In this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dale L. Roberts talks with Andrea Jo DeWerd, a book marketing expert, about the essentials of mastering author branding and marketing. Andrea explains how to create a memorable brand, build a cohesive author presence, and use social media effectively. She also discusses boosting book sales through in-person events and community engagement, debunks common marketing myths, and offers practical tips for public speaking and identifying the right opportunities for your audience.
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Listen to the Podcast: Mastering Author Branding with Andrea Jo DeWerd
On the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Andrea Jo DeWerd joins @selfpubwithdale to discuss mastering author branding, creating a cohesive author presence, and effective marketing strategies. Share on XDon't Miss an #AskALLi Broadcast
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Show Notes
Further Resources
- How to Reach More Readers: ALLi's Guide to Book Marketing
- Sell More Books: ALLi's Guide to Book Promotion
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About the Host
Dale L. Roberts is a self-publishing advocate, award-winning author, and video content creator. Dale’s inherent passion for life fuels his self-publishing advocacy both in print and online. After publishing over 50 titles and becoming an international bestselling author on Amazon, Dale started his YouTube channel, Self-Publishing with Dale. Selected by Feedspot and LA Weekly as one of the best sources in self-publishing of 2022, Dale cemented his position as the indie-author community's go-to authority. You can find Dale on his website or YouTube.
Read the Transcripts: Mastering Author Branding with Andrea Jo DeWerd
Dale L. Roberts: Welcome to the monthly episode of branding, marketing, and promotion brought to you by the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast. I'm your host, Dale L. Roberts. Every month, I'll be speaking to publishing industry experts and insiders on the topic of branding, marketing, and promoting.
Today's guest comes with a wealth of experience, working with a range of authors from all walks in the traditional publishing and self-publishing sectors. Andrea Jo DeWerd is a seasoned book marketing expert and author with over thirteen years of experience at major publishing houses like HarperCollins, Random House, and Simon & Schuster.
She has crafted successful campaigns for over a hundred New York Times bestsellers by famous authors. As the founder of the Future of Agency and co-founder of Madonna Writing Retreats, Andrea combines her extensive knowledge in branding and promotion with a deep commitment to helping authors succeed.
Welcoming Andrea to the podcast. How are you doing, Andrea?
Andrea Jo DeWerd: I'm a great, Dale. Thanks for having me.
Dale L. Roberts: Yeah, it's something that some people won't be able to appreciate but I love the view that you're sitting at, the colors and everything else. Where are you talking to me from? Can you describe it here with our listeners?
Andrea Jo DeWerd: For sure, yes. I'm coming to you from downtown Brooklyn. I am very lucky to have this beautiful greenery behind me, which is actually the top of a condo building. That is a rooftop. I'm on the 15th floor, but I just have this beautiful little green space behind me randomly, and it's been just adding a nice little view to my hot pink chair, which was a Black Friday purchase a couple years ago, and it's been just the best for a Zoom background.
Dale L. Roberts: Yeah, no regrets on that chair. I like that chair. I'm about ready to go pick up myself one of those, but before we do venture off into another rabbit trail here, let's get focused because I had listened to your interview over on the Indy Author Podcast with good friend Matty Dalrymple.
So, shout out to Matty here and boy, I've got a lot more questions I'd like to build off of, but let's start it out with just the basics here. How would you define branding for an author, especially if they're just starting up? And follow up question, what are the key elements authors should focus on when establishing that brand?
Andrea Jo DeWerd: That's a great question. I think an author brand is everything. To put it really simply, I think it's everything that helps people find you online. So, it is your website, it is your social media, it is your Substack or newsletter or other platforms, it might be your podcast. It is everything besides an addition and including your books.
So, it is your books and more, but all of those things add up into your total brand. The bigger question then to make your brand cohesive is how do all of those things fit together? If you are podcasting and writing a newsletter and talking on social about other things, other topics you're interested in, how do those things tie back to your book?
That all falls under brand strategy. It's brand vision. It's brand voice. How do you talk about those topics and how are they related to one another.
Especially if you're a fiction author, maybe your novel is not related to some of the topics you might talk about on social media. Maybe you're also a runner and that's something that's really integral to your brand. So, how do you make all those things fit together? That all falls under brand strategy.
