Creating Author Taglines
Author Jean Oram wrote a valuable blog post about why authors should consider creating a tagline for themselves:
Author taglines (or even writer taglines — you don’t need to be published to use one!) help readers, editors, publicists (hopefully!), and stumblers immediately recognize what you and your brand and your site is about. It should be memorable, short, and encompass what you are and what you write about, and in doing so, let folks know what you are not.
This blog post resonated with me — and reminded me that I had once written a tagline for the screenplays that Mitch and I write: “We write what we love — romantic comedies — and what we know — spy thrillers.”
(Mitch’s and my book FOUR COMEDY SCREENPLAYS features variations on the theme of romantic comedies. See the book on Amazon at http://amzn.to/TPy6Cs)
Actually, the above example is somewhat long for the taglines that Jean Oram envisions: “Right now my blog tagline is ‘Always learning. Always writing.’ That about sums up my blog and website at the moment.”
If I were to try creating a tagline for my fiction and nonfiction books combined, I might use “I write what I know and what I love.” And then I might add, for my fiction writing, “Featuring strong women.”
If you are a writer, do you have a tagline? Leave it below in the comments to share with others. Or try out a tagline now to see if it “fits” you.
For inspiration, click here to read Jean Oram’s entire post.
P.S. I just took my own advice and added my author tagline at the top right-hand side of this website blog.
New post: “Going to Book Expo America?”
© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy story CIA FALL GUY.
Click here to visit her Amazon author page at www.amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller
She also has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the online marketing company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com
Phyllis, one reason people need so much help with taglines is that we call them so many things. Mottoes, as an example. And they get confused with other things like loglines and blurbs and short synopses. I really enjoyed this article. My “tagline” for the how-to books I write for retailers and writers is “Careers that are not fed die as readily
as any living organism given no sustenance.”
I love that Jean gave us some ideas for those of us who also write across genres!
Carolyn — Thanks so much for leaving this comment and sharing your tagline here. And you are so right about taglines being confused with various other “attributions.” But we authors definitely need to consider this area of our writing careers.
Yeah, you’d think, though, that as folks who love words and know the importance of them, we’d all come to some agreement and what to call these guys. I did some social networking. People need to read this regardless of what they call them! Ha!
Best,
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Excited about Magdalena Ball’s and my new Sublime Planet poetry book released to celebrate Earth Day coming in April. The e-book is on Amazon in the US (http://bitly.com/EarthDayKind) in Europe and Japan, too. It’s also available in paperback to be used as a gift for the tree huggers you know. All proceeds for that benefit the World Wild Life Fund.