Promotion and writing

I'm late with this post...again. My excuse is that I've been working on the new book. But last week I also had to take some time to work on a promotional booklet for my June release, The Naked King. And since the King is the last Naked book, at least for the time being, I wanted to make the booklet about my Naked world.

The first challenge was technical--how to set the thing up so it would print out properly. Here my writer pal Ann Macela came to the rescue. The alphabet often puts us next to each other at large book signings, and when I admired Ann's booklet at RT last year, she offered to send me the template--which I did nothing with for months and months. But when I was ready to work on this, I found it in my email and it worked like a charm!

Ann encouraged me to use the booklet as a means to promote all my books, and since I could fit the first chapter of the King in the booklet but not the second too, I had lots of empty pages to work with. I included a page for each Naked book, a shared page for the novellas--and I still had room. So I added a "dear reader" letter and a "Frequently Asked Question" section.

And then I had to produce them--a lot of them. So I took them to a printer I know.

Ack! Deep breath.

Once I recovered from the sticker shock, I decided the cost was worth it. Getting the booklet printed professionally will give me more time to work on the next book, but, more importantly, it will make it look so much nicer than I could on my little ink jet. So this week, hopefully, I'll get the booklet done and be able to hold the finished product in my grubby little hands.

If you're at RT in LA, look for them. I hope you'll like them, too. I'm following my general rule of thumb with promotional materials--no one seems to be able to prove what works, so I try to do things that make me smile.