Why You Should Love Branding Yourself with a Book

Books have immense power and those who have published garner respect, confidence and even awe. It seems that anyone who is famous or well known has published a book, including virtually every modern president, industry leaders, congresspeople and sports figures.

The absolute best way to define your brand, to put it out there for people to see and understand, is to publish a book. This gives you a soapbox of your design where you can stand and shout out your message, vision and history for anyone who cares to listen. Better still, you can craft your message any way you desire, to communicate exactly and only what you want people to understand.

For example, a politician can give their history and background, then lay out their agenda, beliefs and platform in a clearly understandable manner. They can define their legend, so to speak, which can then be used to support their campaigns and further their goals. A volume of this nature gives their constituents information to help establish a bond and build an understanding.

In business it works much the same way, helping to build understanding with potential customers, vendors and employees. A CEO, for example, might write a book to show how they managed to pull themselves out from an impoverished childhood to become powerful, rich and yet still caring. The manuscript can demonstrate that the CEO has empathy, understands the plight of customers and people, and has worked a lifetime to build an excellent product.

One day early last year, I walked into the office of a salesperson, sat down, and we began talking. I looked over his shoulder and noticed he had dozens of books on the bookshelf behind him, each with his name on the spine. He saw me looking, reached back dramatically, and pulled one of his books off the shelf, showing me a copy. His picture and name were on the front cover.

I immediately felt a sense of respect for the man – he was an author after all! I noticed that he used the book during the presentation to illustrate points he wanted to make. It was quite impressive, and I walked out of there as a new customer. In fact, he made a great show of signing a copy, handing it to me, and showing me a few passages that he felt might mean something to me.

The book defined his brand; he included a few chapters of his life story, a description of his philosophy, and the rest was about his services and why they were relevant and helpful.

If you, like many of us, don’t have the time or don’t know how to write, then you are in luck. You can hire a ghostwriter to do most of the work for you.

The next article in this series will talk about ghostwriting and how to use a ghostwriter to help define your brand.

Richard Lowe Jr

Richard is the Owner and Senior Writer for The Writing King, a bestselling author, and ghostwriter. He’s written and published 63 books, ghostwritten 40+ books, as well as hundreds of blog articles.