Monthly Archives: October 2015

Book Marketing Flyer for Dummies

Marketing & Publishing, , ,


Anyone with Word can create this easy do-it-yourself sell sheet.

As a member of the National Association of Book Entrepreneurs (NABE), my novel Our Romantic Getaway was recently included in their marketing efforts at the 2015 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Show in Portland, Oregon.

As a follow-up, I wanted to send a marketing flyer to all of the potential buyers who visited their booth and/or had expressed interest in my book.

I went online and researched how to put together an effective sell sheet, but was unable to find anything that I could tailor for my personal use. I am a fan of Vistaprint.com for printing postcards, business cards, and other advertising materials, but they had no templates available that appropriately fit my marketing needs.

So I did a little cut and paste job in Word and voila, I came up with an attractive, cogent marketing tool.

I purchased white 8.5 x 11 card stock (65 lb) and fed the paper through my printer feeder—the front page first, and then placed the completed front page back into the feeder for the back section.

You can download this PDF to see the final product. Our Romantic Getaway Book Flyer

Below is a quick and easy guide to a DIY marketing flyer:

Keep your sell sheet clean and simple. It’s better to include detailed information about a couple of things than to have bits of partial information about a lot of things.

Include a quote, excerpt of a review, blurb, or endorsement from a well-known person or well-respected authority. Including any awards, your book has received will give you credibility as an author.

Flyers with color will almost always stand out from plain black and white flyers. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on the flyer, and if you have a color printer you can print them yourself. If you don’t have a color printer and don’t want to spend the money to have your flyer professionally printed, you can use brightly colored printing paper with bold black text to make sure your flyer stands out.

You don’t want to risk producing a flyer with sub-standard print quality, so while it may be cost-effective to use your own printer, Kinkos, Staples, Office Max, or any similar retail printing establishment can provide affordable flyer printing services. You want your final product to look as professional as possible, so make sure your printer can provide the quality you need.

And don’t forget to make sure your contact information is easy to locate. Offer clear instructions on how to reach you or how to take advantage of your promotion.

If you set up your flyer in Word, your first side should highlight your book cover only. That’s what you’re trying to sell right? The second side of the flyer will include all the other information.

Here is what I included on my flyer:

    • A photo of the book cover (I copied a jpeg of my cover and pasted it into Word)
    • Title of the book (I also placed an award sticker on my front page)
    • Author name
    • Brief description (See my article Write the Perfect Book Blurb for tips)
    • Publisher
    • Category
    • Format
    • ISBN#
    • Pages
    • Retail Price 
    • Contact Information (Mailing address, e-mail, website, blog, telephone)
    • Author Photo (I printed out a photo, using double-sided tape to added it to the flyer)
    • About the Author
    • If you are available for book signing events, add a line saying so
    • A quote, excerpt of a review, blurb, or endorsement from a well-known person or well-respected authority.
    • Relevant PR or marketing plans) (only if you have room)

If you are mailing the flyer, try to call ahead and get the name of the manager. If you don’t know the name of the manager you can address it as “Attention: Book Buyer.”

If you are visiting the local bookstores in your surrounding area, ask to speak to the manager of the store. If the manager is not available, leave the flyer anyway. But make sure to ask for the manager’s name so you can contact or mail them at a later date.

Introduce yourself as a local author, and encourage them to order your book and stock it in their store. Emphasize the fact that you plan on promoting your book extensively in the area and would like to tell people where they can find it for purchase, i.e. recommending their store. You may also decide to leave a copy of your book for their review.

If the bookstore enjoys lots of traffic, etc. and you wish to conduct a book signing there, ask the manager if he or she is interested in hosting a book signing. Most bookstore managers love hosting events, particularly with a local author that will encourage patrons to buy books from their store.

If your flyer is more of a marketing tool for readers, let them know where to purchase your book. If the book is carried by only one or two wholesalers, list them. If handled by a distributor, make sure to include the distributor’s name and 800#.

Sometimes it takes more than one mailing to interest a potential buyer so don’t give up too quickly.  And don’t expect miracles. Marketing is a process. It takes time. Look how long it took you to write your book!

Health Care and Gun Control

Gun Violence

ShootingcolumbineShootingVirginiaTech

ShootingauroraShootingNewtownShootingRoseburg

April 20, 1999-Columbine High School: 13 dead and 21 wounded

April 16, 2007-Virginia Tech: 32 dead and 17 wounded

July 20, 2012-Aurora Century 16 Theater: 12 dead and 70 wounded

December 14, 2012-Sandy Hook Elementary School: 26 dead

October 1, 2015-Umpqua Community College: 9 dead and 7 wounded

STUFF HAPPENS?