Some of the places we start with authors is taking an account of your online platforms. When people search for your name, your books, what are they finding, and how do we control that?
Spend a lot of time talking about low hanging fruit in SEO, and those are things like claiming your Goodreads author profile, claiming your BookBub profile, because all of that adds up into your search presence and can point people back to you and your books.
And those are the free things to do. There's lots of other things you can do to gain your search presence, but do the free things first that helps people. And all of that adds up into one cohesive discoverable brand.
Dale L. Roberts: Is this something that's easy for authors to figure out or is this going to be something complex and ever evolving?
Andrea Jo DeWerd: That's a good question. I think brand can sound scary to authors or they might think, I have one book, I'm not a brand, I'm a writer. So, I think the idea in its entirety can be really off putting. I'm talking about SEO and metadata, like those are scary words to writers sometimes.
Break it down, what does that actually mean? Okay, it means clean your Goodreads profile. It means update your Amazon author central bio. It means make sure that all of your activities are represented in your bio on your website, that every which way that someone might possibly discover you and your books, that we can tie it back to those things in search and tie it all together.
So, breaking it down step by step into a to do list of simplifying these steps one at a time, I think helps make it realistic for authors.
If you say, you need to have a brand strategy and update your SEO, like that's terrifying to a lot of people.
Dale L. Roberts: What are you getting me to do here, Andrea?
You want me to do SEO and metadata? What the heck is this? So, if I'm new to this, what's the first best step for me to get in that direction?
Andrea Jo DeWerd: My number one recommendation is to make sure your URL, your author website, is some representation of your name. It should not be your book. It should not be your series unless, okay, I'm going to make exceptions for some certain bestselling series. Sure, maybe that has its own website.
First book, second, third book, by your name. If your name is not available, you might do, dalelrobertswriter.com, dalelrobertsauthor.com, dalelrobertsbooks.com, official Dale L. Roberts.
So, you might add official, writer, books, author, any other words. You want real words. You want a. com. A. net and. org are not professional in these days. A .org is just for nonprofits. Any of those other extensions just are not professional in this day and age when you can buy just about any URL.
It is complicated and it's hard, especially if you have a more common name or if you're fighting other people for those URLs, but having your name and having that be the place where everything lives for you and your books, I think is really important. That's step one.
Pop on GoDaddy and reserve some variation of your real name and then make sure that your social media handles match that. That your name on your social media handles, even if you have a handle that is something like, @bookandbikegirl29, something that is fun and reflective of you and your life. But then your name, the actual display name should be your name recognizable as you, the author. I would recommend probably changing those handles at some point to some variation of your actual name for search purposes.
Instagram comes up for free in Google search, not sponsored results. So, having that match, your name can be tied back to your books and help your books come up higher in search. So, step one, start with your website, start with your domain name, and then match all your social handles. All of your places on the internet should be some variation of your same name, same spelling. Middle name, no middle name, all of that should match as much as possible.
Dale L. Roberts: Yeah. So, it's going in and reserving all those names all the way across the board. But my question would be, do I need to be ever present on every single social media platform? I see you smiling because you know exactly where we're going with this.
Andrea Jo DeWerd: I know exactly where we're going with this, and I've said it for years, I'm going to keep saying it. My number one rule for social media is pick one and do it well. You do not have to be everywhere. You might reserve the handle so people can find you. I still have a Twitter or X presence so people can find me, but it points people off platform to other places to find me.
I think it is worth reserving those handles so that no one can impersonate you, especially when you become famous, when your books really hit, when your podcast becomes enormous, not that it's not already, you don't want someone to be able to squat, people will squat on your handles.
Dale L. Roberts: That's true, there are some real jerks out there that will do that. They will go out because they want to bilk you for money, obviously.
Andrea Jo DeWerd: Yes. We went through this in 2010 to 2013 or so when many authors were just starting to claim their social media profiles. I worked with Mary Higgins Clark. We had to kick someone off of her Twitter handle that some money grabber had claimed, and we had to prove that we were representing Mary Higgins Clark and help her get on Twitter so that she could have her name back. So, claim your handles, even if you're not planning on being active there.
