Everyone is Doing This Wrong in Their Author Branding (But You Can Fix Yours)

As an author, your brand is more than just a cover image, logo, and design scheme.

You’re told by publishers and industry professionals to build a platform and sell your book. When it comes time to act, however, there is little guidance provided for how to do that effectively. Pumping out “buy my book” messages makes you look self-serving and turns readers off.

There’s an entire flavor to branding that a lot of authors miss, and it’s hurting their chances of connecting with their target readers!Continue reading

Keeping Fresh Eyes

“It is difficult to keep the public interested… the supply of new ideas is not endless,” complains the narrator of Donald Barthelme’s “The Flight of Pigeons from the Palace.”

For every writer, whether they pen literary fiction or produce streams of online content, the fight to stay interesting is an ongoing one.

Interesting to the reader, interesting to ourselves as writers, and interested in the process of putting words on a page. It is all too easy for overfamiliarity to seep in, causing mind-numbing boredom first in the writer, and in turn, the reader.

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The Simple Scheduling Hack To Find More Time To Read

“Your GoodReads account is like my aspirational reading.”

For a minute, I was flattered, thinking my friend was gushing at my discerning tastes and brilliant literary selections.

“How do you read so much?!”Continue reading

Learn Technique from a Greek: Where Modes of Persuasion Meet Content Creation

If you live in the midst of Western civilization, some English or History teacher probably told you that the ideas of Ancient Greece form the roots of our modern society. Everything from our structures of government to our philosophy, architecture, science, and arts resonate with Greek thought and ideals. And, if you’ve seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, you “know” for a “fact” that any word—any word—can be traced back to Greece.

Would you also believe, then, that the Ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about content creation before we did? We’re talking them having thousands of years of experience over us—so much for content creation being a “new way” of doing things.

The Greeks had different purposes than we do now, though. They weren’t focused on selling a product or service to an audience. Rather, they were in the market of ideas, of sharing them, of persuading others to share them, and having them spread.

They built whole professions on this concept. Orators, or speech-makers, would stand in front of a crowded amphitheater, using their words, voice, body language, professional backgrounds, and logic to get their audience on board with their ideas. Famous rhetoricians throughout history have followed in these Greek orators’ footsteps: W.E.B. Du Bois, Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King, Jr., to name a few. (I had to give you some good examples; no doubt the word “rhetoric” makes you think of corrupt politicians, and that’s enough to ruin anyone’s day.)

So who was the self-proclaimed father of rhetoric in Ancient Greece? My man, Aristotle.

But content creators aren’t rhetoricians or speech-makers, so how can Aristotle’s rhetorical technique help them connect to their audiences? How can you be as effective as Reverend King? Isn’t that a bit of a stretch?

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