All You Want for Christmas...

Christmas anthology - release date 19th December 

Kiss from The Kiss Collection - release date 12th December

Are lots of short stories! Yes, you know that is top of your Christmas list. And what is even better is that you get to have these stories EARLY!

It is amazing that at Christmas last year I was unpublished. This year I have had a short story published, one more next week and a Christmas themed anthology published on 19^th December.

I feel a little greedy.

I have also been indulging in some promotional madness. I was sent my beautiful Christmas cover and decided it HAD to be my Christmas card this year. Which was all good until the website I was on started tantalising me with other promotional goods that I could have my cover displayed on.

I managed to resist them all except one. The phone cover. I made the mistake of mocking one up with a book cover on it. It looked soooo good but I thought I should check what the other covers looked like. I think I started drooling.

But which one should I have made into an actual phone cover? I sat there flicking between the different versions whilst drinking some wine. Which could explain why I now have three new phone covers due to arrive sometime in the next few days. Ho hum.

Pretty in pink...

This is what they look like from the site…

Never putting phone away

All I Want for Christmas

How cool?!?! I did stop myself from buying a huge pop up banner for each cover so I was reasonably well behaved. Now when I am in coffee shops I will leave my phone face down waiting for comments or hold it up on the Tube for all to see. No one is going to mistake my phone for theirs.

So other than downloading my next kiss, The First Kiss and A Stocking Full of Romance anthology, what else are you wanting for Christmas?

'The First Kiss' is released on 12th December 2013 to pre-order click here

'A Stocking Full of Romance' is released on 19th December 2013 to pre-order click here

Swag - What Works for You?

Swag – or promotional items given away at events – is a topic we’ve been discussing recently on an email loop I belong to, and when I attended the RT Convention in Kansas City earlier this year I was amazed at the all the different things on offer.  The creativity of some authors was astounding and I came home inspired, wanting to try out some ideas of my own!

There was, of course, the usual array of postcards, bookmarks, pens and key chains, but it was fun to see how varied you can make them so that they stand out in the crowd.  It also quickly became clear to me that badges (the metal variety with printed logos etc) were extremely popular with US fans.  I hadn’t thought to bring any because they’re not big in the UK, but if I go to the States again I most definitely will!

It was an eye-opener to see what else could be done to promote one’s book – bags (really nice shoulder ones as well as the usual little carrier bag types), plastic glasses, T-shirts, mugs, rulers, tape measures and little booklets, to name but a few.  Collector’s cards were intriguing and then there were the sweets and chocolates – always a favourite with me :-)  I particularly liked little chocolate bars printed with the author’s book cover.

But do swag items really work when it comes to selling books?  After a recent conference I attended here in the UK, I talked to some of the other attendees and they said they would just go through their ‘goody bags’ and throw away most of the promo stuff unless something caught their eye specifically.  That means a lot of it is for nothing, but you might just be lucky and be the one who has designed something that catches a reader’s interest.  So can you afford NOT to do it?  I don’t think so.  And at some conferences, like RT, the readers get to help themselves from promo tables so presumably they only take home things that appeal to them?

For my new novel (a young adult contemporary romance which makes a change from historicals) I’ve had fun creating some promo material with the help of one of my daughters.  We’ve experimented with various things and I’m considering some other ideas as well, but it all takes time and money so even if it’s fun, I guess it’s best to think carefully before jumping into something.

What are your favourite types of ‘swag’?  What would you definitely keep and what would you throw away?  And does any of it make you actually buy the book?  I’d love to know!