Author Brand

I didn't realize it would cause that problem, or I wouldn't have linked it. I avoid linking to things that have irritating features such as pop-ups, blinking ads, anything that makes noise, etc.

>> What I was taught was that you have to make a bunch of things with explosive popular appeal--fanstuff, mostly, or maybe memes or something. You'd build up a hojillion followers/views/reblogs, and hopefully they would send you money for your other stuff. To use the article's parlance, it was all about building your platform. <<

That can work, but it doesn't always. It works for some people with a magnetic personality. It works for some whose material is very consistent. It can be a good way of getting the word out, if you're doing niche work that people would buy if they knew it existed.

>> I do have some minor Internet fame, mostly in the online multi community... but they aren't the people who buy my stuff. Like, at all. I've gotten more business from one particular feminist website in a year than I have in my entire stint with "the community." <<

It is necessary to pay attention to where the eyeballs and the money come from. So if you're getting effective results out of that feminist site, you might do more not only there, but in other gender studies venues.

>> So far, what seems to work for me is that yeah, my fanbase is small... but I seem to have a lot more people who keep coming back. <<

That's more the relationship-building, social-grooming side of things. The best resource I've found on this is "Unslimy Marketing" by haikujaguar, whose work on how to run a creative business is consistently brilliant.

>> It does seem to help that I'm known for doing specific things--mental health comics, for example. Not that many folks doing that. <<

Yes. It's much easier to make an impact in an underserved field -- not just in terms of selling to people where the competition is low, but also making a real difference.

I do this with alternative sex/gender stuff. There just aren't many asexual characters of any stripe, so a diligent search will turn up mine, and I have no trouble outcompeting most other renditions, because at this stage of literary evolution, most of them suck.

>> The only problem is that people tend to know me for doing one specific thing and not be much interested in the others so much. I guess that's the price of doing different mediums in different genres. <<

Yes and no.

I was told, repeatedly, by teachers that I had to specialize and only write one kind of thing. To me that seemed insane. Why would I throw out everything from the toolbox and only keep one screwdriver? I write nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and I've even started dabbling in scripts. I do speculative fiction, Pagan, gender studies, natural sciences, all kinds of topics. So I can do where the money is at any given time. I've edited a Pagan magazine, run a magical online school, and currently it's the Poetry Fishbowl bringing in the lion's share of income. I'm flexible. It's an advantage.

It is true that the market scatter can undercut effectiveness. One way to address this is by doing different things over time, but not trying to do everything at the same height all the time. Another is to cross-reference different works. Frex, if somebody likes the idea of family bonding in Frankenstein's Family but they're not huge on poetry, I can point them to Schrodinger's Heroes or Torn World where I have some fiction. If they like poetry and the dark motifs in Frankenstein's Family but want to go even darker, I can suggest Diminished Expectations or Tripping into the Future.

Most creative folks have favorite motifs or subjects. Look for the things that repeat in your work. You've probably got plenty of options for "If you like X, you'll probably also like Y." That can be used to jump people across media following a consistent theme, or across topics within the same medium. Watch for what people say they like, and hint them toward more of it.