Recently the friendly-looking team at HarperStudio asked a question on their blog, The 26th Story, about whether to invest in a full-featured website or keep up the blog. Since they invited input, I weighed in with an oft-quoted phrase in the industry: “The author is the brand”.
The general idea (which someone else much smarter than I had a long time ago) is that customers don’t walk into a bookstore and ask for the latest HarperCollins or Macmillan. They seek out their favourite authors and genres. Readers want to buy the next Alexander McCall Smith or Stephen King or the latest crime thriller or epic fantasy.
In this context, there doesn’t seem much point in investing a lot of money in a publisher website with a lot of bells and whistles, unless you can master the challenges of searchability in order to drive attention to your authors and titles. Instead it makes more sense to invest in communities of interest around topics or genres, such as the Spinebreakers or tor.com sites, or individual author brands.
But then I had a quick look through the HarperStudio blog and static pages and was pretty charmed, actually. When was the last time you saw a publishing company website with candid photos of the publishers? Open, humorous bios with real human details? There aren’t a heap of publisher blogs that are more than publicity channels for the books they’re putting out. The Penguin blog is funky and well written with a diversity of voices, but these are still disembodied voices emanating from an opaque corporate behemoth. The 26th Story is one of the few blogs where I feel like I’m actually engaging in a conversation with the real people behind the enterprise, instead of being fed marketing copy.
Perhaps that will change as HarperStudio signs more authors and has more titles to manage and promote. Perhaps it will change when they create their new site – although I note they’ve decided to stick with a blog platform for now, using WordPress (good decision!) – but for now I like the small team feel of the blog, the sense (however idealistic) that I could take an elevator to the 26th floor of the HarperCollins digs and find Bob & co sitting around the table much the same as they are in their photo.
And all this got me thinking… is the author the only brand? Isn’t it possible, however unlikely, that some publishers could create an identity so strong and a community so vibrant that audiences seek out their books because they trust and like the people producing them? It’s hard to imagine of the multinationals, but not so hard to imagine of the quirky independents who have well-known identities associated with them, such as McSweeney’s (Dave Eggars) or Small Beer Press (Kelly Link).
Of course, even a wildly successful publisher blog is unlikely to generate the kind of audience that would shift books in the quantities required to make the ROI worth it. Then again, when you look at blogs like Boing Boing it’s quite clear the awesome power of conversation and community. The publisher as brand may not be something to write off just yet. Perhaps publishers just haven’t worked out how to do it well in the new paradigm.
I’ve got some thoughts about author sites and branding too, but this is getting to be an awfully long post already so I’ll hold that over for next time.
What are your thoughts? Do you think it’s worth publishers spending the time and resources on their own brand identity?
P.S. Keep up the cello practice, Bob. It is the most sublime of stringed instruments.
11 comments
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4 October, 2008 at 3:31 am
Debbie Stier
Hi Kate,
Thanks so much for your comments on our blog. I can’t begin to tell you how helpful all of that Website vs Blog stuff was to me. We will be migrating over to WordPress shortly and will hopefully have something that is more authorcentric then.
We are definitely not about branding ourselves! We know we’re only as good as our authors…..and as soon as we’ve got some books it’ll be more about them. We’ve got a few author pages up now….but honestly, we’re ready to roll on a whole bunch of others…just waiting to start fresh on the new site. One of our ideas is that we don’t want to publish books in the traditional “two week window of opportunity.” We want to start the process as soon as we acquire the book and continue long after the publication. To that end, we’re going to get the author pages up and running as early as possible.
Anyway, to be continued!
Debbie
4 October, 2008 at 11:52 am
Kat Meyer
I think both publishers and authors need to bring some branding to the table. Publishers can definitely win points with readers and authors by sharing some of what goes on behind the scenes. What editors are working with what authors and what’s that like? What designers are working on which titles, and what are they excited about for the next season? The house that signs and nurtures an author is lending its brand to that author and vice versa, and that part of the process shouldn’t be lost on the reading public. With indies it is a little more obvious, but even with the big guys, there are real people making these books come to life.
On the other hand, most authors definitely have more to say to their fans than can or should fit within a publisher’s branding scope. I like to see publishers’ sites include a portal/hub where authors’ blogs can be listed and featured.
7 October, 2008 at 2:48 am
The Casual Optimist - Monday Miscellany, Oct 6, 2008
[…] Publisher as Brand? Kate Eltham of Electric Alphabet discusses HarperStudio and wonders whether publishers should spend time and resources on their own brand identities. (via Tools of Change for Publishing) […]
7 October, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Publisher as Brand
[…] Kate Eltham ruminates on publishers, brands, the author, and the web. Does a publisher’s brand have any relevance for readers? Should a publisher invest heavily in a significant web presence, or leave that to the writers? Kate goes back and forth on the question, bouncing around ideas about the new experimental imprint at HarperCollins, HarperStudio, and their blog the26thstory. […]
26 November, 2008 at 10:19 am
Elaina
Hi Kate,
I stumbled across this post through a link from O’Reilly TOC (http://toc.oreilly.com/2008/10/do-publisher-brands-still-have.html) and your question was just what I was looking for. I’ve been thinking about publishers creating a brand and whether it was worthwhile, and I think I might have finally found the way to phrase the question for my Publishing MA dissertation.
Thanks for thinking out loud here and giving me some clarity! -Elaina
8 January, 2009 at 4:56 am
Post-Media Branding « V-TYPE MEDiA blog
[…] Going through my Google Alerts today, I stumbled upon a quote/ argument that I found intriguing from the Electric Alphabet blog: … is the author the only brand? Isn’t it possible, however unlikely, that some publishers could create an identity so strong and a community so vibrant that audiences seek out their books because they trust and like the people producing them? Electric Alphabet […]
18 February, 2009 at 12:49 pm
Thoughts on Best of TOC eBook from O’Reilly « Kindle 2, Kindle Books Reader 2.0 - Amazon Kindle 2 Review
[…] Publisher as Brand – This is another exceptional article. Publishers need to understand that seeing Publishers as people makes everyone much likelier to try to understand their perspective, and not view them as monsters standing in the face of progress. Not to mention that Brand is going to become super important as the Publishing industry evolves with technological advances. […]
20 February, 2009 at 8:41 am
Jane Ross
Thank you, Kate, for raising this oh-so-timely question. From my own experience in publishing over 20 some years, I’d say definitely a small publisher can be a brand that readers will look for. A classic example from Britain in the 1970s and 80s was Virago Press, one of the very first feminist publishing companies. With such a limited selection of women’s literature and feminist titles from other publishers at the time, readers had to ask booksellers, “Where’s your Virago section?”
More recently I’m sensing that the more entrepeneurial self-published authors are creating publishing brands under which they offer products by others that are likely to appeal to their own loyal readers. I use the word “products” advisedly, because we’re at the point where the book is only one manifestation of many possible forms that intellectual property can take. For those of us who cut our publishing teeth in the book world, that’s a hard nut to swallow and digest. As we speak, publishing is being redefined. Tech savvy and an understanding that customers are looking for good content in a flexible medley of formats are the hallmarks of these new publishers and they’re creating their own brands as they go.
23 October, 2010 at 3:23 pm
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6 August, 2012 at 10:40 pm
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27 November, 2012 at 11:11 pm
Do Publisher Brands Still Have Relevance? - Tools of Change for Publishing
[…] Anyway … back to Kate: […]