One of the things an independent author has to do is to promote one’s own books. I’m sure authors with agents and publishing houses have to put in a lot of work on this too, but they probably have people prompting them and suggesting ideas and handling publicity materials.
I decided that once the trilogy was published I would do a leaflet to cover all three of them. My printer, Printing.com, had a special offer on single fold DL leaflets this month – that’s the size that fits in a standard window envelope – so I took advantage of it.
I did a nice layout with the basic blurb and covers of each of the books on the inside, plus a little about me, and on the back cover put the summary of the trilogy in one box, where to find more on the web and a special offer with a discount code unique to the leaflets for a free copy of the first book. I sometimes have bright ideas for visuals, but mostly I leave that to the professionals. This time I just knew that putting the three covers, superimposed on each other, was the right way to go. Then I put “Three ebooks, Two Princelings, One big adventure!” under the book covers on the front page. The hints from Printing.com were very helpful, like leaving enough space for trimming, and also to put your message near the top as that’s what always shows with leaflets. I decided the book covers were the message, so that was ok.
So I’ve probably got enough to keep me going for 10 years unless I start doing a lot of personal appearances for some reason. But I am doing an open day at my vets next weekend, so they’ll be used then. After all, I hope guinea pig lovers like my books!
But what about promoting future books? I hear you ask. Well, I’m planning to make a single width promotional leaflet that can just tuck inside the folded ones to promote any more. There’s method in my madness!