In an interesting essay at Slate's The Big Money, Jill Priluck argues that book authors must "transcend their words and become brands" if they're to sell books. Andrew Sullivan agrees :
My own view is that the publishing industry deserves to die in its current state. It never made economic sense to me; there are no real editors of books any more; the distribution network is archaic; the technology of publishing pathetic; and the rewards to authors largely impenetrable. I still have no idea what my occasional royalty statements mean: they are designed to be incomprehensible, to keep the authors in the dark, to maintain an Oz-like mystery where none is required.
The future is obviously print-on-demand, and writers in the future will make their names first on the web. With e-distribution and e-books, writers will soon be able to put this incompetent and often philistine racket behind us. It couldn't happen too soon.
And what is a brand?
someone you would read regardless of the subject.
says Priluck, and here Sullivan agrees too.
Most of this seems on target. But it strikes me that this generalist requirement for developing a 'brand' conflicts with what's an individual writer needs to do to establish a large presence on the web. I've not done a scientific survey, but it seems to me that most of the heavily linked individual writers on the web establish their presence by specializing. Consider the individual authors among most-linked 100 blogs listed at TechCrunch: TechCrunch does tech; Kos, Drudge, Malkin, Ben Smith do politics; Chris Brogan does social media. A few generalists jump out: Sullivan, Kottke, BoingBoing. But Sullivan and BoingBoing, it seems to me, got established mainly by having the great majority of their posts address a distinct area.
So... how does a writer establish herself as a generalist brand if building a large web following requires a more specialized niche? Or am I misreading this? I suspect the weak part of the equation is Priluck's definition of "brand." Sure, a brand writer might be a John McPhee or a Joan Didion, whom we'll read no matter what they write about. But others we read because we know they'll work a fairly well-defined area in a way we can rely on: Oliver Sacks, Janet Malcolm.
I suspect Prulick is right about the necessity of creating a 'brand' online to sell books. But I doubt that will especially favor generalists.
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Look at Malcolm Gladwell's blog and his brand. Perfect example of the "generalist" and the authorbrand bookselling technique.
I approach this with my writing from a slightly different direction; if you look at my site you'll see it's a blend of personal narrative, internet observations and various forms of nerdery and engineering-geek shit.
HOWEVER. There is a unifying ethos. There has to be, otherwise it's just some nerd ranting about the internet. I conceive of my body of work thusly: I am an engineering student, and I grew up on the internet. This gives me a relatively rare viewpoint on what's going on in the world right now and how it will lead to change in five years or so.
Most everything I post comes down to this: the internet is changing the way Americans go about the basic business of living and I want to help chronicle that shift. I do this for a few reasons: one, the only way to get better at writing is to write more; two, I think that my opinions are unusual and someone might get a kick out of them; three, being conscious of the way the world is changing and trying to understand how the changes showing up today will affect our world in ten years will give me the perspective necessary to succeed when I strike out on my own after I graduate.
This relates to being a generalist thusly: success does not come from blogs alone. A blog is a useful thing to have as a professional because it creates an indexable and browsable library of your musings on things that are directly relevant to your profession (and not, if you so chose!). In the event that I decide to write a book (in the chance event that I have an idea that ten thousand other people haven't thought of and written books on before me), the blog will already exist. I won't have to start it and try to fill it with content only related to the book I wrote; I'll already have a few years of archives all tagged so that anyone interested in the blog posts that lead up to the book will be able to look through the taglist and see the resources I cribbed from.
The joy of a blog is in that it is *not* a book. You do *not* have to limit yourself to a specific topic on a blog, unlike a book.
But hey; I'm not a particularly inventive guy when we get right down to things. I like fire, explosions and making things with my hands, not writing books.
Another resource you might want to examine on this subject would be the blogs written and maintained by the people who write business management books. It's been a longass time since I dove into that world, but I remember a lot of them keep "generalist" blogs where they have a couple of "focus" posts a week, but everything is holographically imprinted with the themes of their blog.
I remember adding your site to my RSS reader when it relaunched - a whole mess of people linked to it when you went live again - and I remember reading something along the lines of how happy you were to be a part of the sciblogs community again because of how lonely it can get out there.
Yeah. It's pretty lonely. But I don't write my blog for company. I write my blog because I believe that I see things other people don't and can frame those insights about the world in unusual and clever ways; enlightening anyone who reads them.
