Featured Writer: Reina Salt

Graveyard Blues (Night Blues)
A sticker campaign

     This picture is actually larger than the sticker. Also, on the sticker is the price and web address for the download. It is a fairly inexpensive way to make your novel ubiquitous and a fun way to involve friends in your sales.
     Everybody loves stickers. I have one of these on the cover of my laptop at the moment and hope to add more from other writing friends. I'm going to see if I can get Reina to stop by and give us more information on costs, the businesses that make stickers or even how to print them at home. This is a step away from the Internet and it's a good one. Stickers placed in strategic areas, on doors, escalators, even bathroom stalls, can stay forever and have a way of becoming part of the accepted scenery. When they are in plain public view, it can also change the way the author is perceived by the public. Your name is known. Someone says "Reina Salt" in the area where Reina lives and everyone remembers the sticker. They feel like they already know her, even if they haven't read her work. It's an inexpensive and brilliant way for the world to become familiar with the author. So, by sending stickers to your friends in your social network, you can easy paper the entire globe with your name.

      Reina Russell

As far as stickers go, I used printrunner.com for full color custom printing. The stickers came out really nicely and true to color, which is important. I went with a run of 250 stickers measuring 2" x 2.75" for about $30. If you order, be sure to ask for proof copy first, so that you can be sure that your image fits the sticker size. Bigger size means bigger cost, so you don't want to pay for blank edges that don't even have your stuff on it. It also doesn't hurt to look on google for coupon codes for sites like this, so be sure to do that. I think that I did, and ended up with something like free shipping.

They also do magnets, posters, and business cards, but the great thing about getting stickers done is that it doubles as a business card, really. If you keep a small handful of them with you at all times, you're ready to give someone one when people ask for it. Which happens pretty often, actually.

On Twitter and Facebook, I had some nice success flat out offering free stickers to people. It's a cool design by the talented Troy Dilport, and it's accessible, so people wanted them. One guy put them on his guitars! For the cost of a stamp, it's a good investment in regards to visibility and reaching out there.

HOW?

You've written your novel; you've revised and revised, edited, had other people read it and hopefully they edited it and gave you constructive criticism beyond "It's great. I really liked it." You've gone through the headache of formatting for Kindle or finding someone who knows what they're doing to format it for you, and, finally, you've uploaded it to Amazon and clicked the PUBLISH button . . . and then.

How do you sell it? How does an unknown, burgeoning novelist get the word out about the product he/she has just established?

THAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THIS BLOG

To collect and compile the ideas of writers everywhere in one place. It's a big world and when you've come this far, you may suddenly feel as though your voice is too small to be heard. The links you posted on your facebook and twitter, disappear like hamburger wrappers on a freeway in the neverending stream of memes and status updates and only your mom bothered to share it.

You feel invisible.

So, what do you do?

That's what everyone who comes across this blog by googling tips and tricks and "how to sell your novel" wants to know.

While I have already seen some people use sticker campaigns and blog features effectively, there are countless other ways to put your novels and stories in the field of public vision without spending a lot of money and while keeping most of it right where your product is--on the Internet.

My first suggestion involves the frontier opened to us by Amazon and the Kindle. As writers responsible for our own product packaging we are given an opportunity very few--if any--writers who work for a publishing house enjoy: to choose our own covers and book art. I have the good fortune of knowing many artists, though I cannot, through any means of self, draw a stick man without making him look physically handicapped. So, it occurred to me that an art contest would not only guarantee eye-catching covers, it would also spread the word about the book. Plus, the winner of that contest may also want their art to be seen, and purchased as much as possible. Your efforts to sell have just doubled and you've made a contribution to your circle of artists. Everybody wins.
What are prizes for runners-up? Whatever you choose. Probably Amazon giftcards.

More ideas later.

If you have ideas to share, please post them in the comments section. Join the fun. We have an enormous opportunity here to break wide open the wall that faces down every unknown author hoping for an audience.

Please don't post anything illegal or otherwise unsavory. We don't need trouble. We want to help writers sell their work.