| Hey, I want to talk about branding today – and how you can use stock photos to help nail the branding for your books. I have a video demo for you where I turn a pair of stock photos into a book cover... and then an entire branded identity across newsletters, ads, social media, and websites. The reason for the focus on stock photos this week is because the most popular deal in Authorland has just returned to AppSumo. 100 Stock Photo credits for just $39. That's an affiliate link, so I'll get a small cut if you decide to purchase - which helps support all the free resources I create for writers. But let me also say that this is a deal I jump on personally all the time. Indeed, I have a video below walking you through exactly how I use stock photos to achieve my marketing goals. But first… Branding, Simplified Authors tie themselves into knots about branding; I like to deploy the Battleaxe of Simplification in such situations so please forgive any broad strokes. We'll start with what branding is not – it's often confused with author platform but these things are quite distinct. I've heard people call your author brand "the face of your author platform" but I feel like that's something which sounds good but doesn't help at all. You might remember we talked before about how unhelpful a lot of branding definitions can be – often being quite gnomic or oblique. It is a nebulous topic but I don't think it's so helpful to say (cool-sounding) things like "your brand is what customers say about your product when you leave the room." I suggested being more prosaic instead: branding is the process of shaping customer perceptions through marketing. And specifically for authors, branding is the process of shaping reader perceptions through newsletters, social media, and advertising. Shaping Reader Perceptions Central to all this is your book's cover, of course, which doesn't just need to be professional looking but also genre-appropriate (and, indeed, niche-appropriate); the charts are a solid guide here. Assuming you have that well in hand – and you should take the time to be sure, as everything flows from this – then it's relatively straightforward to spin up an entire visual identity from that book cover. Regular readers will know I've been doing the Image Workshop on YouTube – where I turn your book covers into winning Facebook Ads. My go-to method is to use the book cover art as the background art for any marketing assets related to a book. But – as so very many of you have been asking – "what happens when you can't use the cover art?" Here's your answer!  It's a quick video demo – less than four minutes – showing you just what to do in these situations. If you want the TL:DR version… I take a pair of stock photos, turn one into a book cover, and use the other as the background art, and then spin that concept out into several different Facebook ads, a newsletter header image, and a Facebook Page cover photo for good measure. All for less than a dollar. Of course, you have free options too when it comes to stock photos – you just need to invest a little more time finding your diamonds in the rough (there's a lot of rough), and I recommend double checking that you have the rights to use those photos on things like book covers, merch, websites, etc. etc. – as you will want that freedom. The advantage of using a site like DepositPhotos is that the rights side has all been taken care of already, and you don't need to worry about it for standard author uses. The credits also never expire, which is very handy – you don't need to worry about wasting any if you don't use them in a certain time. Oh and they have 300 million images to pickfrom. Yeah. So, if you want to pick up your own bundle of 100 stock photos for $39, head over to AppSumo – and do it before the price rises in just 48 hours. On Wednesday the price rises to $49, and then after Black Friday, it will be back at the sticker price of $300. I'll be devoting an upcoming episode of the Image Workshop to using stock photos as the background for your Facebook Ads, so keep an eye out for that. And the long-awaited update to my Facebook ad creation tutorial is coming soon too – now that I'm back at work and set up for video again. Thank you for your patience while we dealt with a variety of medical misadventures this year! I'll be back on Black Friday itself with your usual assortment of deals for writers. Assuming your trusty Deals Sherpa can unearth a few and avoid the dreaded Crevice of False Bargains. While I can't say more right now, there's one particular deal that will get you very excited indeed! Dave P.S. Writing music this week is Magnetic Fields with All My Little Words. | 
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