It's great that you cite Kottke as a generalist, because the evolution and trajectory of kottke.org is the model for how I'm building my own brand. Offer a contrarian opinion that's rooted in your honest opinions. Post regularly. Bring good content to the table. If you build it, they will come, but as the internet is so massive it won't be overnight and you won't be able to chose your audience. The only influence that you'll ever have is through your writing and the whole of your corpus of work (which as I've been trying to get across must be generalized because you want a wide audience, not people who come to your site for one topic).
Thanks, Evil Rocks, (now that's fun to type!) for this thougtful post.
I had thought of mentioning Gladwell, as surely there's no stronger 'brand' in the nonfiction world these days, and he is a generalist. But he -- unlike, say, Sullivan -- isn't relevant to a make-your-brand-on-the-web discussion, because he made his brand as a staff writer for the New Yorker (a nice path to follow if you can work it). His web site is almost irrelevant to his brand, which is why he can virtually ignore it for months at a time while he finishes a book and have the book shoot instantly to #1 anyway.
In the best cases, of course -- as you seem to suggest -- the writer's subject matter on the web will convey a unifying sensibility whether the subject matter is diverse or specialized, just as a good author's books will. For that to happen, the writer needs to know well herself as well as some part or parts of the world.
So, I've tested out that theory a lot. I launched dadomatic.com to be a site for dads, and people jumped and went with me. I write about things like whiskey and my consumer experiences, and people go along with that.
That theory is right, but you have to START out, I think, being a brand about something. Madonna, probably the queen of personal brands, if you think about it, started out as a pop singer. She hasn't strayed too far from that, but she's done some acting, some book stuff, and several other off-singing projects.
I think it's an interesting way to look at it.
I agree, authors and writers need to market their own work online, but I don't think they need to become a "brand." That seems a little much. Often they need what is called an "author platform", but that is different then a brand. However, they do need a way to let readers know who they are, their writing, and how to find it/them. Blogs are a great compromise between a brand and a platform.
I like the spirit of Priluck's piece (and Sullivan's comments) - but I find myself agreeing with your qualification, re: specialization. It seems to me that in a web universe of millions upon millions of information options, audiences instinctively segment and gravitate to what they perceive as the 'best' in specific categories.
Even someone like Sullivan I would argue can be seen as a specialist, if you consider news and political commentary a specialization (I realize he hits other topics too, but I think most people associate him with political commentary - especially anyone who has seen him on TV).
Gladwell, as you mention above, doesn't contradict this model because he was not created in it. He was forged in dead tree media and there he thrives (though, yes, many many people read his New Yorker pieces online - I'm not sure what % of his audience this accounts for though).
For the generalists, it seems to me the reason they become successful 'brands' (a term I hesitate to use in this discussion, and think Priluck uses too loosely) is that the marquis dead tree powers build affinity with, and build the generalists' 'brands' via established venues, giving them broad enough exposure to reach reader-rich audiences (like print hungry people in airports, etc). But, if Joan Didion had to grow up in new media without dead tree venues, would she reach as large an audience? Would as many people care what she writes about? I doubt it.
That, to me, is the grand irony of new media: the bigger the universe, the more robust the need to specialize to attract an audience; perhaps not specialize in the strictest, nit pickiest sense of the word, but in the specialization ballpark. For anyone growing up in new media (not migrating from dead tree, ala Gladwell) the challenge of visibility is, in my opinion, significantly more difficult -- perhaps the corollary difficulty to being accepted by the dead tree editorial powers that be.
Every successful writer is a brand, whether low-brow - Dan Brown - or high brow - Philip Roth. A brand is just about success over the long term. People expect something from your books because that's what you write naturally. To think this should be avoided is silly, because it's tantamount to saying that writers shouldn't try to be successful.
My vote for the poster boy of brand-building/self-promotion is Timothy Ferriss of "Four Hour Work Week" fame. In fact, his book is partly about how he marketed his book online, "created" himself as a media go-to guy, and then outsourced the boring stuff. I'm not criticizing, but rather a little jealous. He has "cook-booked" the process for others to try.
I think it would be too confusing to be a writer trying to build themselves into a "brand" for them to be rambling on about every topic under the sun. The very word "brand" indicates a specific focus...everyone knows Apple as a brand, but they don't think of laundry soap, they think electronics. Some degree of specialization is required. I've written for different media (newspapers, blogs, books) but always focused on humor.
Dear Chris Brogan has helped me spread the word about my most recent book (which he wrote the foreword for) by showing me how to engage people on Twitter, Facebook and other social media and build myself as a "brand" humorist. That can cover a pretty broad swath of topics (almost anything can be made funny) but it doesn't classify me as a technology expert or a political pundit.
Excellent post - thanks for sharing your thoughts!