Besides book quality, how do you build a solid Kindle author brand or platform?

For me, the factors that came into play for building an author brand (because Kindle wasn't around when I started) was interaction with my fans.

I love my fans. I love meeting my fans. I love chatting with my fans online. I love signing books for them. I love having my picture taken with them. etc. etc. etc.

That means doing book signing tours, having booths at carnivals, conventions, festivals, etc.

That means business cards, posters, press releases to newspapers, etc.

I don't do online marketing, at least not in the traditional way people think of it. I don't use email or lists or affiliates or squeeze pages or any of those things.

I do more offline marketing, and my biggest offline marketer is my car, which has 2.5million marbles glued to every inch of it. I have signs about my books taped to the windows, and I work at Maine's largest WalMart. So for 8 hours a day, my car is sitting in front of WalMart advertising my books, as no one can resist stopping to touch a car that is covered in marbles.

This results in a lot of local people buying my books, and in turn results in a lot of local fans, hanging around my car, waiting for me to come out of work, so they can get their books signed and get photos with me and my car. Most days it takes me more then an hour to get from the parking lot after work, as there is always someone at my car, and often more then 30 people to a time, at my car.

Globally I'm not a high sales author and most of my books are bottom feeders, each selling 1 to 3 copies a week. If you live in Maine, than I'm probably a household word in your family, but outside of Maine chances are you've never heard of me. Most people know if they hover around my Amazon page long enough, all my books eventually go free at least once every 90 days, so I get lots of high spikes of free downloads and not many sales in between free days as a result. I'm fine with this, because money never was my goal in writing books.

Another thing that attracts local readers for me, is the very localness of my books. All of my books are set in Maine and feature Maine speaking characters, Maine foods, Maine landmarks, Maine restaurants...if you don't live in Maine a lot of the "Easter Eggs" in my books will be lost on you, but Mainers pick it up and are "OMG! I used to eat there! Ayah, that place is just like this."

So for me, author branding is about Knowing Your Audience.Now, I COULD write a more popular genre, one that attracts readers the world over, but, I don't. I like the genre I write. I have fun writing the genre I write. And so that's why you don't see me doing a lot of online marketing and instead see me doing a lot of local offline marketing. Simple fact is, most of the readers for the stuff I write are local residents in a 14 mile radious of my home.

When I say I write local, I mean very local. Not even the entire state of Maine is my target audience, but rather, just a tiny 5 town section of Maine, known as The Saco Bay Region.

So for me, it's all about targeting my readers. And knowing what my readers want. I know everyone says to know your audience, but most people really don't know their audience. They think they do, but if I asked you the following, could answer them?

Where does you target audience eat?

What car does your target audience drive?

Where do they work?

Where do they shop?

What is their income?

Where do they live?

How many children do hey have?

I can answer those questions. Can you?

Where does you target audience eat?

Pepperell Square, Saco Maine: Pizza by Micheal, The Golden Rooster, or Rapid Rays, being the most popular of the many little hole in the wall restaurants my readers eat at in Pepperell Square

What car does your target audience drive?

Cadillac, Lincoln. Roll Royce, sometimes a Hearse. Big, fancy, expensive, also 20 or 30 or 40 years old, very rusty, and probably bought it for under $1,000 off craigslist. Usually painted something like pink and purple zebra stripes, with rhinestone spokes, and skulls on the dash.

Where do they work?

Pepperell Mill, Northdam Mill, WalMart, 7-11, or one of the many little tiny mom-n-pop shops that fill this mill town district. Or they are lobstermen, sprimpmen, or alwivemem, or they run the amusment park rides at Palace Playland or Funtown or Aquaboggan or they run the scam joints, I mean souvenir shop that sell .99c China junk for $100 to the tourists in the summer. Hey, this is Old Orchard Beach. A town run by us Gypsies. Hey, Stephen King filmed Thinner here for a reason.

Where do they shop?

