Publicize Your Book With Promo Postcards
Tips for Creating Your Own Promotional Flyers and Handouts
© Kat Long
Sep 9, 2009
Savvy authors know that writing a book is only the first step in its success: generating publicity after publication is the key to selling copies and keeping the title in consumers’ minds. Book fairs, author conventions, and local community events are perfect places to publicize your book by word-of-mouth, and it’s crucial to have something to hand out to interested readers. Promotional postcards are easy to design, cheap to print at home, and could translate into further interest for your book.
Designing Your Book’s Promotional Postcard
A promo postcard acts as a reminder to a potential reader--it isn’t meant to be a comprehensive overview of your book. Due to their small size, postcards should contain only a few pieces of information about the book, but these elements will answer the who, what, when, where and why about your title.
First, always include an image of your book’s jacket--it’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words. If your book isn’t published yet or you don’t know what the design will look like, use your author portrait instead, or some visual aspect that relates to the subject of your book. Place the book’s title and your name as the author next to the jacket image.
Choosing What Goes Next: Tagline or Blurb?
The bulk of the text on the postcard will be either a blurb or your tagline. If you are fortunate enough to have had one of your peers blurb your book, use that blurb on your postcard. If you don’t have blurbs, however, don’t panic: use a catchy, thought-provoking tagline to describe the book. You don’t need to go into great detail about your book’s subject; simply choose the most unique aspect of your book and word the tagline so it will stick in readers’ minds. Hint: think of your book as a movie--what would the movie posters say under the title?
Don’t forget to include information about the book’s publication date. “Coming November 2009” or “In bookstores November 2009” is sufficient. If the book is already published, be sure to mention where consumers can find it.
Printing and Distributing Your Postcards
Many office supply stores sell already-perforated postcard stock for inkjet or laser printers, which eliminates the need to have a commercial printer design and produce your postcards. A package of 100 postcards costs less than $20 and can be ordered online if your local store doesn’t carry them.
The tricky part to printing the cards is setting up the print profile so it matches the perforations in the card stock. If you’re using a desktop publishing program like Microsoft Publisher, Quark or Adobe InDesign, you can indicate the number of copies of the postcard per page you need. Certain brands of card stock, such as Avery, offer free online templates that match their card stock products to make your page setup even easier.
After printing the postcards, carefully separate each card along the perforations.
Each time you go to a book-related event, bring a stack of postcards with you to entice readers and get your book’s title out there. Your investment of a few cents per card could be recouped with real book sales.
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