From One To Many: Tips For Hiring Your First Employees

When you are an independent author or book blogger, there are things that you need to do. One of them is to get your name out there. If the name of your blog or your pen name isn't out in front of people, they aren't going to buy from you or read your work. So that means that you are going to have to do some marketing and publicity. There are several things that you can do in that vein. 

Personal Appearances

One thing that you can do is to get out and meet the people. It doesn't matter at this point if you are a blogger or an author, there are going to be places that you can go where the reading public can meet you. That includes things like conventions and signings. Those will let you talk to readers, both current and potential, and talk about what you like to write about or what kinds of books that you review, etc. At these personal appearances, you can do other things that will help promote yourself. That's handing out swag. 

Swag

When it comes to swag, it can be just about anything. The main thing is that it is designed for people to take it home and for it to have your name. It could be keychains, bookmarks, decals, stickers, cards, or even socks. You can set those things out on a table for people to grab or hand them out when they purchase something of yours. The swag can also be prizes for contests that you run or when they purchase a book from your website.

If you are going to do things like bookmarks, cards, stickers, or personalized vinyl decals, you are going to want to work with a printing service. They will be able to help you translate your ideas over to a format that works well in whatever product you are choosing. For example, if you have a logo that you use and is part of your branding, you may want to put it on decals that you can hand out to your readers so that they can put the stickers on their cars, their refrigerators, their computers, or whatever else they choose. However, your logo may not translate well over to decals, especially if you want to have a smaller decal. The customer service or design department will be able to help you figure out how to simplify your logo so that it's readable. 

If you are an independent author or a book blogger, you depend on people to read your work so that you can pay your bills. That means that people need to know who you are. There are a variety of ways that you can do that.