Sorry, I tend to get over-excited by little things. However, yesterday was quite thrilling in that my shipment of 3,000 bookmarks arrived in California in preparation for the LA Times Festival of Books. Here’s a photo of the bookmarks sprawled across a random flat surface, courtesy of Daniel Mariano at Blackbird LSD:
Ain’t they bootiful? I’m still not sure if 3,000 bookmarks is way too much, or way too little. On the one hand, the Festival of Books attracts 200,000 people a year. On the other hand, 3,000 bookmarks is a lot of bookmarks. Let me find the other picture Daniel sent me … hang on …
See??? That’s a stupid amount of bookmarks right there. And yet I have a feeling they will all be snatched up long before the end of the weekend-long festival due to their extreme awesomeness.
Moving on.
I went through several designs before I landed on this one. My initial design was incredibly crowded, as you’ll remember from my previous post about bookmarks. Here’s the new design — you’ll have to decide for yourself if it’s an improvement or not:
Important note re: designing bookmarks — you have to leave a 1/8 inch “bleed” around the edges of the bookmark design, since this will be cut off when the bookmarks are printed.
This design is definitely much simpler, but it’s more in keeping with the simple, black and red theme of Imminent Danger’s cover. Plus, my hope is that when the bookmark is stuck in a book, the Imminent Danger title / “A YA sci-fi novel by Michelle Proulx” part will stick out the top of the book like a mini billboard for my book. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
My bookmarks, for anyone interested in bookmarks and printing and whatnot, was ordered from printrunner.com. The price was reasonable — it came out to $174.96 with tax and shipping — and the quality of the bookmarks looks to be pretty good. So if you’re in the States and looking for bookmark printing, check it out!
As for creating the bookmark itself, I used Inkscape, which is basically the free, glitchy younger cousin of Illustrator. It has lots of neat features and, fingers crossed, I will hopefully be able to design book covers using this program in the future.
This concludes my sales pitch / bookmark how to lesson of the day. Live long and prosper, fellow bloggerites.
Unrelated media of the day:
Fun with a big piano:
Michelle Proulx - Author 
Congrats on the bookmarks! Are you going to be in LA? When is the festival of books?
Thanks 🙂 I won’t actually be in LA, sadly — but Blackbird LSD (publicity company) will be representing me there, which is almost as good! I wish I could trek down there, but sadly plane tickets aren’t cheap and I don’t have twenty hours free to drive down there, lol. Also, I don’t have a car! Um … festival of books is mid April, around the 20th, I believe. Are you thinking of going?
It’s nearby and it involves a ton of books- sounds good to me. It’s too bad you can’t make it down in person.
I was seriously considering it, but … airfare … hotels … eek!
Those look really good. I think 3,000 is fine. Better to have too many than too few.
True! It’s not like it will be hard to get rid of bookmarks. Everyone loves bookmarks.
Very true.
They look great, Michelle. You’ll never have too many bookmarks. That sounds like a reasonable price. I wish I had 3000 rack cards for a convention I’m sending swag to. You have a good amount. Remember people will probably be picking up for their friends too.
Ah yes, excellent point. Now that I think about it, when I worked at a phone company’s booth back in September, we gave away tens of thousands of magnets over a week-long period. So 3,000 is probably not even close to being enough, lol.
I love the simpler design! Very effective and eye-catching.
Oh, good! That’s what I was hoping. The only person I actually showed them to before printing them was my mother, though, so it’s excellent to have an outside opinion 😀
Your mom obviously has impeccable taste. 🙂
HOW FUN!!!! they look AWESOME, Michelle!!!
I KNOW!!! 😀 Now to find a Canadian printer and get some for myself … hmm …
They look great! Congratulations!! 🙂
Thanks!!!
WOW – Well done, Michelle. They look fantastic! 😀
Huzzah!!! That’s what I was going for 🙂
I used a copy of Photoshop Elements that came bundled with the Wacom Tablet I bought a hundred and fifteen years ago or so to design my wife’s book cover. Where there is a will (and even slightly useful tools) there is a way!
Very true! If I hadn’t had Inkscape, I probably would have used Paint, although I don’t think it would have turned out quite as nicely 🙂
They look great, Michelle, and very smart thinking to put your book title at the top. I may have to copy that. I just ordered 50 sticky note pads from VistaPrint (had 50% off code), figured I will give them away to buyers and reviewers only as gifts.
Clever! I was thinking of doing something like that … like those magnetic clips, maybe? I’ll have to check my pockets and see if I can afford that though, lol. And feel free to copy the book title at top thing — I had the book title at the bottom of the bookmark and then I had this epiphany moment of “What the heck are you doing, silly girl? Put it at the top so it sticks out!!!” And thus, the bookmarks in their current configuration 😀
Smartie pants
Those are some gorgeous bookmarks! Love the design!
Thanks!!! 🙂
I love your bookmarks! I think you should do a small print run of Immin Dang bookmarks for your close friends, family and WP bloggers. 😉 They will be collector’s items one day.
Hahaha I’m tempted to do that!
Those bookmarks look fantastic. And you can never have too many, really. If anything you can use them yourself and place them strategically in the books you’re reading, so that when you go out they’ll hopefully catch the eye of a potential reader. 🙂
Ah, very true! I figure bookmarks will also be a lot easier to hand out to random people than business cards. I mean, what question are you more likely to say yes to — “Hey, want a free bookmark?” or “Hey, want my business card?”
I’ve think I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: AWE…SOME!!!! 😉
Woo!!!
Love these! They’re really eye catching!
Thanks!!!!!!
The bookmark is awesome!!!
Thanks 😀
For a brief moment there (until I read the earlier comments) I thought you might actually be making your way down to L.A.! That would’ve been awesome! But alas, it is not to be so. Bummer. 😦 Anyway, I’m just minutes from USC. I’ll definitely head down there on Saturday. If I can find the booth, I’ll pick up your book. Then I just have to figure out how to get it autographed! 😛
Lol that’s the tricky part, isn’t it? Apparently there’s something called book plates, which are basically stickers that the author signs and then sends in the mail to a reader so they can stick it in the front of their book. Thoughts?
Hmm… sounds like a cool alternative. But there’s something about a wet signature on the inside cover or first page that I don’t think is the same with a book plate. It would kind of feel like having my picture taken next to a cardboard cut out of a celebrity. lol
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too. Although it’s the only solution I can really see for long-distance signatures, short of a reader sending their book in the mail to an author … or the author trekking across the continent for a book signing 😀