Building a Brand

One of the things that you need to do, if you want to actually reach people, is build your brand.

Ugh.

Listen, I'm not by trade an advertiser or promoter, so I approach that end of things with a certain amount of trepidation.  And it's stuff I hate, too.  I understand why a lot of writers end up never selling anything - they're either too scared or too lazy or too busy to put the work in to get their work in front of potential readers.

So I understand why I need to go through the trouble to "build my brand."  But that doesn't mean I have to like it!

That means, though, that I need certain things: I need to be active in the online communities where the kind of thing I write gets read, and I need to have a certain indication of "me."  So the plain vanilla blog I currently have won't cut it, and I certainly will ultimately need to put together a Facebook presence (which I haven't done yet, but will).

If I want to reach people, and get my stories read, then I need to build my brand.  Period.  So build my brand I will attempt to do.