Thirteen Cheap Promo Items for Authors

As authors, we're always trying to interest new readers in our stories. Unless you're a household name like Stephen King or JK Rowling, promotion is part of the business ~ you have to market yourself, even if you're with one of the big publishing houses ... and sometimes more so in that case. Who knows your book better than you do? Who can promote it better than you?

Whenever you attend a literary event, you should have promotional items online to hand out. They get your name in front of readers and help promote your books. While you can easily go broke buying every single promo item under the sun, here are a few ideas I've found to be inexpensive ways to help spread the word about your writing.

Thirteen Possible (and Cheap!) Promo Items


1: Bookmarks. There are some great places online where you can buy high quality bookmarks at good prices, such as Print Runner and Print Place. If you're more of a "hands on" type person, you can create the bookmarks yourself and save yourself on design costs. Not familiar with Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro? Create bookmarks in Word and print them yourself or have them printed at an office supply shop such as Staples. The last bookmarks I made, I printed on card stock at a local copy shop for only 19¢ a page. With five bookmarks on a page, a hundred copies (500 bookmarks) cost me only $19.

2: Postcards. These are a great way to get your book cover in front of readers. Instead of leaving the back blank, add a blurb and/or excerpt, as well as purchasing information for your book. Or make a "generic" postcard promoting your website or several different books at once. You can mail these out to readers and/or bookstores, give them away at local events, mail signed copies out as prizes to readers ... the possibilities are endless. You can even create bookmarks from postcards ~ cut it in half and you have two bookmarks! Great for oversized postcards! And you can always find specials over at VistaPrint.