RainToday.com, a website for professionals who want to grow their business, offers a weekly a newsletter called The Rainmaker Report. In this week's issue, they pointed to an article on their website about Three Profitable Branding Models for Experts by Vickie K. Sullivan.
It's a great article for anyone thinking about building a platform, including authors. Most of the examples in the article were authors. A great read. Check it out here:
http://www.raintoday.com/pages/ 2190_three_profitable_branding_models_for_experts.cfm.
While you're at the RainToday website, you might want to subscribe to their free weekly RainMaker Report. Good stuff.