That’s just BS Jeb Bush, aka Mr. Wanna-be-the-President-of-the-United-States. And you know it.

But without the NRA on your side, your political goose is cooked. And after your insensitive and unpresidential comment about “stuff,” I hope your political goose is decimated.

And make no mistake about it: Our elected officials don’t control the NRA. The NRA controls our elected officials.

These officials, whom we voted into office, need to stop kowtowing to the NRA and do something bold and courageous. And we need to put pressure on those officials and force them to effect change and take charge of getting us on the right path. It is up to us to force our elected officials to curb gun violence in America and protect the safety of the public.

I have always felt that we need stricter gun laws. But I also think that our elected officials need to significantly reform our mental health system. Guns and mental health issues are a cataclysmic combination.

And until we as Americans take the necessary steps to ensure that our representatives in Washington, D.C. are looking for solutions, “stuff” is going to continue to happen. BAD STUFF. DEVASTATING STUFF. HEARTBREAKING STUFF.

The U.S. loses 90 people every day from gun violence. And since our elected officials are incapable or plain old afraid to do anything about it, it’s time for the entire country to stand up and take charge.

And sorry to inform you Jeb, your simpleminded opinion that “stuff happens” just doesn’t cut it.

Baa Baa Black Sheep

Family & Relationships,

Black Sheep
Out to dinner with a friend a few weeks ago, she gloomily confided in me that she was the “black sheep” of her family. Her sorrowful declaration raised the hair on my arms and gave me the chilly willies for two reasons:

1. She is beautiful, successful, generous, compassionate, considerate, well-grounded, strong, selfless, and a loving and nurturing mother and wife. The type of woman that anyone would aspire to be.

2. Over the years, I’ve heard this expression more often than I would like to admit. And worse, I’ve heard it used to refer to me. Many times. So many times, that I developed “Black Sheep Syndrome,” if there is such a thing.

So the two of us bitterly asked each other what I have been asking myself for close to fifty years:

Why and how does a child become the black sheep of their family?

When I got home from dinner that night, I looked up the Baa Baa Black Sheep nursery rhyme. Baa Baa Black Sheep is an English poem, dating back to sometime around 1731. But very little is actually known about its origins. While I found several interpretations of the words, there was little to no evidence to support any of them.

I also found several variations of the rhyme, although the one that I prefer is the Mother Goose Melody published sometime in 1765. This version is usually sung to the tune of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” and the “Alphabet Song.” The last couplet is printed as “But none for the little boy who cries in the lane,” as opposed to “One for the little boy who lives down the lane.”

Mother Goose’s version:

Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool?
Yes, marry, have I,
Three bags full;
One for my master,
One for my dame,
But none for the little boy
Who cries in the lane.

A common interpretation is that the rhyme was against Medieval English taxes on the wool industry.

But I don’t really understand the black sheep part. It doesn’t take a genius to know that white wool is more desirable in the commercial marketplace because it can be dyed any color. Black sheep in a flock, are useless in terms of wool production as it is impossible to dye its fleece. A fleece with even a few black fibers is considered less than desirable.

So if the wool from a black sheep is impossible to dye, rendering it useless, and undesirable, it would be unsaleable, thus no need to tax it at all.

Whatever the reason the rhyme depicts black instead of white, it’s obvious that the undesirable and uselessness of the black sheep is what gives us the term “the black sheep of the family.”

And okay, I can see a sheep farmer who makes a living from wool, considering the black sheep a wastrel. But a family?

Black sheep is a phrase used to describe a pariah, a reject, and a ne’er-do-well, especially within a family unit. Someone who is ostracized and treated differently from the rest. A distasteful outcast, who just doesn’t belong.

Nothing for the little boy who cries in the lane.

Yes, I’m called the black sheep in my family. And I’m finally proud of it.

There I said it. And the best realization and revelation for me is that I actually do feel pride.

And here is my take on the whole “black sheep” defamation:

The family black sheep don’t get picked randomly or by accident. The black sheep are sensitive, unhappy, vulnerable, and usually the outspoken child. The one who refuses to stay silent and just can’t and won’t pretend to be one big happy family.

The designated black sheep is made to carry the hidden blame and shame of relatives who refuse to acknowledge their own flaws and weaknesses.

