by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Anyone familiar with this blog knows that I’m not a fan of old-fashioned promoting. I think I’ve sold a lot more books by using better book metadata and following best-practices for SEO on my book pages on my website.
But sometimes…you’ve got to promote the old-fashioned way. In my case, it’s usually by request. My audiobook producer is big into old-fashioned promo: going out into bookstores for events, doing book tie-ins, and that type of thing. He’s really, really good at it. In the past, he’s asked me for free printed copies of my books to tie-in with the audio versions for giveaways at all kinds of special events. I’ve sent them over to him…just very happy that I wasn’t doing the promo legwork myself.
It’s expensive, though. Even getting the author copies from CreateSpace. There’s the buying of the books, and then the shipping of the books. If you’re talking a fair number of books or doing something regularly, it does add up.
This time I told my producer that I’d like to do something a little different (and basically free on my end). I used Canva to design bookmarks especially for my audiobooks and then added an Instafreebie code to provide a free ebook. Realizing a lot of other writers might be going to summer events, I thought I’d share what I did. (And I used to be a VistaPrint customer…nothing wrong with that, except this particular project required immediacy. I couldn’t wait).Continue reading
