Marketing - Bookmarks, Flyers and Postcards

Currently reading - Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan

Paper products for marketing?

Save a tree.

Seriously.

There was a time when bookmarks, flyers, postcards, snail-mailing lists, etc. were necessary marketing tools.  Heck, snail mail was how readers let authors know what they thought of the book.

But where I used to be on several authors' mailing lists to know when to look for their next book, now they e-mail their readers.  Or I can check their website for the next release date.  Or check Amazon.

Want a good example?  Lots of writers leave their promo materials at the Goody Room during the RWA national conference.  As a volunteer, I can tell you from experience ARCs and books go first.  (Okay, the truth is the chocolate goes first.)  Then the useful things like pens or matches.  At the end of the conference, those of us cleaning the Goody Room are forced to trash a hundred pounds of bookmarks, flyers and postcards.  Not even the authors themselves want them back!

So once again, I'd advise you to save your money.

Think I'm all doom and gloom?  Tomorrow, we'll talk about a marketing technique I believe works.