Last week on PBW’s blog, she had a post that started out with this…

“…walk around a busy resort town dressed as a character from your novel, handing out promotional postcards.”

Don’t laugh. I just read this marketing suggestion in a serious article about publicizing a novel. And I can name more than one author who has dressed up as their protag for a book jacket photo. Which always cracks me up, especially when the big namers do it, so I do hope the tradition continues.

Dress up as which one?  Kendall from Hunting the Hunter won’t work.  She was skinny, sexy and a bad ass.  I can be plenty mean, but I can’t really call myself a bad ass.  And I haven’t been skinny since I was like….12?  Sexy?  Nope.  Not me either.

Dress up as an elf?  No.  Shades of LOTR type fan conventions.  Yes, I love LOTR but dressing up?  I’ll pass.

Hmmmm… a dragon, not doable.  But it would be cool if I could actually breathe fire.

A vampire…Kendall’s not the only vamp I’ve written, but I don’t see me dressing up as a vamp that would be recognized as a vamp.  I don’t tend to dress mine in broody, dark clothes, cloaks, leather…unless it suits them to do so at the time.  Malachi from The Hunters series likes to wear a shirt that says BITE ME and that, I can see me wearing.

One of the things about RT that doesn’t really appeal to me is the dressing up.  I’m happy in jeans and a shirt.  I don’t like gowns, I don’t like leather.  When I’m signing, I wear jeans, a camisole and a blazer of some sort.  I definitely don’t see myself dressing up as one of my characters and accosting people on the streets of Gatlinburg.

I actually hate to mess with promo.  I hardly ever take out ads in RT.  I rarely run banners.  I buy bookmarks because people ask for them, but I rarely make the effort to send them out unless a reader emails me requesting them.  I do belong to a couple of blogs where I post new release stuff, do interviews with other authors, and I do belong to a few yahoo groups, but the only group I talk much on is mine.

When it comes down to it, I’d rather write my books than talk about them.  Since I’m doing okay the ways things are, I’ll stick with my game plan.  If it’s not broke…don’t fix it, right?

If you’re a writer, what are your feelings on promo?

If you’re a reader…what catches your eye and appeals to you?  After all, writers are in the promo game to catch YOUR eye.