Last week the amazing Katie Hayoz nominated me for the Awesome Blog Content Award and wrote the funniest blog post I’ve read in ages: “Ten Things (I’ve experienced) That are Less Painful than Writing a Novel Synopsis.” I’ve returned to that post several times because I’m in the agonizing throes of synopsis-writing myself.

That means, of course, life has gotten insane, so I’m only just now getting around to writing my own post leading up to passing on the award. So check out my post for authors just starting out on this branding-oneself business, then hop over to my nominees’ blogs to check out the great stuff they’re doing!

Top Ten Things to Do to Begin Branding Yourself as an Author

So you’ve sold your first book or decided to self-publish. As you move out into the world as an author for the first time, you will find that you are going to need to work on marketing your book—this is true even for those authors who are publishing with big publishing houses; you’re expected to have a “platform” these days!

What can you do to get started? Having recently been in this exact same position, I would suggest that any author do these top ten things (in any order, after #1):

1. Pick a pen name. Your name will be your brand, so go with what you like best.

2. Set up a web site. Have a basic paragraph about you, a photo when you’re ready.

3. Set up a blog connected to your website (I have my blog as the main page of my website). Begin blogging about writing-connected stuff. I do a full-on book blog, with lots of posts about other people’s books. Many of those I get from book-tour companies; that means I can have a new post just about every day. And I post my own stuff (reviews, lists of top-five-favorites, character interviews, and so on) about once a week.

4. Set up a Facebook author page.

5. Set up an official Twitter account.

6. Set up any other social media accounts you want to use (Pinterest, Instagram, and the like).

7. Hook all of these accounts together by using something like Hootsuite.com (there are others, but that’s what I use) so that everything gets cross-posted everywhere. Once you start doing marketing (much of which will be up to you by necessity–you are more invested in your work than anyone else!), you will find that this saves you time, which will become increasingly precious.

8. Begin practicing using all of these before you actually publish a book. You’re going to want to say something other than “buy my book!” so it’s a good idea to start using the accounts before that’s all you want to say. 🙂

9. If you are self-publishing (or publishing with someone who will let you have input on this), begin looking at Amazon for category keywords for your book. You will probably sell the book on other sites, too, of course, but Amazon is still the biggest seller of books, so it makes sense categorize it according to Amazon’s lists. Start looking at similar-ish books and seeing what categories they’re in. (You’ll see something like this: Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Paranormal )

10. Keep working on writing; remember, none of this is any good without books to go with it!

Some of my favorite bloggers are also people who have helped me figure out this whole being-an-author business as I go (either by directly offering help or just being great role-models), so I nominate Wendy of Fabulosity Reads, author Melanie Karsak, and book blogger Toni of My Book Addiction.