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I read a fabulous blog the other day from Tammie King of Night Owl Romance where she spoke about things an author can do to help promote her work.

One of her points was to have promo items that readers can use and not just throw away, ie things like lip balm, pens and tip cards can be used multiple times but items like book marks or flyers can be easily trashed. In fairness, Tammie didn't specify book marks or flyers -- that's just my guess on what might be easily trashed.

Book marks or flyers (a paper that announces your book, maybe has a copy of the cover and a short excerpt) are fairly easy to create. And from an author's point of view, they're fairly inexpensive. As the queen of bargain hunting (sounds better than the queen of cheap, lol), I like the idea of inexpensive. Lord knows, we authors don't make a huge amount of money (unless you use initials for your first name ::insert chuckle:: like JK or JD) so we have to be on the look out for promo items that won't cost us more than we earn in royalties.

I'll be honest. I've done post cards, book marks and pens. Those were inexpensive. I've also done key fobs, and calendar books which, while I got a good price, cost a whole lot more than the pens or paper products. I don't begrudge that cost because they were good, quality products that promoted my name and, though the calendars had a life span of a year, the key fobs could be used just about forever.

I've seen authors give away candy wrapped in paper promoting their books but, ahem, I'll be honest -- I take a look at the wrapper, then rip it apart to get to the candy. It's a clever idea because everyone is willing to take a piece of candy (and if it's chocolate so much the better, lol) but the promotional part, the wrapper, ends up in the trash soon to be forgotten. I don't mean to be disrespectful, honest, but hey who keeps an empty candy wrapper around?

Pens are great - they last a goodly amount of time and are useful. Best of all, they're not that expensive. I'm intrigued by the idea of the lip balm promotional item. And the tip cards (though there must be other things of interest one can put on the cards other than how much to tip) are a clever idea.

I've got a book coming out next year (doesn't hurt to think ahead for promoting :D ) and I'd like to get jump started with my promo items.

So I'm putting it to you, dear readers - what do you like in the way of promo items?

And authors - what have you found to be most successful?

Drop a comment to let me know. Thanks and have a great week!

-- Lynda

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