Branding

The financial upside of writing a book in 2024 is downstream from an author’s brand — the unique identity an author creates that encapsulates their writing style, values, and audience connection.

While talented authors of modest renown were once a mainstay of book publishing, Amazon’s ascent and the changes that ensued caused publishers to view an author’s brand, platform, stakeholders, and following of likely book purchasers as an invaluable way to measure the downside risk of publishing an unsuccessful title. It’s why big brand authors receive significantly larger advances but it leaves many authors wondering what to do next. Publishers, publicists, and literary agents are not in the brand development business, yet the new economics for authors are inescapable. Their greatest financial upside opportunity has shifted markedly from the traditional revenue streams derived from sale of print (and ancillary/derivative) rights to publishers & other rights acquirers, to revenues derived from monetizing their brand.

While legacy income streams continue to play an important role in an author’s overall economic picture (e.g. through sale of audio, dramatic, and foreign language rights), the tsunami of publicity that can accompany a book launch can also be used to promote an entirely separate, revenue-generating vehicle associated with their brand. Examples include brand-driven businesses, movements, and speaking engagements.

Backed by investor Peter Thiel, BMM Worldwide launched emBooks, a conservative book publishing venture for then Daily Mail featured columnist, Melanie Phillips.

Critica, a branded movement and non-profit developed by BMM Worldwide for public health expert Sara Gorman based on her first book, Denying to the Grave, led Dr. Gorman to TEDMED, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Annenberg Public Policy Center, and millions in research grants.

Subsequent to the publication of NYT best seller, Ultrametabolism, publicized by Suzanne Balaban, physician to the Clintonsand functional medicine pioneer, Dr. Mark Hyman built a veritable functional medicine merchandise empire around his ten (and counting) NYT bestselling titles.

Interested authors, publishers, and literary agents should reference our Brand Development Practice when reaching out.

Author brands can be developed. Existing authorial brands can be refined and swerved.

BMM Worldwide president, Suzanne Balaban hails from Scribner Books where she looked after novelist Stephen King ✍️. Before Mr. King published Lisey’s Story, he was known as one of the most successful authors in the world who writes horror stories often adapted for film. But after publishing Lisey’s Story, King was more often spoken of as a literary novelist in the mold of James Joyce.

What changed? Steven King’s brand.

As if by magic, Janet Maslin opened her review of Lisey’s Story in the New York Times:

“This sentence is about to do the unthinkable: connect James Joyce and Stephen King.”

Janet Maslin’s words constituted a branding milestone for Mr. King. It represented the culmination of his move to Scribner and the branding genius of Suzanne Balaban.

Today, BMM Worldwide’s Brand Development practice works alongside its Publicity practice like a business development partner and literary advertising agency 🚀.

While our Publicity practice 🗣 conducts campaigns to secure unpaid organic book endorsements, our Brand Development practice 🚀 assists authors with their: brands, markets, positioning, marketing platforms, followers, networks, stakeholders, and revenue opportunities. Depending upon the author’s objectives and resources, our methods include: brand work-ups, market segmentation, digital marketing, digital advertising, book launch events, book cover design, author playlists, book movements, stakeholder activation, and commercial ventures

Brand work-ups entail segmenting the author’s readership, developing positioning and key brand parameters, supporting the author in selecting branding vehicles that align with their goals and budget, and producing a creative brief for use in soliciting bids from vendors.

BMM Worldwide negotiates with, retains, transacts with, and oversees the work of the vendors and uses the finalized brand parameters to guide their work. The vendors express the brand parameters in physical form across the different branding vehicles, from headshot photography and TikTok teasers, to branded collateral for book launch events and Facebook advertisements. We work with the premier vendors in the world, leverage globalization and our platform in the cloud to coordinate their efforts, and secure advantages on costs.

The author branding projects below comprise a representative sample:

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Headshot for Harvard professor, Barrett Rollins in connection with the publication of his memoir, In Sickness.

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Cover for When She Comes Back by Ronit Plank (Motina).

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Trailer for emBooks, the Peter Thiel-backed, new publishing company BMM launched to re-position UK opinion celebrity, Melanie Phillips.

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Trailer for Shira Nayman’s time travel novel River (Guernica Editions).

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Trailer for In Sickness, Harvard University scientist Barrett Rollins’ shocking memoir (Post Hill).

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Critica, a book movement to amplify the ideas introduced by Drs. Sara and Jack Gorman in Denying To The Grave, a New Yorker Magazine, Scientific American, and Atlantic featured book about the psychology of making health and security decisions published by Oxford University Press. Summing up their experience, the father-daughter scientists wrote:

“Suzanne and Elliot were a delight to work with in every way. They transformed out book into a real movement that’s opened up opportunities beyond what we ever thought possible. We thoroughly enjoyed working with them. We can’t thank them enough.

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Social media for the Bill Clegg-agented novel The Likely World by Melanie Conroy Goldman.

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Digital marketing for Harvard Prof. Ruth Wisse’s memoir, Free As A Jew (Wicked Son).

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Social media for A Promise of Sweet Tea by Pinchas Blitt (Azrieli)

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Playlist for Eric Metaxas’ memoir, Fish Out of Water (Regnery)

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Book Club for In Sickness by Barrett Rollins (Post Hill Press)