But no, you don't have to be posting on every platform. I think it is actually more detrimental to half ass it. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that here, but to do a poor job and post once every six months on a platform, I don't think that's worth it. I think it is worth it to say, this is an updates-only account is what you might put in your bio. So, people know to not expect you to be posting frequently there. But pick your one platform and do it really well. Post on your favorite platform frequently, do what is realistic for you. That is much more important and will help you in the long run than being everywhere all at the same time and being everywhere poorly.
Dale L. Roberts: Yeah, I know from personal experience, because I tried to spread myself out so thin and even then, I justified saying, I've got people that work for me that can manage these things, but unfortunately what it came down to is, is this actually moving the needle?
And to backtrack just a little bit here, you mentioned, let's reserve all our names across all the major social media platforms and only try to be present on one if we can. But if I were to go and reserve my name, just to be safe, what would be the social media sites that I'd want to hit primarily?
Andrea Jo DeWerd: This really depends on your audience. It depends a little bit on what do you enjoy? If you are never going to enjoy being on Instagram, if you don't take photos, I'm not going to tell you to be on Instagram, but then it comes down to audience.
So, if you are writing fiction or memoir, your audience is most likely on Instagram. That is where those book buyers are in particular. If you are writing a cookbook, Pinterest might be the place for you. If you are writing a business book or something entrepreneurial, something with a real trade specificity, you might be on LinkedIn.
So, it depends a little bit about the reader, and then our question of age comes in. If your readership is primarily over 55, they are probably on Facebook still. If your audience is under 25, they're more likely to be on TikTok, except that Gen Z is actually one of the fastest growing audiences on Pinterest right now.
So, if you're doing anything that would turn into inspirational quotes, Gen Z is loving that on Pinterest right now. That is a shift as of the last six months.
So, it depends on audience, and it depends on what is realistic for you. Because maybe you're a YA author, and your audience is under 25. But if you are never going to post a single video, if you are not going to shoot a video, TikTok is not going to work for you.
So, you have to match those things together too.
Dale L. Roberts: It makes sense for sure. Now, I want to ask a little bit more about book marketing itself. Now, what are some common misconceptions authors have about book marketing and how can authors avoid these pitfalls?
Andrea Jo DeWerd: The number one thing that comes to mind is that marketing is not just social media.
There is so much we do that is not social media or not digital period. After COVID, the last two years in particular, in-person events, community is really coming back. We are spending a lot of time with clients right now for my agency, sending people out on the road. People are speaking to libraries and universities. We're sending authors to talk to PTA meetings for a particular book about American education, but that has completely come back, and we're having more inroads, having authors go speak to 50, a hundred, 200 people at a time, then shouting into the void on social media.
And yes, you can send a social media message or send an email to 10,000 people at once, but they're less likely to take action. It is still a very noisy digital space. So, we're finding that our authors who are doing these in-person events or on the fiction side, maybe doing a lot of book club events, they're having a lot of success right now. And it's community adoption that I think is really driving a lot of our marketing.
So, I think that's the trap that a lot of people think, ‘I have to be on social media. I have to be doing all these digital platforms,' and those are not always the thing that things that pay off.
I think of social media as in marketing speak, top of funnel awareness. Social media is the first touch point.
It's the first thing that maybe introduces someone to the book or the author, but we have to move them down the funnel. We have to let them know more about the book and author, which happens through the next step. It might be an email newsletter. The next step might be advertising, but what's actually really driving people to convert, buy the book and then become an ambassador for that book and author is like an in-person connection, some sort of community event.
I will say that we are seeing email newsletters in general are driving better book sales than social media. We have clients with 100,000-300,000 Instagram followers. Those people are not buying books. Those people are like, thanks for the free information on Instagram. Cool. Great. But they will not actually click and buy a book.
The same clients, one has a newsletter of 40,000 people. Those 40,000 people, while it's a fraction of the Instagram audience, those are the people who are actually buying the book. So, that's something I'm talking to a lot of clients about right now, is consider if you really don't want to be on social media, can you start a Substack? Can you write a newsletter? Monthly, bi-weekly, a little bit more frequently, if possible, but can you invest your time in the digital activity that is actually driving sales right now? Or can you invest your time in offline connections?
