Brand New
My agent is getting ready to submit my manuscript to publishers and has asked me to assemble as much information as possible about me, about my public speaking, and about my work on Author and so on. “Don’t be modest,” she commanded. “I want everything.” I obeyed. I am not such a humble guy that self-promotion is anathema to my everyday thinking, but if you had asked me what I thought about marketing before I formally took on this task of own-trumpet-blowing, I would have said I am writer, not a salesman. That’s why I have an agent. If you had asked me about platforms and, God help me, branding I would have pointed out that I am writer, not a ketchup company.
But something began to emerge as I bullet-pointed my way through Author and this column and now Author2Author. I did not start Author, nor this blog, because I wanted a platform. I started Author because I wanted something do, and I wrote this column because almost accidentally I discovered it was the perfect means to share what interested me most with other people. Likewise public speaking and Author2Author: they seemed like natural outlets for what I enjoy doing.
And yet it appears I have created what amounts to a platform. Stranger still, a brand. Yes, a brand. Well, it’s a motto really: Do what you love and fear nothing. I didn’t mean for that to be my motto, my brand, but I seem to keep saying it. Plus, I like this brand. You could etch it on my tombstone.
But it’s a simple brand, isn’t it? Not terribly original, either. So many have said it before me. Yet why couldn’t I remember hearing it so much until now? Why did it seem that the world offered me echoes when I wanted a symphony? How strange to be greeted by silence from a world of noise, as if I had managed to find the one space in life in need of my voice.
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