So I’ve talked about some pro­mo­tional things that have and haven’t worked for me this week. Today, I thought that I’d share a few quick tips that have helped me along the way:

1. Ask­ing for dis­counts: I use the same com­pany to print all my book­marks. A while back, I asked one of the reps if I could get some kind of dis­count since I had used their ser­vices so much. She put me on her pre­ferred cus­tomer list and now gives me a small dis­count every time I put in an order for new book­marks. It’s not a huge dis­count, but it saves me a lit­tle when it comes to ship­ping costs for the bookmarks.

So don’t be afraid to ask some­body for a dis­count. The worst thing they can do is just say no.

2. Rewards cards: Authors buy lots of office sup­plies — envelopes, rub­ber bands, printer ink, books. So sign up for a rewards card at your local office sup­ply store or book chain. I know some places like Office Depot will give you a cou­ple of bucks (I think it’s $3) towards a gift/rewards card for every printer car­tridge that you recy­cle. I usu­ally buy enough ink alone to get a gift card every quar­ter with at least $10 on it, which I use to help pay for color copies or envelopes or what­ever I need at that par­tic­u­lar time. It’s not a huge sav­ings, but every lit­tle bit helps.

3. Become an affil­i­ate: If you’re an author, make sure that you are an affil­i­ate with at least one of the major book­sellers or a good inde­pen­dent store. I’m an Ama­zon affil­i­ate. That means that every time some­one clicks on one of my book links, goes to Ama­zon, and buys the book, I get a com­mis­sion of a few cents. Again, it’s not a lot, but a few times a year, I get an Ama­zon gift card, which I can use to buy books for give­aways or whatever.

4. Find some­one local to do the work: If you need to have some­thing done (like cre­at­ing a Web site) that you just don’t know how to do, try to find some­one local who does. Look in the yel­low pages or con­tact one of your local col­leges and see if you can hire some­one in your area to do the job. They might just be cheaper than try­ing to find a Web site or graphic designer online. A col­lege stu­dent might design a site for you for a class project or just to be able to put it on their resume. It never hurts to ask.

5. Do the work your­self: I do a lot of my work myself — every­thing from design­ing book­marks to stuff­ing envelopes to book­ing ads. Yeah, it’s mostly grunt work, but it needs to be done — and I am far too cheap to pay peo­ple to stuff envelopes when I can do it myself.

So there you have it. Some final thoughts on book pro­mo­tion. Got ques­tions? Ask them in the comments.