Marketing Your Work: Create a List to Sell All Your Books

Friday, I was fiddling around on Twitter. One of my favorite picture book authors, Peter H. Reynolds, had tweeted this image. It isn’t just a list of his books. It is an updated list. And it isn’t just informative. It looks good. I might be a wee bit jealous.

But I’m not so jealous that the wheels didn’t start turning. We authors do bookmarks. We make buttons. Items like those advertise one or two books, tops. But this list has 38 entries including 3 that aren’t out yet and 3 collections.

Maybe people who write for adults don’t think like this but children’s writers are trained. What can we produce that is inexpensive and can be handed out to every kid we see at a school visit? That could be anywhere from 30 to 300 kids. The answer – a book list.

Don’t ignore this idea if you don’t write for kids. Something like this could also be given out at a conference. Or posted on your website. Or tucked into copies of your book at a signing. The possibilities are endless.

But first you need the basic list. Easy peasy. Right?

The first thing that I learned is that this is harder than it looks. I know. I’m probably the only one who is surprised. Here is my attempt. I pulled this together in about 40 minutes and it looks like it. But I’m not giving up. I’m going to work on it until I get it right. I want to:

• Find a better font. I want it to be interesting, but not distracting. And bold enough to grab attention but not too bold.
• Fix the photo. I managed to turn a full color into something that looks like a black and white sketch which de-emphasized it, but it isn’t the look I want. I’d like a pen and ink line drawing.
• Layout. More graphics. Make it more engaging.
• Bold. I'm not sure why it looks so washed out, but that needs to be addressed.

A friend recently told me to just use a Word template. I’ll have to check them out but I don’t do so great with templates. I tend to get a vision. Yeah, I’m visual but not artistic. I did my version in Publisher. I’m sure Publisher has templates since it is by the same people as Word.

I definitely think it is a good idea to have an attractive list of all my books so I’ll keep working on it. I mean seriously. If a world famous picture book illustrator can do it, I’m sure I can too. I have a few ideas.

--SueBE

To find out more about Sue Bradford Edwards' writing, visit her blog, One Writer's Journey.  Sue is also the instructor for Writing Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults. The next session begins September 10th, 2018.

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