Going Off Brand...

Why does this word make everyone freak out? Including me? Let's get over it.

There was a journalism twitter kerfuffle this weekend that you might have missed if you’re not at least a little tuned in to media twitter. In it, NYT reporter Maggie Haberman took a swipe at Taylor Lorenz, a former NYT reporter who now works for the Washington Post. The topic? Branding for journalists and whether it’s necessary. Haberman basically suggested that journalists don’t need and/or shouldn’t have “brands” of their own (that it’s just attention-seeking to maintain otherwise—and pointedly in Lorenz’s direction) and Lorenz pointed out that Haberman has one, because she has a book deal and a cable contract, and that for most journalists the answer is YES.

Maggie Haberman @maggieNYT

Taylor, if you want to keep this going we can. But I think if you think you and I go about journalism similarly, that’s surprising to me.

Taylor Lorenz @TaylorLorenz

Maggie, the attention economy is my entire beat, it’s what I cover, and you’re certainly an expert at leveraging it yourself. I hope you can recognize why more workers at the NYT and elsewhere are seeking more ownership of their work, opportunities for career growth and fair pay. https://t.co/cF4G3U0Pcm

Given the shark tank that is modern journalism, seems hard to dispute the original point that most new journalists today need to develop personal brands in order to make a living. There’s a real “old school” vs. “the new kid” angle to this, and I’m always disappointed to see established pros pitting themselves against younger/newer people in the same field. (Especially women, honestly, and especially with this tinge of the personal to it. Haberman is obviously a very distinguished journalist, and just as obviously got up and chose violence and adding Unnecessary Public Swipes At Colleagues to her brand portfolio.)

Anyway, from the title, I bet you thought this was going to be another newsletter about Brandon Sanderson! (At $24 mil and counting, last I checked!) But instead it’s going to be about the way in which the word branding makes us twitch and why we probably should just get over it at long last. As a Gen Xer, I’m fully in the camp that has an instinctive cringe at the word… But thinking about this more over the weekend, I need to let that go.

Getting branded (not about cults)

Elizabeth Spiers wrote a great essay about the kerfuffle (which you should go read in its entirety) and I sure do think her points 1000 percent transfer over to writers of books. I’m going to quote some of the more relevant parts here:

…the word “brand” specifically appears to send people into paroxysms of revulsion. But all of the performative gagging looks silly when you just substitute a word journalists respect: reputation. Journalism is one of the few industries where your name is on your work, in public, all of the time.

Oop. That is also an author’s deal—our name is on our work in public, all of the time. Reputation might make you feel better than brand vocab-wise, but when you’re just starting out you probably have a brand (whether you know or understand it or not) and not a rep. Over time, hopefully the two sync up more or less. (Edited to add: Someone in design/marketing pointed out on twitter that reputation is the interpersonal and brand is for the marketplace — the meaning is the same, the arenas are different. Writers all have to negotiate both.)

While I don’t think the two are necessarily as intertwined as they are for journalists, there are definite correlations for fiction writers. In the journalism world, your reputation can determine whether and who talks to you and how candid they are. In the author world, reputation acts similarly… do people still want to work with you after they’ve heard stories about working with you? Would they want to work with you based on how you are in public? If I ask the media escort shepherding me or a friend from bookstore to store for the dish on the worst (or best) author stories they have, is your name gonna come up??? (Always. ask. for. the. stories.)

(This is also yet another facet of the whisper network, because it’s not just gossip, it’s also the way you know who to look out for at the hotel or avoid being on panels with.)

Another quirk of reputation in the author world is that to a certain extent, you’re also just fighting to stick around long enough that someone has in fact heard of you. I suppose this is equally true in journalism. Even people who have iffy reputations, if they manage to stick around, are given a sort of deference eventually (rightly or…not). Because making a name is hard, no matter if you’re writing journalism, nonfiction or fiction. And that’s essentially what we’re talking about when we say brand. Your name, and what it represents to your audience or would-be audience.

Spiers makes some great points about privilege and in particular the privilege of working for legacy media companies—which both journalists and authors would probably still grumble about not being enough these days… But it does matter. We often talk as (traditionally-published) authors about how much the efforts of a publisher can move the needle, far more than our own.

So, why do you have a brand if you can’t move the needle that much? Why do you have one even if you’re like “I’m just a human bean”? (In your private life, you may be just a human bean, but this is your public side we’re discussing, the side that wants people to read your work and buy your books.)

But maybe part of the shivers we associate with the word brand — besides the parts with privilege we might not want to admit we have — is simply that we automatically think of the worst, most obnoxious, phoniest type of branding, instead of being real and holistic about it. ANYTHING considered in its worst incarnation will be all-caps CRINGE. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing of value there…

Another quote from Spiers:

This does not mean shouting ME ME ME on the Internet all the time; it means talking about your work regularly, being present where your audience lives, saying yes to opportunities, and being fluent in different media. Most importantly, it means not assuming that someone else is going to do it for you, because unless you’re already a tenured personality at a legacy media company, that’s not going to happen.

Freelancers understand this intuitively because they can’t survive without it. Over-reliance on one source of income is dangerous, and if people are not familiar with your byline, it is infinitely harder to get work.

Not having to do all of this is a privilege. If you don’t have to do it, you should probably be grateful— because it is a lot of work — and maybe write your audience development people a nice thank you note.

Always thank your publicists and marketers, authors! Even when you feel like they aren’t getting the results you want, they are (probably) still doing the work. And be aware when you judge people who seem like they’re trying too hard (again, not being obnoxious, just honestly trying to make their name), because the interaction that inspired this piece is not a good look on the part of Haberman.

In fact, if you wonder why I’m mostly talking about traditionally published authors here, much like what Spiers says re: tenured journalists vs. newer freelancers, I think most indie authors have already accepted all this, because they are the ones steering the ship.

Platform is not just for shoes

When I talk about the dreaded term “author platform”—I look at it more holistically. It’s certainly not just social media, and follower counts, which is often how it’s discussed. It’s everything about you that is public facing, including in the tangible world outside your house and screen. After you have a few books, or even just one, your books are probably the base of your platform—the way people find you or the thing that keeps them with you. This is one reason why, while “platform” is definitely a thing in selling nonfiction work, it’s not as big a factor in selling fiction to traditional publishers. I personally prefer to think of platform in terms of writing my books and as part of that building community and being a part of one (or more!).

We are storytellers. So if we can’t stomach words like branding and platform, we should realize the baggage is at least partly ours, and tell ourselves the story that allows us to accept the reality of it. I always say: Careers are narratives. Be careful who you cede the right to tell yours to. And beware telling yourself the wrong story about your own career, positively or negatively.

Whether you think you have a brand or not, you do. And it’s one of the few things you can directly influence, if not entirely control.

Because there’s very little we can control in any given moment, obviously. But we can control how we react, how we treat other people, what we choose to do (or write), and how we build our communities, online and off.

And whether we wake up and choose violence on the internet.

Have a great week — I’ll be back with more shaken & stirred in your inbox a couple of times, as I’m finding my schedule here.