I
recently skimmed a book. Hello My
Name is Awesome: How to Create Brand
Names That Stick, by Alexander Watkins.
It’s a book being promoted by the PR firm that I work for. It occurred to me that some of its contents
are applicable to authors – what they name their publishing or consulting
company, and what they name their website, blog, or book title.
It
reminds me of when my wife and I wanted to pick the perfect baby name for our
children. We had a bunch of rules and
filters, including:
·
It
had to clearly express gender – nothing ambiguous.
·
It
can’t be rhymed with a curse or tease word.
·
It
needs to be easily spelled.
·
It
should sound strong.
·
There
should be no confusion with another similar sounding name.
·
It
can’t have a dual meaning.
Of
course we ruled out names of people we didn’t like – former girlfriends,
boyfriends, bullies, nerds, etc. We
wanted to be unique, but not weird. I
went through a phase of wanting to use former president last names as a first
name, like Carter, Clinton, or Taylor.
But,
I digress. Let’s talk authors and what they need to think about when it comes to
naming stuff connected to them.
Some
things to consider:
·
It
should relate to your genre.
·
Short
is better.
·
Think
of what images are to be associated with it.
·
Is
it searchable?
·
Does
the name reflect what you are all about?
Watkins
says a really good name has these elements:
"Suggestive - evokes
something about your brand.
“Memorable
- rooted in the familiar.
“Imagery
– is visually evocative to aid in memory.
“Legs
– lends itself to a theme for extended mileage.
“Emotional
- moves people.”
Watkins
says to avoid a name that is annoying restrictive, tame, too similar to
another, spelling–challenged, hard-to-pronounce, or something only a few insiders seem to get.
Resources
that help with crafting a name include these:
“Try
to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”
--Maya
Angelou, Poet
“The
great things about ideas is that every new idea leads to two more, ideas
breed.”
--Jeff
Bezos, Amazon
Did
You Know?
According
to Author’s Guild Bulletin:
- The U.K. produces more books per capita than any other country.
- One in five U.S. adults reads more than 12 books annually.
- U.S. daily newspaper weekday circulation fell to 35 million while Sunday editions declined to 38 million – down from 60 million from the 1960s – 1990s.
- Facebook and Google control almost 75% of all digital ad dollars.
- Verizon owns The Huffington Post, Yahoo, and AOL.
Writer’s
Digest Short List of Co-Working Offices
The
Writers Room, NYC
Paragraph,
Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Writers Space
Type
Set, Seattle
The
Hatchery Press
The
Writers Grotto, SF
Writers
Workspace, Chicago
Writers
Room of Boston
“Brain
studies reveal that not only are we hard-wired to receive stories, but our
brains don’t differentiate between real and read experiences. Amazingly, they register identically in brain
scans. At its most basic, story is a
survival instinct. The brain craves it,
using stories to explore uncharted paths and to strategize new experiences from
the safety of the imagination.”
--Behind
the Book by Chris Mackenzie Jones
“After
all, the printing press has recorded and spread some of the greatest achievements of humankind…The
printing press is a stage upon which the entire drama of human thought and
morality is acted out..human civilization is all the richer for the bizarre
history of printed books…The flawed history of humankind printed books…The
flawed history of humankind can be found in books,and the questions books
provoke still drive us today.”
--Printer’s
Error: Irreverent Stories from Book
History by J. P. Romney and Rebecca Romney
Websites To Read
DON”T MISS THESE!!!
How authors get their
book marketing mojo – and avoid failure
Authors cannot succeed
without the right attitude
So what is needed to
be a champion book marketer?
Should You Promote
Your Book By Yourself?
The Book Marketing
Strategies Of Best-Sellers
How authors can sell
more books
No. 1 Book Publicity
Resource: 2019 Toolkit For Authors -- FREE
Brian Feinblum’s insightful
views, provocative opinions, and interesting ideas expressed in this terrific
blog are his alone and not that of his employer or anyone else. You can – and
should -- follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him
at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels much more important when discussed in
the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2019. Born and
raised in Brooklyn, he now resides in Westchester. His writings are often
featured in The Writer and IBPA’s Independent.
This was named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs and recognized by Feedspot in 2018 as one of the
top book marketing blogs. Also named by WinningWriters.com as a "best
resource.” He recently hosted a panel on book publicity for Book Expo America.
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