Thursday, August 13, 2009

Making your Bookmarks

Tip of the Day: Drop off a stacked of signed bookmarks in the teen section of your local library.

I just got my bookmarks in the mail and they are sooooo pretty! See:















Here's a close-up:




















When I was doing my bookmarks I ended up asking a lot of people what they did. And for today's post I'm going to share that info with you.

First, you need a snazzy design. If you're photoshop savvy, this will be easy for you. You just need to create a bookmark that includes your cover, some book info or a tease about your book, release date, ISBN, your website URL (and e-mail if you'd like), and don't forget to put what age your book is for! For mine I put 12 and up. This design needs to be 2 x 7 on average (you may need to adjust this depending on where you print). You can choose to add a back to your cover if you'd like. Here you might go ore in depth about your book. I decided to leave mine blank since I'm only showing the one book. And I thought it would be nice to have space to sign in case someone wants a signature. You never know.

Lucky for me my husband is awesome with photoshop so he whipped these up for me. But if you're not awesome with photoshop or married to someone who is, fear not. The super talented Saundra Mitchell (author of SHADOWED SUMMER) has been designing bookmarks, postcards etc. for lots of authors at a really reasonable rate. You can check out her awesome portfolio here. Contact her for more info through her Web site.

Once your design is ready to go you need to send them to a printer. I used Printrunner and it cost $59 for 1000 bookmarks. And they shipped pretty fast.

Another option is to have the printer design your bookmarks as well as print. Lisa, Miss Crafting a Career, uses Kelley at Iconix Digital Arts. Didn't hers turn out great?





















I'm thrilled with mine too and now I'm just trying to think of places to hand them out. I'll have them at signings of course but does anyone have any more ideas for me?

Kristina, Miss Delighted to Debut

6 comments:

DeenaML said...

They look gorgeous! (Lisa's too.)

You could do what Cynthia Leitich Smith does and have a drawing for librarians and booksellers to win a dozen of your autographed bookmarks? I've won them twice from Cyn and the teens love them!

Kate Fall said...

I love your bookmarks!

It's cool to find out how these get created. You have some great tips in here. I'll be curious to see what suggestions you get.

BookChic said...

Send some to bloggers. We love getting swag from authors and it makes for some fun extra stuff to include with prize packages. And some bloggers even give away envelopes of swag to their readers, so that helps spread the word as well! :)

Your bookmarks (and Lisa's) look amazing!!

Adele said...

Seconding Bookchic's suggestion. Bloggers love to get swag and will gladly pass out extra copies and stick them in with giveaways.

Kristina Springer said...

Oooh, thanks for the idea BC and H!! I'll totally do that!

Emily Marshall said...

Such cute bookmarks!!!