Book Promotion for An Angry Ass Black Woman

It's June 22nd . . . time for me to start getting my promotion game in gear for my new book, An Angry Ass Black Woman. I would advise everyone to start really pushing their book as soon as as they get a jpeg for the book cover. And the first thing step should be getting postcards.

I ordered 500 postcards on June 4th, and was out by June 11th. I attended the Go On Girl! Book Club annual conference, stopped by a literary panel -- moderated by Vanessa Irvin Morris, and featured Nakea Murray as one of the panelists -- at the Celebration of Black Writers Conference, and attended the Black Pack Party hosted by Troy Johnson, Linda Duggins, and Ron Kavanaugh. So, I ordered another 500 postcards and went through those in about two weeks. I'm picking up another 1,000 this weekend.

Let me give you all a tip . . . postcards are an author's best friend! I usually order 5,000 at a time, although I'm doing small numbers right now for a reason I'll explain later. Another tip: Don't bother putting your picture on the postcards. No one cares what the author looks like. And it's not likely that your picture will be in the bookstores when people go browsing looking for books.

One side of the postcards should feature your book cover. You can also add a banner announcing the release date of the book if it's not out yet - as is the case of An Angry Ass Black Woman. On the other side of the postcard should be: The book title, the author, ISBN, the publisher, the synopsis, and someplace for the reader to go for more information i.e. your website or Facebook page, and contact info (I use my twitter and facebook page)

I'm showing an example here. My actual postcards have a white background on the back, but I "yellowed" it here so that it would show up. Also, I've lost some of the formatting while attempting to upload it to this blog, but my title is usually centered, bolded, and underlined.

What do I do with the postcards? Well, if I know someone is having a book signing I'll stop by and ask if they'd put one of my postcards in all of the books they sell.

I get to conferences early, and place a postcard in all the empty seats so that in order for someone to sit down they have to pick up my postcard.

When I have to go out to take care of business I make it a point to go to the restrooms, on each floor, and place a card in each stall.

I give them out to the toll booth clerk whenever I go through a toll.

I go up to people reading books and offer them information on a new book about to be released.

I go to bookstores, and give people a card on their way out.

Yep, I do all that and more . . . because I want to be selling some books!

Hope