Laura Purdie Salas

Small Reads for Brighters Days

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Author Promo Materials for the Design-Challenged

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I know some writers covet the ALA awards given to fabulous writers yesterday. And I wouldn’t kick any of those awards out of bed, either! But here’s my confession: I covet other authors’ cool promotional materials. When I try to create them myself, though, the results are often sketchy. But I enjoy using Vistaprint.com to make pretty inexpensive materials and figured I’d share a bit about that here. For instance, I have two upcoming events I need some promo stuff for. One of them is a CLN event called Books for Breakfast, a wonderful chance for authors and illustrators to get to briefly share their work with 200+ teachers and librarians. For that one, I’ll be focusing on BookSpeak! and A Leaf Can Be… I’m putting together a door prize centered on A Leaf Can Be…, and it will include a copy of the book and some leaf products–tea, a little houseplant, a bagged salad, plus a set of 10 notecards using Violeta’s beautiful art from Leaf: Then each person at my table for the breakfast will get a little swag bag. That bag will include a couple of oversized postcards featuring the same art. Here’s the front (color) and back (b/w): The swag bag will also have some book plates and a luggage tag (I’ll share these one I actually make them!) that will have the “Book Plate” poem from BookSpeak on it. So I ordered business cards with the poem on them. Since there will be 200+ teachers in the audience, I decided to throw together a’school visit postcard, too. Here’s the front (color) and back (b/w):

For that I just used one of Vistaprint’s offered templates, so I didn’t upload any art. So I ordered 100 standard-sized school visit postcards, 10 notecards with white envelopes, 250 ?Book Plate? business cards, and 50 oversized Leaf Can Be… postcards. For $13.81. Basically, at Vistaprint, if you sign up for their mailing list, you get emails at least once a week offering you free products. It might be 50 postcards or 25 flyers or a pen or whatever. Usually, it’s a list of 5-10 possible free products. You go in and create and order them and all you pay is the shipping. If you upload art (like I did with the Leaf art above), there’s a $4.95 fee. But once you pay that fee once, you don’t ever pay it again, even in future orders. So you upload your book covers and/or the iconic art you want to use from your titles, and then you’re all set for future orders. Of course, if you do big events or school visits, you’ll need more than these small amounts. What I like is that this gives me a chance to try out items on a small scale. If I like something a lot, I’ll probably make a bigger order in the future. And Vistaprint has good prices for bulk orders. But for materials that are event-specific or that I don’t know if I’m going to need tons of them, it’s really nice to be able to order just a few to start out with. 2 important tips:

  • Make sure you have permission from your illustrator to use his or her art!
  • Use hi-res images. Otherwise, your print materials could be grainy and ugly.

OK, this is getting very long! I’ll share the other materials tomorrow!

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Comments

  1. Hey, this is some really gorgeous stuff.
    I usually come up with something myself – and it varies on how good it looks, but wow! This!

    • Thanks, Tanita–I’m trying to get away from using the book cover on EVERYTHING. Such a balancing act–making something visually appealing enough that people will actually want to use it, but also making it do its job of promotion…

  2. Hey, this is some really gorgeous stuff.
    I usually come up with something myself – and it varies on how good it looks, but wow! This!

    • Thanks, Tanita–I’m trying to get away from using the book cover on EVERYTHING. Such a balancing act–making something visually appealing enough that people will actually want to use it, but also making it do its job of promotion…

  3. All of your items look wonderful. I think those who receive your swag will be thrilled. Thanks for the link to vista print-looks good & the price is very inviting!

    • Thanks, Linda! The Vistaprint freebies are really a good deal–and fun for experimenting. You can get sucked in and spend too much time and shipping $ if you’re not careful, though:>)

  4. All of your items look wonderful. I think those who receive your swag will be thrilled. Thanks for the link to vista print-looks good & the price is very inviting!

    • Thanks, Linda! The Vistaprint freebies are really a good deal–and fun for experimenting. You can get sucked in and spend too much time and shipping $ if you’re not careful, though:>)

  9. Laura: These are such great tips! I might even get inspired to fire up a Vistaprint order. You make it all seem so simple and do-able. Thanks from this promo-challenged author.

  10. Laura: These are such great tips! I might even get inspired to fire up a Vistaprint order. You make it all seem so simple and do-able. Thanks from this promo-challenged author.

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