Hi all!
Wanting to create a personal and professional portfolio or a web-based profile for an author I represent, I came across hundreds of web-pages of world-recognized and appraised authors, as well as debutants and young writters struggling to get published and sold and I must confess I didn't like anything I've seen so far.
So my topic for today is how can we get to brand an author, to make him visible and known, in a professional way? I've seen author sites that ruled out imagination itself, blunt, numb and without any spark. I've seen portfolios looking like excell data base and biographies so dull, they made me fall asleep.
I'm writing to you guys, as professionals in this business, standing here as a new-born in this fascinating world of marketing and selling a new author, asking you for help.
I'd love to learn tips and trick on how I can build an image for my writer, so, if you have info, please tell me what sections should this CV contain or what key-points it should focus on, or even show me really good writer's portfolios. If you can, give me suggestions of what an outstanding, friendly, interesting and addictive author's CV should look and consist of, I'd be very grateful to you all.
So, let's brainstorm and see how we can invent and re-invent the magic world of literature and its beautiful, talented people who write!
My first guess: this type of portfolio should include a photo, a short biography, the author's main titles, projects and contact details. These are just standard resume's features and from my point of view, they are not enough, let alone imaginative, interesting or catchy.
Anything else which can make anybody's who clicks that page (general population, agents, publishers and so on) hearts jump is welcomed!
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Replies
Have you seen Susan Wittig Albert's site? She really pushes her wares by maintaining a number of websites, blogging and sending out email newsletters. I think she's really got the net down.
While technology keeps advancing our ability to be seen, it's become too easy to simply make noise that others will intuitively tune-out. What you can count on when it comes to marketing is that humans don't change. You can spend $millions and make $0, and you can spend $0 and make $millions, because it all comes down to how you affect the humans. It's about the humans, stupid. When enough humans have a measure of passion about an idea or a product, they will communicate about it to others. The term "viral" is a 100% accurate description for this, and it's been happening for as long as our species has been able to communicate with each other. When selling, think about ways to start a conversation that will become rapidly expansive. You then need to keep feeding the conversation with fresh and compelling sentences, or the mind-meld will just as quickly dissipate. Finally, don't forget that your agenda is for your product to be a beneficiary of the conversation, which means that people will be motivated to purchase the product and not simply talk about it. Jeff Herman