority demonstrated in every element of your digital presence, because everything is researched on the internet.
An agent isn’t going to just open up your query letter or your synopsis or your book proposal and take it at face value. It’s about relationship, and for every relationship we need to establish trust – ie. I am who i say I am.
What a literary agent needs to see if you are pitching any kind of nonfiction book:
The first thing that a literary agent (or reader, if the book is already published) sees when they look you up, whether it’s your social profiles, a media piece or your website – must convey a very strong personal brand connected to the concept of the book you’re pitching…and an angle and a hook that has never been explored in this way before.
And it needs to be apparent in a matter of minutes…
Bad luck if your name is on page 4 of google’s search results because you have no digital presence or you’ve made no effort to ensure your name is the first thing that pops up when someone googles your name.
(If you need help with this, my digital course CREATE YOUR WRITER PLATFORM shows you how to set up a search engine optimised digital presence in a weekend. Get it.)
You need to show this cohesion in your digital presence whether or not you are pitching a memoir or a general non fiction like a self help or a cookbook or a leadership book or a self development or self help book or spirituality or diet or fitness, or any other kind of nonfiction book. Why? Because credibility and authenticity around your topics, themes (and as a human!) is key to nonfiction book sales.
It needs to be 100% crystal clear that you are the very best person to write this book, on this topic, at this time, right now. And there’s a need for it, as demonstrated by your ‘social proof’ of media, digital content, or something else.
Personal Brand: Established Credibility and social proof
You as the author need to have established credibility in the market and as a personal brand, i. e. an authority, an expert in the field. So at the very least clarifying and setting up your web presence with a website that gives a really clear message as to who you are and what you’re an authority and the best of your work And how you offer something unique to the world.
Having that tied in with the work itself, i. e. the book and the subcategory that it’s written in and actually having connections and understanding where it sits in the market, as well as actually having something fresh and new and unique and original to offer on that topic or theme. This all makes up the book, the hook and the cook, a concept so crucial to selling a nonfiction book in traditional publishing.
Never pitch a memoir or nonfiction book this way in a query to an agent
I had a writer approach me wanting me to help her write a strong proposal for a nonfiction manuscript that was not a memoir, or narrative in nature, but it was also not advice or tips. It was on a topic and in a style which she thought had never been explored in that way… but she didn’t have a hook, or a sense of comparative titles.
I actually know 30 books on that topic. It’s a common topic, a whole sub-category of health and wellbeing.
The very same topic she’s pitched as never having being written about before.
So she hadn’t actually done the research as to what the topic and theme is and where it fits in the publishing market and what’s actually selling. Because when you find the similar books in your category, and leaders in that field, you get some great ideas about things you could do to build your brand.
More importantly, all the content on her web presence was in a completely different field.
She’s a professional writer, but nothing she’s had published has anything to do with the book she’s trying to sell.
So, in terms of personal brand, her credibility and her authority, in a totally different business sphere. She has no (visible) qualifications in this health / wellbeing area. Or, if she does, nobody would know.
So, this writer’s website – and her name – was all promoting a different area she’s written about, that has nothing to do with the themes and topics of this new book.
And I see this ALL the time.
Your digital presence must be cohesive and connected to the work you’re trying to sell!
Establish credibility – if you’re pitching a memoir, get an essay or a literary piece published. If you’re pitching a health book, establish credibility and authority and make sure it’s really clear what your qualifications / expertise involves.
A lot of writers look at my website for clues, but the thing is, I’m not trying to sell a book at the moment. When I was pitching A Letter From Paris, I’d established myself as a freelance writer with published work in the style I was pitching (personal writing, biography and research-based). All of my social media and visible presence connected to that. Because that’s what Publishers want to see if you’re pitching a biography, memoir or research-based book.
It’s different for every project – it totally depends on your angles, your topics and themes.
Bringing it together for your publishing deal…
So personal brand is about cohesively communicating who you are and what you’re building towards…
The book itself needs to be a well-written manuscript that meets the high standards of the subcategory of nonfiction that you are writing. To meet the high standards of what’s being bought in that area, you actually need to know that subcategory or that genre really well.
This is why the comparative titles in your proposal or your query letter need to be clear.
If you don’t know the genre that your book is in, then you’re you’re not clear. You need to actually know where it fits in the publishing landscape, whether or not you want to get traditionally published or even if you’re going to publish it yourself. You need to know where it sits and who’s going to buy it. You learn this by knowing the category really well. A narrative nonfiction is very different to an illustrated guide. There’s so many sub-categories in nonfiction, but the thing they share in common is that the author plays a huge part in the marketing, promotion and trust that leads to sales of nonfiction books.