I think that is something that, again, a lot of authors don't think about from the beginning or don't think about as part of this marketing picture.
I'm rambling now, but offline marketing I think is what people forget about all the time.
Dale L. Roberts: Yeah, it seems like everybody's social media, email marketing, sometimes people throw it in there, but they forget the fact that there's this eyeball to eyeball, belly to belly connection that you have when you're in person with somebody.
So, what about that introverted author that is absolutely terrified about doing any in-person events? What's one of the best ways to overcome that hurdle? And what are the opportunities I can find in, say, my local area that would be pertinent to me as an author?
Andrea Jo DeWerd: It's a great question. I think what comes to mind is, what's the low barrier to entry way to do that? And that might be starting with a book club of 10 people.
And test it, because I also really strongly believe in gentle marketing. If it doesn't feel right to the author, you're never going to do it. So, if you are absolutely terrified and never going to speak in front of a room of a hundred people, that's okay, don't do that. That's not for you and that's okay.
Then do something else, invest your time in advertising or email marketing. So, I am very adamant on what works for the author and what's realistic for their life and their preferences. But I would say dip your toe in first.
Can we arrange maybe a 10 person Zoom book club conversation? Maybe you get the benefit of the screen. You don't have to be exactly in person, but you get the benefit of the in-person feeling of a book club meeting.
If that feels okay, then let's go to the local library. Will the library host something for you for 30 or 40 people? If you're not comfortable speaking at a podium, can someone interview you and bring in a friend? It doesn't have to be someone with a celebrity following, an influencer. It can be a pal who's just read your book and can talk about it. Maybe the two of you have a book club chat in a room that happens to have 40 people in it, but it's just you and your friend talking about the book.
Those are some of the ways to dabble. And if that feels good, go to the next level. Can you do a room of a hundred people? Maybe you do speak at a podium at some point. And again, that doesn't have to be the be all end all. Maybe if you don't speak, maybe you just read and then take audience Q&A.
I think Q&A is a great way of just talking to the audience. You're talking to one person at a time, it's a great way to circumnavigate some of the fears of having to do a big public presentation.
I would start small, always start with a practice session. We always do practice sessions before podcast interviews with our clients, before they're going out on the road and doing interviews.
We do a practice session with just us. If you can do it with two people, then you can do it with 10 people, and you build on every positive experience.
And also know, there are going to be events that don't go well, it happens to everybody, and I think a lot of this is just having that mental game to bounce back. If it doesn't feel good, that's okay. Not everything's going to be a smash hit, but you still did it. And for next time maybe that's not your preferred format, and then we never have to book that event ever again. Start slow and build.
Dale L. Roberts: By and large, what have you found to be the most successful in moving the needle and getting more readers, selling more books?
What in person event works best do you see?
Andrea Jo DeWerd: Tapping into specific networks or professional associations has been really helpful, and I say this because it depends on every book. But we're working with an author, a novelist. The novel has a lawyer character in the book who becomes a Supreme Court justice.
So, we've been going out to legal associations. So, we're hearing back from professional legal networking groups who happened to have book clubs, and those groups are adopting the book, but their book clubs, some of them are 200-300 people. They're large professional networks that are adopting the book. So, being able to tap into that kind of specific angle about the book has been really helpful.
And we have to be creative. We're looking for these legal associations that maybe have book clubs who we've never talked to before.
I did work on a legal thriller several years ago, but it's been 8 or 10 years, so we're finding new organizations to pitch this to, and that's really the model that works.
We had another author writing a memoir, but she was adopted by this Texas women's professional association. I don't even remember what the professional network was for, but these women, invited her and they arranged a bookseller to come on site, but it was really their stewardship of this event and this network that they were spreading the word to that really helped.
So, any minute connection, especially with fiction, if you pick apart the book, who is most likely to be interested in this? Is there any association that we can pull out? Those are really the ones that have championed the books, but it is a little bit of a numbers game. It's pitching, trying to find the right organizations that might be interested.
I completely understand that authors personally may not have time to do all of this. It's something that is a luxury, just being able to send a million pitches and see who responds. So, try to really pick apart and see who's most likely to respond, but then also leaning in once you get one, yes. Oh, actually the legal associations are really interested in this. Can I do 10 more legal associations? Kind of extrapolate and reapply from one success. That's how we have been able to grow some of our campaigns.
