10 Reasons to Promote Your Book with Postcards

For several years I’ve been using a postcard-sized promotional piece to market my writing and editing services. However, it has writing on both sides and can’t be mailed. It’s a nice thing to give out in addition to or instead of a business card.

Authors need to think about what promotional materials they can use to promote their books as well, especially since they can’t simply hand out their books wherever they go and to whomever they meet. Shel Horowitz, author of Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers and Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, returns as my guest blogger today to tell us how we should use postcards to promote books. Postcards don’t tend to be something authors consider since email has become more common, easier and cheaper than snail mail, but Shel says there’s a good reason why we should consider using postcards as book promotion tools.

10 Reasons to Promote Your Book with Postcards
By Shel Horowitz

In many cases, authors can market more effectively with postcards than with traditional business cards. Among the many possibilities, here are 10 I’d like to share with you:

• Visit libraries and bookstores, show your book and leave your postcard
• Mail postcards to your local mailing lists to announce author events
• Pass them out at fairs, festivals, and other public events
• When you talk to someone at a trade show or business networking event, give the postcard instead of (or in addition to) your business card
• Excite people who’ve never met a real live author by giving them personally autographed cards–one for them and one for a friend
• Enclose cards with every direct order to get more business from your “word-of-mouth army”
• Enclose when you send press releases, letters of interest about speaking gigs, responses to inquiries about consulting, etc.
• If you’re doing a flier exchange with another author, offer postcards instead of fliers to put in their packages
• Distribute to school classes if you do school gigs, and hope that some show their parents and talk about how much fun you were, and the parents order
• Hand them to clients and suppliers and say, this is my new book

Friday: what to put on your postcard.

About the Author

Which would you rather read? “Electronic Privacy Expert Releases New Book” (snore!) or “It’s 10 O’Clock—Do You Know Where Your Credit History Is?” Press releases, book jackets, sellsheets, web pages from Shel Horowitz (award-winning author of Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green, and six other books) tell “the story behind the story.” Say goodbye to boring copy! Shel will write material so compelling that people thank you for letting them read it. www.FrugalMarketing.com/publishers.shtm

Shel is also available to speak on book publishing and marketing, green business/green marketing, and success with ethical business practices. He writes the monthly columns, Green And Profitable and Green And Practical.

All purchasers of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green are entitled to more than $2000 worth of bonuses, just by registering at http://www.guerrillamarketinggoesgreen.com/resources-2/bonuses