1 Cheap & Easy Way to Promote Your Self-Published Book

These tiny prints cost less than 5p each

Self-published authors often feel bogged down with the investment of time and money required to promote their books, so here’s a simple, low-cost tip that will cost you only a few moments and pence/cents.

Simply load a jpeg of your book’s cover image onto a memory stick, and next time you’re out shopping, stop by at one of those instant-print photo machines commonly found in retail pharmacies and supermarkets. Plug in your memory stick, select the jpeg of your book cover, and choose the print option which offers ID photos. For the cost of a single photographic print at standard snapshot size (6″ x 4″ or 10cm x 15cm), this will give you an array of 8 tiny images, each the size of a passport photo.

Tiny Photos Make a Big Impression

Take them home, cut them up, and voilà! Appealing little images of your book cover to carry around in your purse or wallet, for the next time your book crops up in conversation with a friend or stranger. Handing over this tiny picture is a terrific visual way to help them recognise and remember the name, author, title and visual appearance of your book – enough to find it in a bookshop or online, and much more appealing and unusual than an ordinary business card with a string of URLs and phone numbers on it. The shiny finish and quality feel will discourage them from binning it, and most likely they’ll show it to someone else, to share its novelty value. You could even sign it on the back with your best author signature, if you like, or add a sticker with your contact details.

Hoping to publish a paperback soon

I think they’ll be particularly handy when promoting a book that exists only in digital format, for which you can’t show them a physical copy, as in the case of my latest book Coming To Terms With Type 1 Diabetes (though I’m hoping to launch a paperback soon).

Once the recipient has bought your book, they might use the little photo as a bookmark – or else pass it on to any small child who has a doll’s house. It’s the perfect size for a doll’s house coffee table or bookshelf!

Two More Quick & Easy Book Marketing Posts:

• Meet other authors for coffee
• Make customised bookmarks