Creating Author Swag

What's your favourite swag to collect?

I am attending the Wild Out West book signing in May as a signing author. If you haven’t got your ticket yet, they are selling out fast, so make sure you get one soon. It’s going to be at the Esplanade Hotel, Fremantle, WA which is a fantastic venue.

Even though it’s still two months away, I started thinking about what swag to take, and how to set up my table. I realise there are a lot of people who don’t think this far ahead, but with working full-time and potentially needing to design/order/make things, I wanted to be prepared.

I went through my analysis from last year’s event and discovered my magnetic bookmarks had been pretty popular. Not so much the ones with my covers on them (sigh!) but the ones I did with funny bookish sayings on them. So I decided to make some more.

Canva is a great tool for this as there are a bunch of graphics I can use, and it also suggests different fonts which go well together and I’m not great with choosing fonts. So after a bit of searching to find some fun quotes, and a little bit of design work I came up with three new quotes to go along with those from last year. The bottom three are the new ones and to be honest, I’m actually quite thrilled with how they turned out.

Which one is your favourite? Or do you have a quote you’d love to get on a bookmark? I can always make more!

I do love a good craft project and these took me a few hours to complete. I made six of each and now I just need to figure out the best way of displaying them on the day, so readers can choose their favourite.

I also have some stickers and a few other swag items left over from previous signings that I’ll add to the table as well. What kind of swag do you like collecting at these kinds of events?

Now I need to turn my attention to designing a new banner and some signage for the table. Is there anything that annoys you about tables at book signings? Any information you wish was easily available? What do I need to make sure I include? I’m always trying to improve my display.

If you are attending Wild Out West, make sure you pre-order if you want to get any of my books, because I’ll have limited stock on the day.

I hope to see you there!