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Your Book Promotional Materials--What Works and What Does Not 3/1/2010 10:16:58 AM
Whenever I go to book events, such as a book fair, I always like to pick up other author's promotional materials. Oftentimes people who attend these events won't necessarily buy your book that day. Instead they'll collect the author's promotional materials and decide later on which books they want to order. These little gems can go a log way to help sell your book so a lot of thought should go into them. Some authors have really nice ones, while others do not.
For example, at a recent book fair I attended I noticed one author handing out illustrations of characters from her book. They were nicely drawn, but there was nothing else there. Not the title of her book, her name, or even any information who the character was. It was just a little drawing of a clown printed out on a piece of computer photo paper. It looked homemade too, which was another turn-off. I'm sure when people got home and went though their stuff they probably looked at it and thought, "What the heck is this?" before tossing it in the trash.
In the meantime another author was handing out a postcard that was very well done. One the front was a color illustration, the name of his series, and a list of the titles in the series. On the back was his website and a list of the booksellers carrying his books.
So which author do you think will get the most sales?
It's like one of my art professors back in college used to say-- "If you don't respect your art then your art won't respect you."
Take the time to create classy promotional materials. It's an investment that can really pay off.
