Can, and should, book authors become brands?

Brands are often the elephant in the room no one wants to confront. Some authors consider it unwise to be branded as, er, brands; it's a signpost for low-brow, mass-market sensibility. And it's also the case that the vast majority of fiction writers, even today's best-sellers, did not begin their lives as brands. Many were unknowns whom publishers rejected. Believe it or not, there was a time when few had heard of John Grisham. He sold his first book from the back of a car and no one was interested. Then came The Firm. "I took John to bookstores, and, at every turn, clerks were putting his book into the hands of customers," said Ellen Archer, president of Hyperion Books. It became a hit and launched the author into a brand name.

In today's fickle marketplace, the Internet—with blogs, videos, Twitter, and other promotional tools like Amazon's Author Stores—is the modern-day equivalent to hand-selling. Thomas Friedman even posted a chapter of Hot, Flat and Crowded on LinkedIn and asked members to weigh in. (Disclosure: I was part of Friedman's publishing team.) In a way, authors are empowered in this new model, provided they can leverage their networks into living, breathing communities who have a stake in—and benefit from—an author's ballooning platform.

But it comes with a price. When authors are beholden to a brand, they ally themselves, almost like actors and athletes, with agendas and meanings that are well beyond their control. In their desire to fulfill the dictates of a brand, authors can compromise their integrity as writers, especially if they cubbyhole themselves.

The Chick Lit genre provides numerous examples. The Nanny Diaries, published in 2002, sold more than 1.5 million copies and was made into a film starring Scarlett Johansson. But the author's 2004 follow-up, Citizen Girl, pitched as social satire—male bosses filled in for Park Avenue socialites—was a flop. The authors, who reportedly were unable to sell their idea to Random House, settled on Simon & Schuster's Atria—and satisfied the beast that was the brand. Lauren Weisberger, "Bridget Jones," and Melissa Bank suffered similar trajectories—some worse than others—and their careers as writers have waned.

The overemphasis on platforms means that authors sink into brand-speak to get their projects sold, even though their writing—and often their reputations—gets short-circuited. With limited choices, they trade depth for instant gratification, visibility, and higher advances. Ironically, their longevity, supposedly the marker of a good brand, falls by the wayside. It seems that unlike a detergent or a car, an author who is branded too quickly will often fizzle out just as fast.

That's why many believe that trying to cram writers into branded boxes is antithetical to the creative process. "Not every book is a great hit. Sometimes it takes a couple of books and then the author comes back with a great book again," said Elaine Petrocelli of the bookstore Book Passage in San Francisco.