James: Today our guest is a great friend of mine, Brandilyn Collins. She is the award-winning, best-selling author of 28 novels. Today, we’re going to talk about branding and how she came up with her tagline.
Brandilyn: My tagline is Seatbelt Suspense. I’ve had it since about 2006, when I decided to write suspense full time instead of writing both suspense and contemporary. Marketing is in my background, so I understood that the tagline needed to be alliterative and catchy.
But how do you put into words what you do as an author?
I had kept all the emails my readers sent me. I went through them and started underlining words that came up again and again. Many talked about a roller coaster, strapping themselves in, the edge of their seat. I realized my tagline isn’t just about how I view myself. It’s how my readers view me and what they expect from me, which may not be quite how I view myself.
What makes Seatbelt Suspense different from most author taglines?
Thomas: Most authors sit on a writers’ conference panel and someone says, “Before you leave, you all need to have a tagline.” They have no idea what their style is or what about it resonates with readers. They come up with some phrase, and it’s almost always encouragement-and-butterflies. We see a lot of taglines in my business, and the problem is there’s no promise built in.
What I love about Seatbelt Suspense is there’s a built-in promise to the reader. What does that promise mean regarding your brand?
Brandilyn: People were emailing me what they were seeing in my writing. It came down to four points that became the brand promise behind Seatbelt Suspense: fast-paced, character-driven suspense, myriad twists, and an interwoven thread of faith.
Readers spoke to all four of those points. The challenge was how to get that all together in a catchy phrase. I kept working it until I came up with Seatbelt Suspense, which captures the basis of that promise: fast-paced, we’re going to go for a ride.
Did the readers brand you, or did you brand yourself?
James: To come up with this tagline, you didn’t say, “This is what I want to be, so I’m going to say I’m this.” The readers branded you. You didn’t brand yourself.
Brandilyn: The readers branded me. This also means you don’t do this right away before you publish. You need some books to establish what kind of writing you do.
When you come up with a brand, it is a promise. I’ve written myself into this brand. I’ve told my readers they can expect fast-paced stories from me. I may have a lot of what-ifs that come into my brain, but unless they fit all four points of my brand promise, particularly that first one, fast-paced, I won’t write it. It may be a great suspenseful story, but if it unfolds slowly, that’s not Seatbelt Suspense.
Do you ever get partway through a book and realize it doesn’t fit?
James: Do you ever get three-quarters of the way through a book and think, “They might not need the seatbelt for this one,” and have to go back and revise?
Brandilyn: If I felt that way, I wouldn’t write the book in the first place. I have written some books that were more character-driven than others. Suspense novels are often plot-driven, but I still think characters need to drive the book.
My novel Gone to Ground is very character-driven. I thought, “Will my readers like this? It’s not as scary, but it’s still tense. It still fits my brand.” Readers loved that book because they got so into the characters. Characters make the book.
How much work goes into a two-word tagline?
Thomas: Albert Einstein valued the “simplicity on the far side of complexity.” To get to that simple statement, you had to go through dozens or maybe hundreds of emails and parse through them. Probably none of them used the word “seatbelt.” A lot of them were using similar phrases, and you had to keep working and working it.
The easy approach is to go for simplicity on this side of complexity, to just grab some words that sound good and throw them together.
What would you say to a beginning author working on their first book, when everyone is telling them they need a tagline? Should they wait, or pick a training-wheels tagline?
Brandilyn: In the famous words of Nancy Reagan, “Just say no.” You’re not ready. You don’t know who you’re going to be as an author. This is marketing. You don’t want to start this and then have to unravel it.
Seatbelt Suspense is not only my brand, I paid lawyers to trademark it. After five years, you have to re-up because, goodness knows, we have to keep paying the government and the lawyers. It goes on your website, Facebook, Twitter, on the back of your books, in your bios. I don’t want to unravel that. It’s who I am.
Can a tagline work when you write in more than one genre?
Brandilyn: Even now that I’ve started writing contemporaries again, my brand is almost working even better for me. When I’m writing a contemporary, I tell my readers, “This is a contemporary.” Then I say, “My next Seatbelt Suspense is coming up,” and they know what to expect.
James: I love that approach. A lot of authors who want to pivot to a new genre pick a new name and start over from scratch. They have a pen name for the other genre, and it’s like they’re a brand-new author. They give up all of their brand equity. With this different tagline, you’re able to keep your name but signal something different. It’s still a Toyota, but this is the Toyota Truck, not the Toyota Camry.
Brandilyn: I wanted to build my name. A lot of my suspense readers will follow me to the contemporaries. Readers read different things. Besides, the thought of setting up a second website, a second Facebook, and dealing with a whole second persona is far too much work.
What about the mid-career author with a bad tagline?
James: What about the author who has three or four books out, doesn’t have a marketing background, and has come up with a horrible tagline?
Brandilyn: Get help when you need help. If you’re not a marketing person, go to someone who has done marketing. I knew how to write back cover copy and grab someone’s attention in two seconds. Some of these taglines are so long they take longer than two seconds to read.
James: It is so worth it. Go to somebody who knows what they’re doing. As Brandilyn said, this tagline could last 20 years.
Do you even need a tagline?
Thomas: You don’t need a tagline to be a successful author. People have been writing books for 2,000 years, and they’ve been coming up with taglines for maybe two decades. In many ways, it’s almost a fad. It worked well for the first few folks.
You were early to the tagline train. Now everyone who talks about taglines quotes you and talks about Seatbelt Suspense. You needed a good one, and it worked for you, but it may not work for everyone.
There are a lot of successful marketing tools and ways to brand yourself. Scott Sigler is an author I look up to in many ways. His branding is in his imagery. He does dark horror. If you look at a picture of him, you can tell he writes horror. One photo is him holding giant scissors in a white lab coat. You look at that and think, “This guy does medical horror.” He doesn’t need a tagline for that.
People often say, “I need a tagline.” I say, “Name one of your favorite authors’ taglines.” Almost never can they name a single one.
Brandilyn: I don’t think you need one today. A lot of authors talk about how silly it is to have a tagline these days. I’ve jumped into those conversations and said, “I agree. I don’t think you need one.” Your brand becomes your name, and readers know who you are through your name.
However, I came up with this tagline, and it has worked for me, and I trademarked it. I’m not doing away with it. It’s working. But that doesn’t mean everybody needs one.
What’s the takeaway?
James: In some ways it’s a little bit like a superstition. This worked for someone else, so surely it will work for me. What’s important is to measure and experiment. Just because a guru tells you to do something doesn’t mean it will work for you.
One of my crusades in this industry is to bring science back to creative writing. Think like a scientist. Scientists are skeptical. You tell a scientist something, and they’re going to say, “Let me test it.” After the test, they’ll know whether they like the idea. That is helpful not just for marketing but for the craft too.
But if you have a perfect tagline, feel free to use it. We’re not saying only Brandilyn can have taglines.
Brandilyn: It’s not that. It’s just 99% of them are bad. It’s worse to have a bad one than to not have one. You can always get one tomorrow. Wait until you have the right one.
