Ironically, I hate postcards.

Not the antique ones I collect and use as the basis for my upcoming POSTCARDS anthology; I hate the postcards comic publishers use to promote their books. Can’t stand them. Can’t stand the philosophy that they’re cheap to print so therefore they must be good; guys showing up at cons with a stack of five hundred postcards, handing them out, leaving 100 on a table near the entrance.

You see people grab them; throw them in their backpack, never to be seen again. What can you really put on a postcard? A picture, a cheesy tagline and “Coming June 2007”? On the back, you can put order numbers for your other books as if:

• Anyone knows what they’re about;

• Anyone knows what to do with an order number

Unfortunately, besides candy, this is one of the only things Con-goers are taking away from a lot of booths, a postcard that says nothing about your book. And somehow, a lot of us find this to be effective marketing.

Now, I’m not saying you need to make a catalog. If you have a lot of books and you’re doing a show like the Book Expo America, then sure, a catalog is a great idea. But if you have a couple of books and you want something that folks who seem interested can take home with them -- something that tells them all the information they’d need to know about your books and were to get them -- use a brochure.

That’s right. A brochure.

Despite how ugly and businesslike that word may sound, it’s an incredibly effective way to promote your company.

“But Jason,” you may ask, “aren’t brochures expensive to print?”

I’ll use OverNightPrints.com, the place where I get all of my business cards and brochures made up, to answer that question for you.

On OverNightPrints.com, 500, full-color, double-sided postcards cost $89.95 plus shipping. Not a bad deal. I understand some places might be even cheaper but I wouldn’t know; I never went comparison-shopping for postcard prices, because I firmly believe that no matter how cheap you get them it’s a pointless investment.

On OverNightPrints.com, 500, full-color, double-sided brochures cost $159.95 plus shipping. That’s almost double the amount; is a pitch for you book really worth that much?

Yes.

And if you don’t believe that, the fact that you can pitch four books comfortably on a single brochure makes it even better. If you needed to get 500 copies of four different postcards to promote your four books, that would end up costing you $359.80. And you’re still not getting a real pitch in; you’re just getting a teaser image and a tagline.

So, much like I did last week, I’m going to talk you all through my design for the POSTCARDS brochure I’ll be showing and handing out at SDCC.

Overall design was easy: postcard scrapbook. It has a tri-fold design so that when it’s folded up all you’ll see is the logo and tagline across the front, and the spiral binding on the bag with half postcards displayed; no text. Nice, strong design.

The final outer flap has the contact info and copyright information as well as some teaser images. This is the first flap the person will see when they open the brochure so I want to make sure they know who’s presenting this to them and how to get in touch with me.

The inside flap has teaser art from four artists showing the different styles that’ll be present in the final product. The first postcard has the short pitch that tells what the book is about and how it came to be. Concise, and effective.

The second postcard lists 15 creators (although you’re only seeing 4 for now). All of them are recognizable names to most folks; a nice sample of the book’s talent to let people know this is a serious project.

The third postcard is the promo piece Matt Kindt did for the Comic Book Resources feature. In case someone is just lazily opening it, hopefully they’ll recognize the image of Harvey Pekar and realize that the book has some serious talent in it. I love Pekar’s work, but from a marketing perspective, I love the fact that a lot of people know what he looks like. I plan on using that to my advantage whenever I can.

The fourth postcard brings it all together and spells it out for the person reading the brochure: this book is going to be the best book released next year. Period.

Simple, effective; the kind of handout someone will actually want to look at.

I’m going to put forth the same offer I did last week (that no one took me up on): tell us about your book and, as a group, we’ll design a brochure for it. So, let’s get to it.