Plenty of authors use taglines for their books and series, summing up in just a few well-crafted words the key themes, tropes, and story elements that readers can expect to find among the pages. But The Author Wheel co-founder Megan Haskell suggests authors should take it a step further and craft taglines for themselves, too. Summarizing your brand, your books, and your writing business is as much a marketing tool to help connect readers with your stories as it is to help you understand the story your books tell about you. In the fourth part of her guest series, Haskell shares how to do both in just four steps.
Why Every Author Needs a Mission Statement
As an author entrepreneur, whether you're an indie author or are traditionally published, you are a businessperson. Most businesses have a mission statement. Do you?
A mission statement, in its most simplistic form, is a declaration of motive. For writers, it answers the question: Why do you write what you write? Perhaps more importantly, it can help readers decide whether your book appeals to their interests.
Uncovering your author personality and your purpose are key to crafting an author business that meets your personal goals. Now let’s put them together into a cohesive mission statement and tagline that will guide your writing journey and connect you with your ideal readers.
Step 1: Remember Your Purpose and Personality
Understanding your writing purpose and author personality will lend authenticity to your mission statement. You're not just here to make money; you're here to provide some kind of value to your reader. Are you attempting to entertain, educate, or inspire? Does your writing support your primary business, or are you developing a fanbase around your fiction? Once you have these answers, spend some time brainstorming descriptive adjectives that apply to your work.
Step 2: Identify the Story Elements That Inspire You
Not every story appeals to every person. We are all unique humans with varying backgrounds and interests. Characters, settings, themes, and tropes can pull us into genres we don’t normally read, and they can shove us out of our favorite type of story as well. Certain genres appeal to specific readers—including you.
Understanding the story elements that inspire you might help you better relate to the readers who will love your work. What are your favorite genre tropes? Which of them appear in books you’ve already written and published, and which do you plan to write in the future?
Once again, spend some time brainstorming descriptive words for the elements that appear in your stories. Try to find powerful words with multiple meanings that will hook your target audience.
My business partner Greta Boris uses the tagline “Murders that Hit Home.” The phrase “hit home” does double duty: she writes domestic suspense stories that take place in suburban homes and neighborhoods, and these stories have a powerful emotional impact.
Step 3: Put It Together
When you’re finished brainstorming, craft a mission statement that describes what you write and why. I find it easier to write my mission statement in the first person, at least to start. It helps me connect with readers in a more authentic way. You can think of this as the elevator pitch for your writing career or for a particular pen name, if you write under multiple names.
When crafting your mission statement, include the genre, purpose, tropes, and themes that resonate through your writing. For example, as an author whose purpose is entertainment with themes of identity and belonging, this is my mission statement:
“I write action-packed portal fantasy adventures that cross between Earth and other realms. My protagonists are strong women who must face down the monsters that haunt them to understand themselves and their place in the world.”
Step 4: Boil It Down
Once you feel good about your mission statement, transform it into a marketable single-sentence author tagline. Skim through the descriptive words from steps 1 and 2. Which are the most powerful or evocative? How can you string them together interestingly?
Keep your author tagline short and pithy but exciting for your target reader. Try variations in length to find a balance between the two.
After I pare down the mission statement I used before, my tagline becomes: “Penning tales of myth, magic, and mayhem, featuring kick-ass heroines and monsters of every size.” Use this as your intro when doing an interview or sitting on a panel and as a super-short bio on social media. You can also shorten this even further for graphics or other social media, as well as for your author logo.
This can take time and many iterations to develop, and it can change as your backlist expands. However, it’s time well spent. Defining your mission statement and turning it into a marketable tagline can help you focus your author brand and connect with the readers who will most enjoy your work.
About Megan Haskell
Megan Haskell pens tales of myth, magic, and mayhem featuring strong female heroines and monsters of every size. She’s the award-winning author of The Sanyare Chronicles fantasy adventure and The Rise of Lilith contemporary fantasy series, and co-founder of The Author Wheel Podcast and courses for writers. With more than fifteen years of writing and publishing experience, her goal is to help you Clarify, Simplify, and Implement your own best path to an author career. Find out more at www.MeganHaskell.com or www.AuthorWheel.com.