A couple of weeks ago, Shannon, my husband and I were browsing Barnes & Noble looking for fun children’s books for her niece and browsing in general. After staying away from the new release/bestseller section for the majority of our visit (hey, we ARE in a recession), we passed a table of featured books on our way out. One in particular caught my eye — with its bright colors, sketched imagery and bold type.
Without even looking at the author’s name, I said to Shannon, “Carl Hiaasen has a new book out?”
As we’re discussed previously, branding is all about consistency and building an entire platform — not just an image. Build that image effectively, however, and your readers will recognize and be drawn to it subconsciously.
To better illustrate how branding can tie together (or not) an author’s work, we’ve devised a little matching game. We’ve taken twenty book covers from well-known authors and removed their name from the cover — can you still tell who each cover belongs to?Note: You can click any cover below to enlarge it and launch a gallery of all images.
 1 |
 2 |
 3 |
 4 |
 5 |
 6 |
 7 |
 8 |
 9 |
 10 |
 11 |
 12 |
 13 |
 14 |
 15 |
 16 |
 17 |
 18 |
 19 |
 20 |
Post your guesses and discuss your thoughts in the comments! If you were able to figure out which covers matched, was it because you knew the titles/author or just due to the branding? Were there any ones in particular you found difficult to match up?
We’ll post the answers tomorrow to jump start our Wednesday discussion post on brand image consistency (as shown through book covers). Then, on Thursday, we’ll discuss what we learned from the hunt for these pairs of book covers, and how you can apply the principles to your own brand image efforts!
We're 
Pingback: 8 Observations from the Branding Match Game | Self Publishing Team | Duolit()