Tag: marketing

I’m appearing at the Christmas Craft Fair at Great Witchingham Village Hall on Sunday 27th November (2-5pm), so if you’re within a couple of hours of Norfolk (London, Cambridge, Newark, Lincoln) you could come over and say hello, pick up some lovely Christmas gifts, have tea, coffee or other beverages, play the raffle or tombola, and meet Santa.  I hope I’m going to be next to the cake stall again, too – scrumptious!

Having invested in a banner for one of my other projects earlier this year, which I’ve been very pleased with, I spent a couple of days designing one for the Princelings books using the free package Gimp.  I used the template provided by the online printers (I use Solopress.com, who are based in Southend-on-Sea, Essex), and came up with this design.

I’ve been holding back because I knew I wanted to put covers of the books on it, and I got the idea of using the illustrations as background from a wallpaper I had as a kid!  Having been thinking about a design for ages, it was great to wake up one morning with the idea of the tail.  In many ways I couldn’t do it until I knew where the series would end.  I’ve included Willoughby’s Kindle cover, and since I’ve briefed Dani on book 8, and know it’ll be a variation on the colours of Dylan’s book, I stole his cover, added the title in Gimp, and then faded it out at the bottom.  There are also chapter illustrations from Book 8.  I hope it also implies more to come.

After I popped on some of my favourite review quotes (thanks Renee, Ana, Wendy, Julie and Rebecca) I had a thought about QR codes, which I’ve been meaning to investigate further for some time.  It strikes me that popping a QR code on the banner makes it simple for anyone who uses them to get the booklinks off the banner if they’re interested, even if I’m busy (or they don’t want to ask), so I put them on each book cover.  I don’t think they’re too obtrusive, and it makes the banner even more of a marketing tool.

So I hope the finished result will look good when it arrives tomorrow.  And it is even cheaper than the last one, coming in at under £40.  Money well spent, I think.