How To Make Publicity Posters For Your Book (Part 1)

As a self-publisher, I find myself completely responsible for publicizing my books.  That means establishing a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, and anywhere else I can think of that will get the word out about my work.  It is truly a daunting task.  However, one thing that has been fun is creating publicity posters for my novel Zombie Complex and posting them wherever I can find eyeballs to read them.

Since I have a little artistic talent and a low budget, I made my first posters using the LibreOffice Impress.  It's the presentation software that comes with the free open source office suite LibreOffice.  I simply added the first book cover I had made with the online cover creator, Canva, and incorporated other photographs that I had taken.  Then, I printed out my posters, cut them into various sizes, and posted the them in local apartment complexes and other places where they might be seen by potential readers.

Publicity Posters Created with LibreOffice Impress

In some cases, I just made the posters in plain text.  All I wanted to do was catch a reader's eye and pique their curiosity.  I also exported the posters to JPEG files so that I could cut them up and use them on Twitter.

 While these initial posters were fun, at least one Twitter user objected to my use of Comic Sans as a font.  This led me to seek out alternative mechanisms for creating posters.

This led me to revise my graphics and make them a tad more sophisticated.  I found several Apps for my phone that were perfect for creating quick publicity posters!  I'll cover those in my next post.

Welcome to Worlds of Pain

Welcome to my new blog Worlds of Pain.  My name is Alexander Z Pain and I am a writer.  I've recently published two works of dystopian zombie apocalypse fiction: a novel Zombie Complex - The Battle for Chattahoochee Run and a short story "Dog Walk of the Apocalypse."

Zombie Complex is the story of an Atlanta-area apartment complex during the Zombie Apocalypse.  While many residents flee onto overcrowded highways when zombies come to town, many residents of Chattahoochee Run Apartments have no where to go.  The residents themselves come from different worlds.  The main characters, Jake and Karen, are American IT workers who thanks to outsourcing don't have the finances to get very far in an evacuation.  Most residents are Indian guest workers who have good American IT jobs, but have no "bug out" location available.  Can the Americans and the Indians work together to survive?

If you are a looking for a shorter read, check out my short story "Dog Walk of the Apocalypse."  Set in the same world as Zombie Complex on the eve of a full-fledged zombie apocalypse, "Dog Walk of the Apocalypse" focuses on a first encounter between our hero and his dog and a single zombie.  It also shows why civilization just might crumble faster than you might think.

I really hope you enjoy my work and, if you do, I would deeply appreciate any reviews you can leave on Amazon.com.  As I move forward with the blog, I will provide some behind the scenes insight to my own work and I will touch upon some works of other indie authors that you might like.  Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy Worlds of Pain!