Last year my daughter got on the computer and printed some business cards for me. I was going to hand them out at a book signing I was doing at a local book store. As it turned out, she printed a lot more cards than I had people interested in having my card, so I had a lot of cards left over.
Since then, I've been leaving them in random places: with my tip at a restaurant, at our local library, in the rest rooms of stores. I don't leave my phone number on my card, but my web site, blog, and email are all there.
Usually, I sneak away before the person I've left the card for finds it. I'm shameless about promotion, but I'm also a little shy when it comes to actually saying the words, "I have two published novels and I'd really like you to buy them and read them, and then convince your friends to also buy them and read them."
Tonight hubby and I were at a relatively new eatery in our home town, and the server, also part owner of the place, was really personable. (Could be that we were the only people in the place eating dinner, while everyone else was in the bar.) As part of the tip, I pulled out my card. She'd struck up enough of a conversation with us during dinner, that she had no issue picking up the tip in front of us and saying, "Ah, what do we have here?"
Then she frowned.
No one likes to have their business card frowned at, least of all authors.
Then she started asking questions about my writing. We talked for a few minutes, when she said, "Would you be interested in doing a book signing here sometime?"
The words weren't even out of her mouth when I howled, "YES! NAME THE DAY!"
I'm sort of shameless that way.
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| This is lovely. Now if I only had a BOOK to read with it! |
She offered to bundle the signing with a...wait for it...WINE TASTING.
Could anything be more perfect?
Now we're just hashing out a date.
I'm telling you this to encourage you to look at the simplest way to promote your writing. You can go to every single conference, pay someone to build adds and a video for your book. You can pay to have people read and review your book. Most of these things, I've done, in one way or another. (Never done the video yet, though.)
The most effective tool I've had yet? Putting a business card on a table.
I hate marketing. I'd rather write. But I love book signings, so if putting a card on the table gets me a book signing, then I'm printing out more cards right now and papering every eatery in the tri-county area with them!
As always, once I have a date for this amazing wine tastings/book signing, I'll let you all in on it.
But for now, I'm off to print more business cards.
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