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How To Write a Book: Whose Brand and Why?

The first time I read a book about rich people, they all shopped at a shop that was more clubhouse than commercial space. I leaned into the designer names that the author applied to her pages with a thick putty knife and I couldn't get enough of them. While reading that book I was escaping to a place where expensive gowns dragged carelessly along the floor. My twelve-year-old hand went to my mouth in horror! I decided I knew just what these people's colognes and perfumes smelled like. 

That was back in the nineteen seventies and even in the best store in a mall, I wasn't going to find anything described in this book. I was transported to a rarified atmosphere I'd never see, touch, or smell as that was the author's intention. But today where the world has access to everything all the time and if they can't afford the designer, they can sport the knockoff, brand chic doesn't mean the same thing. I was at the DMV recently and counted no less than 19 oversized Luis Vuitton tote handbags that cost upward of $3,000. I assume most of them were fake. Now overt brand mentions mean materialism unless very carefully set up otherwise.

Before you put a brand in your story answer these 2 Questions:

    What is the purpose?

    Am I being paid by the brand?

Brands can be very powerful. Back in the early 1990s in inner-city Chicago people were being murdered for their Air Jordans by Nike. Just saying "Air Jordans," told us a world of information about a person or place. It was also fraught with danger if we saw someone careless enough to be walking around with them during one hot summer.

If you have a deal with a designer, then, by all means, bandy their name about-- but in the effort of not selling out-- make your book so engrossing, surprising, and satisfying that the brand doesn't overpower the reader's experience.

In the end, the brand you should be reinforcing through excellent books that the reader's love is your own as an author.


-- Anna Erikssön Bendewald  




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