In this episode, we talk with Brandilyn Collins about author taglines.

Transcript

James L. Rubart: And today, we have a guest that I’m very excited about. Thomas, you’re excited about this guest too.

 

Thomas Umstattd Jr.: I am super pumped.

 

James: This is a great friend of mine, Brandilyn Collins. And Brandilyn, if you don’t know who she is, she is the award-winning best-selling author of 28 novels. And the problem with having Brandilyn as a guest frankly is we could talk about myriad topics.

 

Thomas: Almost anything.

 

James: We really could. We really could. And so, we’re going to have to have Brandilyn. We’d love to have you back at some point. But today, we would love to talk to you about your branding and how you came up with your tagline. We just love to hear the story of that.

 

Brandilyn Collins: Sure. So thanks for having me. My tagline is Seatbelt Suspense. I have had that tagline since about 2006 perhaps. I came up with it when I decided to write suspense full time instead of writing both suspense and contemporary. And I wanted – marketing is in my background, so I understood that it needed to be alliterative, it needed to be catchy. But how do you put into words what I do as an author?

 

So what I did is I had kept all of the emails that people – all my readers send me. And I went through them and I started underlining words that came up again and again. And many of them talked about a roller coaster. And strapping themselves in the edge of their seat, OK? Because I realized that my tagline isn’t just about 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.

 

James: Right.

 

Thomas: And one thing I want to point out here is different that process was from what most authors go through. So most authors, they go – they sit on a writer’s; conference panel and it’s like, “Before you leave, you all need to have a tagline.” They haven’t read the book. They have no idea what their style is. They have no idea what about their style resonates with readers.

 

And so, they come up with some phrase and it’s almost always encouragement in nature and butterflies. And we see a lot of taglines in my business. And the problem with those taglines is that there are no prompts. What I love about Seatbelt Suspense is that there’s a built-in promise to the reader. And I know that that means a lot more than just Seatbelt Suspense too.

 

So, unpack that first. What is that promise mean regarding your brand?

 

Brandilyn: Well again, I went back to what people were saying in their emails, and I realized what they were seeing from what I was writing. It came into four different points. And these are the four points that have become the brand promise that goes with Seatbelt Suspense. And those brand promises are fast-paced, character-driven suspense with myriad twists, and interwoven thread of faith.

 

All four of those points, readers spoke to in my – that they see in my writing. So I saw that, but the point is how do you get that all together in a catchy phrase? And I just messed with it and messed with it until I came up with Seatbelt Suspense that says the basis of that which is, fast-paced, we’re going to go for a ride.

 

James: I don’t want to belabor the point, but I want to go back to how you came up with this. So in other words, 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 and also obviously, this means you don’t do this right away before you publish. You need some books that you’ve written to establish what kind of writing you do.