WalMart, 7-11, or one of the many little tiny mom-n-pop shops that fill this mill town district.

What is their income?

The average 2 income family of 8, according to USA .gov census of 2014 is $24,000 a year.

Where do they live?

In the many little 4 to 8 family townhouses that line the river up and down the mills.

How many children do hey have?

Average is 6. No one less then 4. Several have more then 12. At least one has 15. And that's CHILDREN PER WIFE. Oh, yeah, I did say PER WIFE. Polygamy is not uncommon around here.

That is my target audience: the residents of Saco Bay, Maine, which includes the towns: Old Orchard Beach, Saco, Biddeford, Scarborough, Pine Point, Ocean Park, and Camp Elise.

Approximately 26,000 people, about half of which I have meet face to face, and about 3,000 of which I know on a first name basis.

Now I know that is a bit extreme, but it does show you that, I know who my target readers are and because I know them so very well, I can write EXACTLY what they want to read.

Sure, it's harder to be as detailed in a more global market, but I find it's far better to cater to a small target, rather then just scattering books out at random and praying every person on the planet will read them.

Online authors are always telling me: "Do more marketing", "Get a list!", blah, blah...uhm... 1/3 of my target audience, doesn't have electricity, let alone the internet...half of them have never heard of Amazon. I spent an hour last summer, trying to explain to a local man, that Amazon was website, on a computer... because he wanted to read one of my books, and that particular book is a Kindle only book, there is no print edition. His response was to yell at me, saying it was highway robbery for me to force him to buy a plane ticket and fly all the way to South America, to buy my book at some exclusive bookstore in the Amazon rainforest. A guy in America, in his 40s, in 2015. Didn't know what the internet was. Never heard of Amazon or ebooks. And most of Maine is like that. I'm a freak because I have a computer - there is a local pastor who runs around telling people, I am the child of Satan, because own a computer.

THAT is my target audience. That is why most of my books are print only, and sold locally. That is why I don't focus my marketing online or with email lists.

And THAT is how I've built an "author brand" that has lasted 40 years. Online & globally, few people know my books. But offline and locally, here in Maine, I bigger household word then Stephen King. No one in Maine reads Stephen King, and no one in Maine really likes him, he never comes out of that house, never out and about, hobnobbing with the locals or hugging his fans and signing books and posing for pictures, like I do.

So there are different ways of looking at it. Globally, someone like King is seen as a huge success, because the whole world knows his name. But locally, everybody is, "Oh yeah, that's just Stephen King, He don't talk to anybody any more." But then, globally, no one has ever heard of me, but locally everybody is: "OMG! It's EelKat, Is she on her way into The Golden Rooster? I'm gonna go see if I can grab a seat at her table, she invites fans to eat with her you know. I've had dinner with her before. She's cool. She's don't chase her fans out like Stephen King does. She loves her fans."

I do love my fans. And I never know who's eating with me. But somebody always is.

That's my reputation. That's what I'm known for: I love my fans. I eat dinner with my fans. I go shopping with my fans.

I've had people tell me, that what I do is what is called "a politician personality". A person who acts like they are campaigning for an election, so is always there to smile for the camera, and small talk with "the little people" (There are also locals who petition trying to get me to run for various local offices, but I have no interest in politics.)

So, success becomes a matter of perspective here: Most people online, would probably see my Kindle sales are a failure of epic proportions. But then again, they's never seen me drive a rhinestone encrusted Volvo at the head of a local parade either.

There is much more to success then money: there is love, family, and community as well. And those are things I value far more then money. Which is WHY you don't see me trying to cater to a global market, why you don't see me putting more of my books on Kindle... I care about my local community, and my local community knows that. I'm not after hoards of money and online internet marketing glory. I'm here to make the lives of the people in my home town, better, happier, more filled with joy. And in that, I'm very successful.

