At the recent Phoenix Comicon I had the pleasure of attending several writing panel discussions. One in particular made me smile broadly when the subject of postcards came up. Gini Koch, author of several books including “Alien in the Family” and “Touched by an Alien” said she recommended postcards for several reasons.
“It’s a physical piece of mail. You put a stamp on it and send it and it makes its way through the mail system.” Meaning many more people will see the postcard than the recipient. Make the front of the postcard eye-catching and people will take notice. While they may not read your message (that would be rude), they will see your design, and if that’s the same as your book cover they will be more likely to remember that when they visit Amazon.com or their local book store. “Everyone knows me at my local post office,” Gini continued. I like that idea.
After the discussion I walked up to Gini wearing a broad smile on my face, postcard in hand at the ready. I’ve been doing postcards since I began trying to get the word out! She took one look, smiled, and said, “I can tell you exactly what’s wrong with yours.” But…but…but. Actually, what she told me made a lot of sense and I’ll be putting in a new order very soon.
But where do you go for the postcards? I bought mine through Vistaprint.com and they look very good featuring my proposed book cover on the front. I left mine blank on the back. Gini said was a mistake. I’ll agree with her when my book is published and I’m sending out canned promotional cards, but for now I’m personalizing them individually. I don’t want to send out the same message to everyone. For example, I just finished reading Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams’ “Before the Dawn” and wanted to tell him that as well as the fact I was at boarding school in Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles. None of that related to what I wanted to tell Richard Dreyfuss or Oprah Winfrey. You see why my cards are blank on the back.
My first attempts to print the cards were moderately successful. The cards came out of my HP printer legible but skewed a bit. Then disaster struck – when I tried to print on cards from the balance of the new order left over from the Phoenix Comicon, they jammed one after another. Turned out the new cards were on heavier stock. I tried sending them through my HP D7560 with the same result. When I tried my “retired” DJ5940, the cards did not jam. I thought great and ran out to my nearest Walgreens to get the ink cartridges renewed. Yeah, well, it seemed like it was going to work. 😉
I then decided to chance using my wife’s wide-format Epson – with her permission of course (actually I let her drive). Lo and behold, the postcard printed perfectly. Hoping it was more to do with the Epson’s paper path (rear fed), I took a chance on the Epson NX420 on sale at Staples for $69.95. Bingo! The postcards print perfectly, and I’m very pleased.