The book, the hook, and the cook are crucial for any sales or business offer
I actually think these three things, book, hook and cook, which is a publishing term, apply to any kind of creative business or entrepreneurial business or, any kind of offering you need to have. The product itself, the book, needs to be well made and well constructed.
The creator AKA the cook needs to have established credibility in the area in which this product pertains to help or offer something new. So that, that’s shown by things like: relationships, business connections, social media presence and connections, all of the events and conferences and media and marketing and digital connections that you have in your personal and professional life. And you also need – and this is absolutely crucial:
A strong hook. Something uniquely personal that only YOU can offer to this topic, angle or theme. And it must be timely and relevant to a wide cross-section of the book-buying population.
Probably the most common mistake I see with hooks is when authors think and say:
Oh, this has never been written about before.
Or, no one’s ever written a book like this before.
That is a very quick way to offend slash annoy a publishing professional. Just yesterday I received a random email from a stranger who said her memoir was completely different to any other memoir…and she’d watched my free masterclass and nothing could apply to her story.
I took this to be her saying: my memoir is SO unique, I don’t need to fulfil the category or the genre requirements of memoir. And then she went on to describe the basic concept of her story…
and It’s basically a travel memoir.
A hook is not something you ‘say’ is unique. You have to show me why this problem is urgent, why and how you address it in a different way to similar works, and the potential promise of the story
I think writers think if they just say mine is completely rare and unique and this has never been written about before, that’s a strong hook. It’s actually more than that. A hook is a really clear, captivating concept with high stakes and a clear problem that is going to be solved by this work or, a dilemma that will be faced and resolved and transformed by this work if it’s a narrative nonfiction.
But it also has to have really timely, relatable aspects. And it also needs to, have a personal aspect and tie into your authority and expertise or brand or persona as the author.
This is how nonfiction books are different and this is why personal brand is so important to non fiction books and the whole proposal and sales side of non fiction books and publishing.
See my separate articles:
Summing up personal brand and your nonfiction publishing deal: Know Thyself!
So pulling it all together, having a cohesive personal brand to succeed in nonfiction book publishing, and also in business in any industry really that relies on personal brand – ie. the aspects of you that connect with the business product itself are fundamental to sales.
It’s really just about knowing yourself deeply, and also being able to zoom out and objectively see the gaps in how your presentation and the best of you and the best of your work fits in the category and the market itself. And making sure that your digital presence, and media presence findable, Google able, as they relate to your authority and your expertise in this area.
Related: 5 Common Mistakes Authors Make on Their Website
Lastly, you need to make it easy for people to see your book / hook / cook as soon as they see the pitch or the proposal.
It’s about making it really, really simple for people to see the best of your work and to see the hook and to see the uniqueness. And for you to make that simple, you need to know it as well.
Do you know what makes your work unique in that angle or sub-category of the genre? Do you know what makes YOU unique?
Because personal brand just comes back to knowing yourself, knowing your story, knowing the story you want to tell, knowing where you are going and what makes you, you, and different and really knowing your own value, and bringing that across in everything that you put forth to sell this work or pitch it or promote it.
And not confusing people, not having one website for one thing and then another website for some other aspect of you. It’s all your personal brand.
Personal brand: One name. One website. One social channel.
This is why I always tell authors, just get the domain name for your name and don’t make the name of your website something about the theme or the book title itself or anything like that. Buy your name as the domain and put it all under there. Because when people buy nonfiction books, just as when they buy a business offering from an expert or a consultant or a teacher or a leader in a particular field, they want to know, who that person is and how it all comes together, both personal and professional interests to form who they are because we don’t make decisions like purchase decisions, without that level of trust in the person’s credibility and expertise.
Make sure you know yourself, know where, how you want to be perceived, know what the best of your work is, and, Absolutely get crystal clear on the hook, which actually means that you need to understand the market a bit more too.
I do think personal brand is something that either repels people because they misinterpret the term personal brand or confuses them and overwhelms them and makes them think that they need to be on social media all the time. But it really is simply finding your unique gap in the market where your audience and your reader or your specific person / aka your ideal reader ‘hangs out’, whether that be LinkedIn or, or Instagram or, you’re reading a particular industry periodical, for example, you could be a plastic surgeon who is the number one authority on a particular aspect of plastic surgery.
So building a credible brand for you would be about writing for an industry publication once a month because that is where a lot of your contacts and connections who want to know about YOUR unique aspect of this profession, wil be reading and looking and wanting to connect.
Because that is your market and your readership , and that’s where your expertise is best shown. Too often, people think they need to talk ‘down’ to a reader, when you’d be surprised to find your readers for nonfiction are often your peers.
In Create Your Writer Platform – I teach you how to set up the assets that comprise the digital component of your author brand. So you can have a clear and appealing presence for literary agents and editors as well as general members of the public you wish to read your work.
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