We Love Bookmarks: Reason #5

For the writer: It lets you send your fans home with your brand.

When you give someone your bookmark, you’re making a connection. Even if the interested party doesn’t buy your book, and even if that person isn’t even your fan (yet) and just dropped by your table for a piece of the chocolate you have out, or perhaps the roll of shiny gold Autographed by the Author stickers sitting in front of you caught her eye, or maybe she was just walking by but you said “Hi” — even then, if you hand that person a bookmark, you’re sending her (or him) home with something with your name on it. Even better, it’s something that will get used, or at least seen again, even if just by getting tucked into a book on the nightstand’s to-read stack, or simply by looking too pretty to throw away immediately (as so many do), it might get tossed in with a pile of mail, or onto a desk, or into a purse — some place where it will be seen again.

Also, think of all the times you have met someone in line at a supermarket, or on the plane, or in a restaurant where the tables are quite close together and the kids are spilling over. When you carry some bookmarks on you, you can hand this newly-met person a bookmark. Now you know that this branded reminder of you and your book has gone home with this potential reader.

And when they visit your website they’ll already feel comfortable because it’s in the same design as the bookmark you gave them. Hopefully that comfort will carry them through clicking on your order links!

Check out some other reasons to love bookmarks!