Craft a Category of One
I was learning about Seth Harp’s experience releasing The Fort Bragg Cartel. Before his book even dropped in stores, Amazon already carried a wave of impostor versions. Lookalike covers with auto-generated summaries, AI biographies of the author. All of these operating as keyword traps. They’re designed to trick buyers who barely look before making a one-click-purchase.
Publishing has reached a point where replication moves faster than recognition. For screen-scribblers and storytellers, the challenge isn’t only creating, or getting folks to read or listen. It’s making work that can’t be mistaken for anyone else.
The following are a few ways to craft a creative identity that can be tough to counterfeit.
Worlds Over Words
Create continuity across your projects. Let characters return. Let ideas echo across formats. Treat your work like a world with gravity. Lore becomes memory. Memory becomes the moat.
Make It Hard to Steal
Text alone is easy to copy. Sound, image, annotation, staggered release - these can add texture and identity. Try audio essays. Annotated PDFs. Workshop recordings. Behind-the-scenes notes. Limited digital editions. These can offer your audience more than a single file.
Create Your Own Lingo
Shared language builds connection. Use frameworks, phrases, internal references, maybe a recognizable narrator - these can create pathways only insiders will grok. Culture grows from engagement and participation, not identical imitation.
Show Your Receipts
A counterfeiter can borrow your text, not the path that shaped it. Provide photos of early drafts, notebook pages, rough sketches, index cards, voice memos. These act as evidence of authenticity. Your process becomes your proof.
Turn Readers Into Collaborators
Participation solidifies recognition. Use polls, beta groups, Q&As, shared prompts to bring the audience into your workshop. If you empower them to invest time and attention, the reward is a loop of loyalty and trust.
Artifacts Beat Articles
Files are transient. Artifacts can be treasure. Share short-run PDFs. Field manuals. Signed pages. Postcards. Companion guides. Meaningful mementos for your 1000 true fans.
Put Yourself In The Mix
What you’ve lived is unique. Yet also relatable. Obsessions, failures, geography, humor, scars, perspective, the moments nobody else witnessed can create texture imitation can’t duplicate.
Repel The Replicants
Forge your fortress from an identity that’s felt, not just scrolled. When the work bears your fingerprints, the audience adds a layer of verification. Your goal isn’t to outrun the counterfeits. That would be impossible. So why not try building something unmistakably your own?