Dale L. Roberts: So, it's just a case of really getting out there, finding where my audience resides, and just asking, just going and asking. So, thinking about that, what are the wrong opportunities? What are the ones that I need to avoid? Meaning that, obviously we know I don't want to be sharing my erotica book to a room full of kids, something like that. That's a given, but are there other opportunities that I should avoid altogether?
Andrea Jo DeWerd: That's right. I think, if it's not the right audience that's rule number one. But then I would also think about, is it something that you want to do personally? I think about this with travel. We always hope that an event organizer will pay for travel for an author. If they won't, is it a city that you actually want to go to?
This came up. We were working with an author who wanted to go to every book festival this past fall, and do you really want to go to Wisconsin if you get an invite, and nothing against Wisconsin, I grew up in Minnesota, but do you want to go be under the tent and talk to 10 people in the rain if this is maybe not where your target audience really is? From their social media, we can see that they have more followers in Chicago.
So, thinking about, is there really an audience for you there? Is it a place where you're willing to travel yourself and maybe spend your own money to go to this thing?
If the answer is no, I wouldn't actually pay to send myself to Wisconsin. You don't need to be pitching that book festival. I think that's a good way to ask yourself truly in your heart, do I want to do this, and how would I feel if 10 people show up, if five people show up? Would that be worth my time and maybe my own money to travel myself there? I think that's a good lens to think about things.
I will just say that not every book needs everything, and I fell into this trap for my own book. My own novel came out about a month ago. It's there on the shelf.
What We Sacrificed for Magic, a book about witches in 1968.
The trap I fell into was thinking that I wanted absolutely everything for my book. I want the radio interviews. I want the newspaper reviews, and I had to really come back to that audience and say, this is a book club book. This book is not for everybody. I don't need to be on NPR to talk about witches. Not that NPR people don't like witches, but that's not my primary audience. My primary audience is book club readers.
So, having that lens to really focus myself.
I had this idea that I had to send a press release to 600 journalists that might possibly be interested in the book. I did not need to do that; I needed to spend my time talking to book clubs. I invested myself in bookclubs.com, which is a great organization for book clubs to organize and learn about new releases. So, investing my time in a relationship with bookclubs.com and doing a live interview for them, that was a much better use of my time than trying to pitch 600 journals that may or may not be interested.
So, it really does all come back to audience. I think that's the right lens to be looking through. Is this right for your book?
I was really obsessed with the Grub Street column. They do a ‘what I ate all week column', I forget what it's called, the Grub Street Diet. I'm obsessed with that. I'm not a chef. I'm not a food writer. There's absolutely no way they want me to write that column. I am not that person, and that's okay. That's not this book.
So, I think being able to say that and look at where's your audience and what's right for this book, for this audience, that's most important.
Dale L. Roberts: Awesome. All right. Now, I've got one last question. Rapid fire answer this as best you can here. Obviously, it's kind of a loaded question, but for authors who are self-publishing, what are the top three marketing strategies they should invest time or money in?
Andrea Jo DeWerd: The number one answer coming to my brain is podcast. I was like, do I want to say podcast while I'm on a podcast? I think podcasts.
I think there are a lot of great podcasts out there that want to talk to indie authors. There's a great community.
Matty's, I think, serving that community as well.
That's, I think, a good place to invest. Pitching 75 or a hundred podcasts. I think that yields for indie authors in particular, and then building one-on-one relationships with the influencers, the bookstagrammers, who do post indie authors.
The way we do this is we dig into the tags of who else have they posted and are they posting other indie authors?
And if a bookstagrammer is going to post indie authors, that's a good place to invest your time in relationships. Make some in-roads there.
Dale L. Roberts: Very good. Andrea, as we start to wrap things up, how can authors get in touch with you?
Andrea Jo DeWerd: Our agency is online at thefutureofagency.com. My personal website is ajdewerd.Com. Just all of my branding handles are under @ajdewerd, and we are available and around for book marketing services, and I love talking about this stuff all day. So, you're going to have to cut me off.
Dale L. Roberts: Thank you so much, Andrea. I really do appreciate your time today.