I think, before any author can try to build a "successful author brand" the first thing they need to know, is what do they deem the word "success" to be, what type of author do they want to be seen as to their fans, and what talents do they have that they can use to promote reaching those goals.

The answer is going to be different for every author.

And finally: Beware of underhanded tactics of the new breed of so-called self published author - the type that impersonates you online, hijacks all your forum and social network accounts, then posts lewd, psychotic, hateful, mean, crap via your own accounts, pretending to be you, while posting very derogatory stuff in an attempt to destroy your career and reputation as an author.

I know of 73 authors this has happened to - all 73 of them had accounts with Kboards & NaNoWriMo and suspect it was BECAUSE they were on those 2 forums, that their accounts with hacks and hijacked.

It happened to me, that's how I found out about it. Here's what happened:

I joined the internet in 1997. Between 1997 and 2013 I had created more then 300 forum & social network accounts. I had a huge online following, including 20,000 followers on Twitter. I also had a reputation of helping everyone, never saying an unkind word, helping mediate forum wars to keep the peace, and giving away thousands of copies of my books for free when every one said doing so was crazy - because I would rather see my fans happy then make scads of money.

I wrote 1,371 "How To" articles for authors (most of the articles between 7,000 to 20,000 words long, each) on how to get ideas, how to create characters, how to self publish, how to market, etc, etc, etc.

In 2003 I started the "Ask EelKat" advice column, where I weekly, sometimes daily, answered reader questions about writing, publishing, etc. Between 2003 and 2013 I had written 6,000 articles for the series, most 700 to 2,000 words each.

Then in 2013, I simply vanished from the internet, not to return until March 2016.

November 14, 2013 someone beat me up, leaving me paralyzed. I started training to learn how to walk again February 2014, but fell, damaging the same injury and would not be able to try to relearn to walk until May 2014.

I spent May 2014 to October 2014 relearning to walk.

From October 2014 to March 2015, I began relearning to use my hands and relearning to type.

By March 2016, I have regained the use of 3 fingers of one hand and now type with those 3 finger. When you know that my highest clocked typing speed was 175 words per minute and in 2010 I averaged 91 words per minute, you then relive how frustrating it is now, that I have lost the use of my hands, which for me is far more frustrating then the loss of the use of my legs.

It is now May 2016 and I am out of the wheelchair and walking with a cane, and do most of my typing now with the help of a DigiMemo because I still have limited use of my hands.

And yet, I now find out that the online world, HAD NO IDEA I was offline, hospitalized, crippled, paralyzed, and dying, for 3 years, because, for those same 3 years, my online accounts went psycho frenzy crazy, posting a lot of very out of character posts.

Unknown to me at the time, was that a NaNoWriMo ML had hired a hitman to kill me and then hacked my accounts pretending to be me, in an attempt to destroy my 20 years of building a reputation as the #1 go to guru for writing advice. Her most notable posts were the 3,000+ wild, crazed, rants that she let lose on Kboards from 2013 through 2015 - posting from MY PROFILE - pretending she was me!!!!!!

Why this woman did this? I'm not sure. I still don't yet know the identity of this psychotically deranged, very dangerous woman who typed to have me killed, then spent 3 years impersonating me online.

What we do know, is that she is the same woman who in 2010, sent my several thousand emails in the month of October, all saying that, she could not write, it was my fault, and lots of threats that, if I dared to publish another book before she did, she would blow my brains out.

Near as I can tell, the woman behind the nightmarish hack of my online accounts, is an unpublished novelist (in serious need of mental help) and turned to insane levels of cyber stalking, rather then just writng her book and trying to get it published.

Why have I told you this?

Because... you asked

Yep.

I wrote my first book in 1978.

It is now 40 years, 170+ novels, 600+ short stories, 2,000+ articles, a few comic books, and a couple dozen stage plays later.

What have I learned?

Be it print or ebooks, doesn't matter 90% of what gets published, is never going to sell 5,000 copies in it's ENTIRE published lifetime. That has been the way the publishing industry has been for over a century. That's never gonna change.