Toxic and dysfunctional family members tend to project their own jealousies and sense of inferiority onto the shunned and disfavored black sheep.

And even if the black sheep eventually leaves (or is thrown out of) the familial flock, it doesn’t end there. The hated black sheep is more than likely still considered the cause and reason for the family’s difficulties and unhappiness, no matter how much time has passed.

Because the family’s need to place blame and project shame onto the black sheep is the only way, they can live with themselves.
Black Sheep Nursery Photo Cropped

American Express Small Business Saturday Statement Credits Are Canceled for 2015

Observe & Ponder

American Express Cards

The first Small Business Saturday took place on 11/27/10 and American Express encouraged people across the country to support small, local businesses by offering a generous statement credit of $25 off $25. The event was hugely successful, with people coming out in droves to shop and use their Amex cards.

For the past five years, small business owners have relied on the American Express statement credit program on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The program has helped to counter balance lagging traffic and sales during Black Friday weekend for thousands of small business owners.

My question to Amex: You didn’t think your decision to effectively cancel Small Business Saturday didn’t warrant an announcement on the home page of your Small Business Saturday website?

Shame on American Express for not making sure that small business owners were given a heads up that, for the most part, Small Business Saturday has gone bust.

When I went online today to find out what kind of credit incentive Amex was going to offer for the 2015 Small Business Saturday, I saw nothing on their website. But I did find several articles claiming that an American Express announcement that no statement credits would be offered this year, was buried somewhere in their FAQ section. I looked around on the Amex Small Business Saturday website for quite some time and found no such announcement in their FAQ section or anywhere else.

I ultimately sent an e-mail to Amex directly, asking them if they were in fact canceling statement credits. I received the following e-mail reply back from them:

As in years past, American Express will continue to drive awareness of Small Business Saturday and encourage consumers to shop small through local and national advertising.

This year we are not offering a statement credit offer for Card Members on Small Business Saturday, but are instead increasing the support and resources we provide to help small business owners market the day within their communities and truly make it their own.  Learn about the materials we make available at ShopSmall.com/GetReady:

  • Customizable marketing materials
  • Free online ads
  • Shop Small merchandise kits (while supplies last)
  • Educational event guides

We are also significantly expanding our grassroots advocacy efforts, such as the Neighborhood Champion program, to facilitate more community events and activities to engage local communities to shop small on Small Business Saturday.

Why would Amex have a Small Business Saturday and not have statement credits? What would motivate people to shop on that day vs. any other day?

Sorry, Amex but your offer to increase support and supply materials isn’t going to bring the store traffic to small businesses that your statement credit program did. It won’t even come close.

The popularity of Black Friday Weekend has lessened in recent years, as e-commerce has completely changed the scope of holiday shopping. And now Amex has decided to quietly cancel their statement credit program?

As the Executive Director of my local Chamber of Commerce, I have seen firsthand how successful stores have been on Small Business Saturday, thanks in large part to the American Express statement credit incentives.

I also witnessed hundreds of shoppers who swarmed the stores that day with loads of Amex cards. And I mean loads—per person. I saw one shopper with at least 50 credit cards. And I witnessed store after store printing out sales receipts that were eight feet long nonstop until they closed at midnight.

A little-known rule regarding American Express cards, is that you can have up to 99 authorized users on any one card—each with their own card, and more importantly, their own individual statement credits.

So I am assuming that American Express was tired of shoppers abusing the program. But they could have easily limited the promotion to one card per person, and that would have been the end of the abuse.

Instead, they canceled the program entirely, with no formal announcement. Not yet, anyway.

Below is a history of incentives going back to the 2010 launch year:

2010: $25 off $25 offer announced on 11/08. Registration opened 11/08. Spending valid 11/27-12/31/10.

2011: $25 off $25 offer announced on 10/06. Registration opened 11/01. Spending valid 11/26/11.

2012: $25 off $25 offer announced on 09/24. Registration opened 11/17. Spending valid 11/24/12.

2013: $10 off $10 offer announced on 10/01. Registration opened 11/24. Spending valid 11/30/13.

2014: $10 off $10 valid 3 times per card announced on 09/27. Registration opened 11/16. Spending valid 11/29/14.

2015:  No formal announcement made yet, that Small Business Saturday statement credits are canceled for 2015.

I get that American Express is trying to cut costs, but in my opinion they should have canceled Small Business Saturday altogether. Let’s get real, without a financial incentive, people won’t pay attention. Wasn’t a financial incentive the whole point of the program?

Incentives or no incentives. At least let small business owners know.