Promotional flyers for advertising your book

'Real life' can sometimes be just as effective as the internet for promoting a book...

Flyers for one of my early books.

A while back I reported on how one of my best sales periods came after I created some promotional flyers to advertise my books, and then distributed them to party-loving backpackers at the Full Moon Party in Koh Phangan (when I wasn't partying myself, that is).

My original flyer creations were fairly amateur efforts and weren't going to win any awards for graphic design, but they got the job done and helped gain me a few extra sales in the week that followed that Full Moon Party.

Since then I've designed more eye-catching flyers and used them on a few occasions with successful results. As you can see from the photo above, this time I went for colour flyers and for the design I basically just used the front cover of the book, then added a short text explanation to inform people where they can download the book.

I love to travel, so I always carry a few flyers with me whenever I'm backpacking around the world. Backpacker hostels generally have book exchanges or flyer racks where you can leave a small pile of flyers, and nowadays many backpackers include an ereader as an essential part of their luggage, so backpacker hostels are a good fit with a potential target audience.

More book flyers, but this time arranged in a less organised order.

When I'm back home in Newcastle there are a few pubs in town which also have flyer racks and flyer tables. Generally speaking, most of the flyers are for local bands, but I've always had a friendly response whenever I've asked the bar staff about adding my own book flyers to the rack. A pub might not necessarily be the best location for some authors to find their target audience though, so obviously each authors' distribution strategy will be different.

Anyway, as I've mentioned before I think in this modern technological world it can be easy for indie authors to concentrate totally on the internet and forget about the promotional opportunities we come across in real life. Creating promotional book flyers is therefore something which I would recommend to all authors looking to get their work noticed by more potential readers.

My original flyers featured black and white basic designs, but they nevertheless helped to promote my book and helped achieve my first run of sales over a few days. They were very amateurly designed, so it just goes to show that it's possible to boost your sales without spending a lot of money on professional looking flyers.

If any authors have any other promotional ideas for book marketing then feel free to leave a comment.