How Barnes&Noble transformed its brand from corporate bully to lovable neighborhood bookstore - Fast Company*

Today's trip into the Catosphere took Panzer to the Fast Company site. There with a little digging in the posts our inquisitive kitty boy found one about Barnes and Noble.

 

I think the changes are good.

Rob Walker's post follows the changes made to the Barnes and Noble brand since the company's purchase by Eilliott Advisors. Under previous leadership the company's brand was "big box store" bookstore. The stores were large and carried more retail merchandise than books. Now, under Elliott the stores have smaller footprints and concentrate more on books. The post contains links to posts at other sites with more information about Barnes and Noble.

 

Panzer says,"Small is good."

 

Note:This is a long post. Bring a large mug of cocoa, two brownies and two chocolate chip cookies (biscuits)for your reading. If you plan to follow the links in the post, you should probably bring your lunch too; but, you decide what else to bring.

 

To read the post tootle over to Barnes and Noble

 

 

*A tip of the kitty fedora to Nate Hoffelder for the original link in his blog post. 

Design Your Own Website

You all know my bad, bad cat boy doesn't usually hang out at sites where there's no murder or mayhem. But today when he was out in the Catosphere he found The Violet Femmes blog. He immediately applied the Panzermobile's brakes because he thought it said The Violent Femmes. But it turned out okay, when he saw Maria K. Alexander's post Author Website Design 101.

No murder or mayhem? Oh, well.

You see, Panzer has been thinking of updating Cats and Crime and Maria's post has all kinds of suggestions. There are sections on your brand, your bio, your buy links, and your contact page. There's even a resource section with links to photo sites and hosting sites.

Panzer says, "If you don't have a site, this will get you setup. If you already have a site, this will get you updated."

To get the information you need for your site, tootle over to author website design

Romance University: Your Author Brand

Panzer was over at the Romance University blog today. Yes, you read that right. The Romance University. He was doing some research for Fiona L. Webber, the romance writer of our team, (click the tab above for more about her) when he came across a post that will help all of us. No matter what our genre, we all need to put our brand in place.

The post by Oliver Rhodes, founder of digital publisher Bookouture, is titled Your Author Brand - How to Make The Most Of It. Rhodes suggests we ask ourselves questions such as, "Who do I want for my audience?" and "What does my brand represent?" Rhodes says that by answering these questions and several others we can put together a formula for what we want our brand to do for us.

To see if this plan will work for you tootle over to Romance University: Your Author Brand

Aaron Patterson's Blog: The Art of Branding and Rebranding: Guest post by ...

Panzer and I stopped in at Aaron Patterson's blog The Worst Book Ever.

He has Cory Clubb as a guest this time. Clubb is posting about branding yourself. This is an information dense post. Panzer's favorite part is about using the covers of your ebook series as part of your brand. Clubb advocates using similar covers for each of the books in your series. In this way your readers will recognize your books by sight. Panzer says, "That makes total sense."

To see what other trick's Cory Clubb has for you, tootle on over to  Aaron Patterson's Blog: The Art of Branding and Rebranding: Guest post by ...: The Art of Branding and Rebranding. Finding Your Brand. Books last a very long time, now maybe forever with the i...

What Is Your Brand?

Panzer and I went out into the Catoshere (read our October 19 post) today. We couldn't pass up Cheryl Bradshaw's A Place for Aspiring Writers of Fiction blog. We parked the Panzermobile to take a look around.

Cheryl has a great post about formatting your brand. It's her opinion that your name is your brand.

She has several book covers as examples of how authors have used their names as their brand. There are covers with different fonts and font sizes for book titles and the author's name. According to Cheryl your name should be the same size or larger than the title.

So tootle on over to A Place For Aspiring Writers Of Fiction and learn about using your name as your brand.

Writing Your Author Bio

Panzer and I were out in the Catosphere looking for more branding ideas today. We stopped in at one of his favorite blogs Writer Unboxed.

Panzer is doing the happy cat dance. He found author Keith Cronin's post "Five Ways to Fix a Boring Bio" just what he was thinking branding should be. Cronin explains how to add vim, vigor and verve to your author bio.

Let's face it, your author bio is a major part of your branding. This is where your readers can get to know the real you. And Cronin explains exactly how to tell your readers about your life (well, sort of).

So tootle on over to Writer Unboxed.

And remember: Panzer picked Keith Cronin's post. You have been warned.

Building Your Brand

Panzer and I were speeding around the catosphere when we happened upon Judy Dunn's blog Cat's Eye Writer.

No cats here but some interesting information about using your blog to help establish your brand.

Judy's blog post is an instruction manual about how to set up your blog so it helps your readers determine your brand. Your author brand is much more important than you think. It helps establish your genre. It establishes where  your readers can look for your books. And it establishes your personality in your readers mind.

Panzer loves the name of the blog. He also found this post very informative and he suggests you hurry on over to the Cat's Eye Writer.

SUNDAY BLOG in BED: The Eye of the Reader

 Vincent Zandri's Sunday blog was about the importance of good covers for your branding. Zandri discusses how authors can use their covers to help readers click that Buy Me button.

Branding is important to authors. I write in three different genres. Using my name Fiona L. Woods, I write cats involved in crime mysteries. Hence this blog: Cats and Crime. The covers for my ebooks in this series have cats on them. These are part of my branding plan. I have other branding programs for my other two genres.

Zandri uses John Locke as one of his examples. Locke uses a woman's legs on his covers as his ebook branding. That way, whenever a reader sees a cover with those legs on it, he or she knows it's a John Locke ebook.

Read Vincent Zandri's  SUNDAY BLOG in BED: The Eye of the Reader  to help you with your own ebook branding.