If you want to be an author, and you want to make sales, you learn to do one of 2 things

#1: You write one book, you publish that book, and then you market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, market, .. for the rest of your life or until you get bored with that book and write a second book.

This works because every time someone turns around, there you are, and eventually they get so sick of seeing your face, they buy your book. (And do know the difference between spamming and marketing...learn to market without spamming.)

#2: You write one book, publish that book, write a second book, publish that book, write a third book, publish that book, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, write, publish, for the rest of your life or until you decide writing is not the career for you.

This works because every time someone turns around, there you are with yet another new book release, and eventually they get so sick of seeing your face, they buy your book, and then buy another, and another, and another...

Note that on Kindle, this method only work if you publish a new title EVERY SINGLE MONTH like clockwork.

So what does any of all that have to do with this?
.
The substandard stuff that makes lots of money, usually is someone doing a sit load ton of marketing or publishing monthly releases.

The well-written, expertly put together books collecting dust, are usually someone who has done none or only minimal marketing, and/or has a year or more between book releases.

Unfortunately, the authors of these well written flops, have started a trend of cyber attacks on forums (including on Amazon reviews - which is in fact a forum) and results in the type of things, you saw the stalker woman doing to me.

Saddly, I wish I could say it was a one time case of one very immature, unprofessional author having a 3-year long meltdown in my accounts, and therefor an isolated incident. The sad fact of it is, it was not an isolated case, and like I said, it happened to 73 authors who were on the Kboards forums. All those "Big Name Authors" who used to write the big helpful threads on Kboards and then suddenly vanished, some of them off the internet entirely? Where did they go? Well, at least 3 of them are now dead - yeah - dead. 2 of them we killed by a psychotic rival author on a rampage, and a third one commit suicide. A 4th one had her face cut off with a broken bottle. I just told you what happened to me.

No, it wasn't one author on a rampage. It turns out, each of us, was attacked by a completely different stalker! Yeah - it wasn't one deranged person attacking 73 authors - it 73 deranged people attacking authors, it what has become a very bad trend in low-sales authors, attacking, any author they think might possibly be out-selling them.

I've been in the publishing industry for 40 years now, and I've never seen anything like this, frightening new trend of authors impersonating authors on forums, in blatant attempts to damage their reputations, or this even more terrifying trend of author killing author, just to stop an author from having more sales then them.

It's why you don't see me on a lot of forums any more. WF is one of the few places you can still find me online - I used to have 300 forum accounts, and I've shut them all down. I used to have 32 blogs, I took them offline. All my how to articles for authors have been removed from the internet, the 200+ websites I used to run - I shut them down to. This psychopath hacked almost all of my accounts. It was a nightmare.

Here I was in the hospital, dying for 3 years, and I come back online, after 3 years offline, to find THIS had been done to my accounts. This women went out of her head insane. She hacked my forum accounts, my social networks, my blogs, my websites...I couldn't believe the stuff I was finding!

And that's just the stuff she did online. I haven't even told you about the stuff she did offline! My family lives in mortal terror: a bomb blew up my house, my car was cut in half, my cats were kidnapped - their heads returned, and now I'm crippled for the rest of my life, all because one seriously mentally disturbed author had writer's block and decided I had published too many books.

It baffles me, what could possibly have been going through this woman's mind, to cause her to do these things. It saddens me to know, that there exists in our world people who can become so full of hate and jealousy and greed, that they could set out to try to hurt another living being. I hope the woman who did these things is able to get the help she so very obviously needs.

Does any of this help you or actually answer you question? I don't know. I hope it does.

In any case, many hugs and kisses to you. Have yourself a gloriously wonderful day, and may all your clouds be lined with rhinestones.

Lots of love from

~EK

You need to know how to make your book rank well on Amazon. This is the most important thing. If you cannot make your book rank well, you will not make any sales, it is this simple.