To SWAG, or Not to SWAG
How much of your book-marketing budget should go to free giveaways?
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Hi Authors!
In this newsletter, we’ve written a few times now about the importance of author events — getting out there, in person, to promote your book (and yourself) to readers.
A question I’m sometimes asked (by both readers and fellow authors) is whether I bring “giveaway” or “promotional” items to hand out to people at those events… and whether it’s helpful in building my brand and selling books.
An number of other authors would probably answer this question differently, but personally, the only SWAG (“free items”) I bring with me, to give out to people, are bookmarks. I explained why in an earlier newsletter, but to summarize: they provide the best bang for your buck. You can order a whole bunch of them without breaking your marketing budget, you can fit a lot of information about you an your book on each one, and they easily fit into a person’s pocket or purse. Plus, they resonate with readers and serve a pragmatic purpose (keeping a reader’s place in their current book). You really can’t go wrong with bookmarks.
I’ve seen a number of authors place a bowl of candy on their table, to make themselves more approachable to readers. I think that makes sense too, and candy is of course quite affordable as well.
Promotional pens are another item I’ve seen authors hand out:
I certainly understand the appeal. Writing goes hand in hand with authors, and people like pens (especially free ones). And similarly to a bookmark, you can display information about you and your book on a pen. The problem is the price. A pen is much more expensive than a bookmark. Case in point, the product pictured above is priced at over $5… per pen! While I’m certain there are cheaper “pen” offerings out there, an author could blow through their book-marketing budget pretty quickly by going this route. Even if one of those pens does lead to a book purchase, the royalty amount you’d receive for that book would likely be less than what you paid for the pen.
I don’t mean to pick specifically on pens, but I think it’s illustrative of my point. The are plenty of other promotional “giveaway” products an author can order that will assuredly lose them even more money. For example, as suggested in the header image for today’s newsletter, an author can order promotional t-shirts to hand out.
Now, to be clear, the image up-top is a mock-creation. I made it only for the purpose of today’s newsletter. Those t-shirts, which promote the work of author Mark Paul Smith (who’s a great guy and acquaintance) are not real.
Neither is the one shown in this silly image for my book Restitution (which was good for some fun social-media engagement at the time):
But believe it or not, I’ve seen authors indeed hand out custom t-shirts like this at their events, which again… can’t possibly make fiscal sense.
HOWEVER, I wouldn’t completely dismiss the t-shirt idea. There is a smart place for such merchandising in your book-marketing plans — just not as general SWAG.
For example, I think it makes perfect sense for an author to order such an item (maybe not of the tank-top variety) for himself or herself, to wear at certain events. Heck, even wearing it around town isn’t a bad idea; it might grab some people’s attention and prompt them to ask about the book.
Additionally, why not order one or two shirts (or tote bags, drinkware, etc.) as raffle giveaway items at one of your big events? That way, you can keep your costs under control while supplying attendees with an additional reason to walk over to your table and talk to you (and even give you their contact information for the raffle, which you can later add to your newsletter).
As we keep saying, discoverability is very important! But you also want to be fiscally smart in the pursuit of being discovered, because book marketing is a marathon, not a sprint. Always be thinking about the long game.
That’s it for today. As always, we hope you found this information useful. Let us know if you have any questions, and good luck!
