Selling Without The Book
How To Give Away Your Giveaways
24 April 2003
If you want to
promote your book, the first thing you will have to do is learn to be
bold. No one will ever care about your book the way you do, so YOU have
to tell everyone why it is worth their time. If you can’t bear the
idea of collaring people and talking their ears off about your creation,
creating promotional products is another way to introduce people to your
book. (See last article for
examples.)
When you have
created postcards, bookmarks, business cards, samples or other products
you must set about distributing them. You will have to give away many
promotional items for every sale, so don’t be discouraged if you
don’t see sales immediately. You never know where each item will end
up. You could give it to a woman who gives it to her mother, who leaves
it in a book she returns to the library, which is checked out by someone
interested in reading your book.
Take Them With You
The first rule,
of course, is to carry your promotional items everywhere. To the grocery
store, on planes, to parties, everywhere you go. Then whenever someone
says, “So, what do you do?” or “So, how have you been?” or
“What have you been up to lately?” you can pull out a postcard or
business card about your book and hand it over.
Find any excuse to do this. If they mention that they’ve been
stressed lately, say, “What you need is a good novel. Here…” and
hand over the card before they can say, “I don’t have time to
read”. If they mention
something that relates in any way to the topic of your book, whip out
those promotional items and hand them over.
Freebies At A Book Signing?
If you have
arranged a book signing at a bookstore, mall or any other venue, make
sure you take plenty of giveaways with you. Henry James Warren, author
of the novel “Storm Keepers” says he always makes the most of his
book signings by taking along hundreds of specially printed bookmarks.
He stands in front of the table that displays his book and reaches out
to everyone who walks by, saying hello and giving them a bookmark. He
gives out 600-1000 bookmarks at each mall signing! Giving away freebies
gives Warren an excuse to talk to passersby in the malls. He says,
“Fifty percent
of my book buyers are not heading to the bookstore in the first
place—I bring them in. Sometimes they end up buying other books—but
most of the time they buy mine.”
In The Mail
Yes, you can use
postcards for special mailings to everyone you know, but you can also
make use of every other piece of mail you normally send to carry
promotional materials about your book. Slip a bookmark or postcard into
every piece of mail you send, even bills. You never know whose desk it
will fall on and what they might like to read. And since you’re
spending the postage anyway, this counts as free advertising.
See if you can
arrange cooperative mailings with other authors, or anyone who might be
mailing information to a large group of people. If you have a
non-fiction book, find a business that complements the subject of your
book and ask if you can include a piece in their next mailing. If you
write novels, you may still be able to find a hook. Perhaps your
novel’s hero is an insurance broker. Your broker may be willing to
include information in a mailing to his clients. Businesses may charge a
fee for this or you may be able to ‘sell’ it to them as a free gift
to their clients, especially if your giveaway is a sample chapter of
your book. You may even be able to barter some services with the
business in lieu of payment: perhaps you can contribute an article to
its newsletter, whip up a press release, ghost-write an article for
their CEO to contribute to a trade magazine.
Lying Around
There are
hundreds of places you can leave a stack of cards carrying information
about your book. The most obvious might be bookstores and libraries, but
there are many other places that allow you to post information or leave
giveaways. Supermarkets, cafes, beauty salons, barbers, craft shops,
gift shops, convenience stores and any other store with high traffic
volumes are good bets even though they may not, at first, seem to have
anything to do with books and reading. Approach the managers of these
places and point out that you are a local author and you would like to
leave some information about your book. You’d be surprised how often
people will respond to the idea of having a local author represented in
their store. (This also works if your book is set in their area, even if
you don't live there). And it costs them nothing.
If you can, leave
postcards or bookmarks by the register. Simply take along a stack and
check up on the inventory every week. If the establishment has a
bulletin board, you can still leave a supply of giveaways. Simply create
a holder by stapling a piece of card slightly wider than your giveaway
and 2/3 as tall, to a piece of 8.5” x 11” paper. You can fill top of
the background paper with an eye-catching image of your book and basic
information about it. Then fill the holder with business cards,
bookmarks or postcards, pin the whole thing to the bulletin board and
stop by every now and then to restock the holder.
Back Of The Room
If, in the course
of your promotion, you find yourself giving talks about your book or
about the writer’s life, make sure you leave promotional giveaways at
the back of the room for your audience to take. If they don’t buy a
copy of your book that night, make sure they take something away with
them. And give a few extra to the organizer, so he or she can distribute
them to others.
At a recent
conference appearance I was talking to a room full of people interested
in self-publishing. Whenever I am on this kind of panel I always end up
fielding the majority of the question because once people hear about
Print On-Demand they are fascinated, skeptical or outright
suspicious...but they always have a lot of questions.
For this
conference, I took along a few CDs of my e-book (21st
Century Publishing: An Author’s Introduction to Print On-Demand
Publishing) but I wasn’t sure I would have a chance to make my
sales pitch to many people. Instead, I took along a CD-ROM business card
and left them, with information about my e-book at the back of the room.
Because my book
is available online it made more sense to create a CD-ROM business card
than to hand out printed supplies. Since I wanted people to order my
book (only available online), the CD-ROM provided them with live links
to online sites where they could buy the book immediately. Also, CD-ROM
cards are still new enough to be a novelty and people are quite likely
to pick them up.
Following Up
When giving away
freebies, it is a good idea to try to get people to provide you with a
way of contacting them in future: an email address or a mailing address.
Put a sign-up sheet next to the freebies, and promise them two things:
-
an
informative, fun communication once in a while (with the opportunity
to win more freebies, if you can manage it) and
-
that you will
not sell, rent or in any other way abuse their personal information
(this is very important, and you must mean it).
For more
information on following up, check out future articles in this series.
Upcoming Articles in the series Selling
Without The Book: A Marketing Guide for Print On-Demand and e-Published
Authors:
The Power Of
Words – Using The Written Word To Promote Your Product Before They See
It.
Contests and
Prizes – Being Irresistible.
Using Your
Contacts – How To Make Other People Promote Your Book Pt. I.
Partnerships –
How To Make Other People Promote Your Book Pt. II.
Following Up –
Don’t Forget To Say Thank You.
***
If there are other questions you need
answered about publishing and book selling, email me at jd@jdwrite.com.
If I don't know the answer, I'll try to find someone who does.
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