Monday, October 12th, 2015: YAY! Stickers!

Stickers, Buttons and Temporary Tattoos!

The New Fish Wielder Banner!

I got back to my office today, after a week of travel for work, to find that my test order of stickers for Fish Wielder had arrived! YAY! STICKERS! The stickers are of Brad, the talking Koi fish. I'm working with a place called StickerYou.com to print them. So far, I'm very happy with the results. I've already had a test run of tattoos made with the same design (also through StickerYou.com) and a test run of 1.5" buttons made with Thoral on them through a place called 24hourwristbands.com. All are looking pretty good so far--at least in my opinion. These tests are for promotional items that I'm intending to give away at book conventions and things in order to let people know that Fish Wielder is coming out next August and to get them excited so that they'll keep an eye out for the book as it gets closer to the publication date. I've never tried promoting something before it exists yet, so this is new to me. The owner of my publisher, Misty, of Fiery Seas, has been awesome about brain storming ideas with me, including things like "character cards" that will describe the central heroes and villains, and even a possible book trailer. Actually, one of my main "to dos" on my to do list for the week is to work on a script for the potential book trailer. In addition to the stickers, tattoos and buttons, I've also had a large format test poster run at Uprinting.com that I'm very happy with and a banner. The banner is for use at my first public appearance in support of the book. It looks gorgeous and I had it printed at a place called Vistaprint.com.

I'm going to share a booth with the Oregon Writer's Colony at OryCon 37, November 20-22nd in Portland, Oregon. This was set up by my sister-in-law, Rachelle, who is also a writer and works with the OWC. I am lucky to have a sister-in-law who pushes me to do things related to my book--like going to conventions and getting a publisher.

Actually, I'm starting to put together a small list of conventions and things I might be able to promote the book at. Here's what I've got so far:

OryCon
I'll have a table here from Nov 20th through 22nd , 2015


Newcon PDX (A convention for every flavor of nerd)
Still looking into whether or not I can do a panel or something--January 15th through January 17th, 2016.


Wizard World Comic Con Portland 2016
I'll probably just go to this. Not sure if there's a public appearance opportunity--February 19-20-21, 2016


2016 Northwest Publishing Conference
I've been invited to speak about the marketing plan and my relationship with my publisher on March 5th, 2016


Norwescon Seatac, WA
Again, not sure there's an appearance opportunity here, but it's from March 24-27th , 2016


Emerald City Comic Con (Seattle, WA)
Same again--this is a big one. Not sure if there's an appearance opportunity--April 7th through the 10th

One item I haven't found a good supplier for yet is T-shirts. I was working with a place called ooshirts.com for some Ts to promote my graphic novel The Helm. The ones they printed on white shirts worked out great, but I've been very unhappy with their work on dark and colored shirts. I ordered a couple of test prints of Fish Wielder T-shirts more than a month ago and they have yet to even send them. Meanwhile, dark shirts I've run for The Helm have been a disaster. I can't recommend Ooshirts unless you are working on white shirts, so I'm not even posting their link here.