authorship as brand
(Still more test prep.)
A forthcoming article suggests that authorship is a form of “branding,” much like trademarks. In other words, authors need protection because they invest more than just “originality” in their works. Authorship is about creating an image�much like a brand�and that image should be protected as a trademark. Is authorship more like a brand than it is about creativity?
Authorship is certainly very much like a brand, and has been from the beginning. The Greeks differentiated an Aristotle speech from a Plato speech. Quintilian was concerned about protecting his brand, citing piracy concerns in the introduction to Institutio Oratio. Pliny was very much associated with Naturalis Historia. Today, we talk about the new Joyce Carol Oates novel, the new Tom Wolfe.
Perhaps one of the most striking examples of authorship as brand are the Rowley poems of Thomas Chatterton. Born in 1752, Chatterton is best remembered for a literary hoax. He claimed to have found a series of poems written by a Medieval monk named Thomas Rowley, which he provided to publishers. The work received widespread acclaim, unlike Chatterton’s own poetry. Not much later, it was discovered that Chatterton had written the poems himself and copied them onto parchment he had found in a rectory attic. For a brief time, though, he operated under two distinct authorial brands, one successful and one not. His “own” work never found popular success, and he committed suicide at 17. Chatterton was an icon to the Romantics, and is still a subject of study � but primarily for the Rowley works, not the writing he did as himself.
Modern and contemporary authors have also employed dual identities, albeit for less mendacious purposes; for instance, Stephen King is also Richard Bachman. King, who is very much a horror brand, is a much higher seller than Bachman, who holds the distinction of authorial credit for The Running Man. He wrote as Bachman during his early career because he felt that the public would only accept one book a year from an author and he wanted to publish two.
However, I don’t think that we can divorce branding from creativity. Without creativity there is no brand. Without an original, well-crafted story, nobody cares who the author is. The author’s unique creative voice is what we look for, and so we expect a different brand of creativity from Oates than we do from King, and a still different sort of creativity from Wolfe. Woodmansee defines the modern author as originary, proprietary, and solitary, and I would argue that ‘originary’ is perhaps the most crucial element of the bunch.
Comments
I'm having trouble separating "brand" from "style" or "voice" (or "perspective," even, a al Collin).
And to split hairs: I would also hesitate to call pseudonyms new or different "identities." Well, from a feminist perspective, wherein identity is an external social construct, I would grant that the unique style (or brand) of each author does create a new "identity." But only from the outside. And I grant that the outside is sometimes the only one that counts.
But back to branding: choices an author makes about ethos (diction, rhythm, etc) would need, then, to somehow be categorized or characterized into something homogenous and label-able? That way it's recognizable and transferable (I could mimic Stephen King's "brand").
But even if I were to write my own novel from (what I perceive to be) King's voice (a super-natural horror story with lots of forward moving dialogue, gore, idiom, popculture reference), could I pass my own work off as his?
And would you posit that Bachman and King had the same "brand" even though different identities?
So, just a little grist, I guess. Or gristle. :)
Posted by: Madeline Yonker | January 28, 2005 7:15 AM
Hi Madeline! I can see where you’d have problems with that. Lemme clarify: I’m not separating branding from style or voice - I’m saying that style and voice (and other elements of creativity) are elements of an authorial brand.
Also, I’m not equating pseudonyms with identities in the sense I would normally think about identities from a feminist/queer theory standpoint. I’m thinking monolithic corporate, market ethos, not individual identity. (And that difference is a whole 'nother problem in itself.) I’m thinking about the ethos contained in a corporate label, much like the labels on household products. Kraft Mayo and Hellman’s Mayo are both still mayonaisse, but people select one or the other based the qualities they associate with the label. King and Bachman may not have been that much different in tone or content, although it seems to me that the Bachman books are less horror-y. (I’ve not read hardly any of King’s books, so I’m talking out my hat on that one.) But people knew the King label (or "brand") better, and thus the sales for those books were higher. You could, as a writer, imitate everything about King, but you wouldn't be able to slap the King brand label on your product. And that label is the only thing that explains the success of some King products - see Maximum Overdrive, for example, which even the man himself admits was a turkey.
Posted by: Krista | January 28, 2005 8:12 AM
I think that the idea of identity is where the analogy falls apart. According to Naomi Klein, branding is when a company takes a product (like mayo) with no personality and creatively constructs and image for that product. Thus, Nike is athletic, the Body Shoppe is a natural, Target is for the blue starters, etc. Because in branding the creative measure happens post-product development in the marketing, I don't think that it is the same as authorial brand-naming.
It seems as if with writing, the brand that the author develops is tied directly to the kind of book that has been creatively developed by said author; therefore, the cult of personality that is attached to the author's name does the selling from that perspective -- we read King because he is proven to scare the s**t out of us.
It is a hard distinction, but I think that it has something to do with the identity of the product itself -- King would not have become King without actually writing the novel first, but Mayo . . . well it is always gonna be Mayo, just maybe not squirtable, squeezable wholesome, family togetherness fun.
So, I suppose this was my longwinded way of saying I agree with you, but that there is a type of creativity in branding as a corporate practice -- it is just a disembodied creativity that has only the slightest of relations with the product itself.
Posted by: jenwingard | January 28, 2005 9:03 AM
Jen:
What the hell is a blue starter??
Posted by: Madeline | January 28, 2005 9:25 PM