Trading cards!

[GoldenMaia]

Has anyone here done the trading card thing? That is, made cards with your characters on them?

I've been seeing them more and more and was just curious what the feedback was.

I can't imagine people really collecting them but...I guess why not?

 

[49greg]

I don't know anything about trading cards, or care.

But, if I was single I would try to find several women to pose as some of my characters and include them into my stories.

But my wife wouldn't approve of me taking photos of nude or partly clothed women. Not even of her LOL.

Such pics could be used for trading cards. Ahhh, back in High School I thought being a Playboy photographer would be the ideal life.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Ahhh, back in High School I thought being a Playboy photographer would be the ideal life.

You do know they were all gay.

 

[Hypoxia]

Write period stories. Use period, public-domain images. Or use such images for modern stories that can bear a retro look. You can easily research what's PD in your jurisdiction. I can think of many old erotic drawings, paintings, and photos for trading-cards of my tales.

 

[OliviaM]

Edit: nevermind

 

[Handley_Page]

Are these "trading cards" the sort of things that we saw as children, many, many years ago, given away with, for example, cigarettes or similar ?.
I remember my Grandson going bonkers on Pokemon cards, bought at an exhorbitant price from the local sweet shop. Fortunately, he never quite got round to stealing or other crimes just to get them.
What put me off was that the Rules changed all too often, so I did not encourage him.

 

[Hypoxia]

Are you talking about physical trading cards, like to hand out at cons or something? Or virtual ones? I haven't seen this. Sounds interesting, though!

Virtual decks would be pretty easy. Merely waste much time with a grafix editor, shooping away.

Physical cards would merely ice that cake -- but why? Handing out at cons... sure, promote our LIT stories at pr0n cons. Or scatter them about to attract attention. Staple them to wooden phone poles in pedestrian areas -- I've seen the like all over art-town Bisbee AZ. Staple onto bulletin boards. Glue onto walls.

Or get serious: print double-sided 10- or 12-card decks on cardstock, shrink-wrap them, and sell on Etsy. Anonymity may be tricky there...

 

[lovecraft68]

Never trading cards, but for fun I printed some stock photo pics that I've used for covers, on high gloss paper at work and signed them for a couple of local people who've read some of my work.

 

[OliviaM]

Virtual decks would be pretty easy. Merely waste much time with a grafix editor, shooping away.

Physical cards would merely ice that cake -- but why? Handing out at cons... sure, promote our LIT stories at pr0n cons. Or scatter them about to attract attention. Staple them to wooden phone poles in pedestrian areas -- I've seen the like all over art-town Bisbee AZ. Staple onto bulletin boards. Glue onto walls.

Or get serious: print double-sided 10- or 12-card decks on cardstock, shrink-wrap them, and sell on Etsy. Anonymity may be tricky there...

That actually sounds awesome. I deleted my original question when I realized the logistics involved with promoting erotica. Sorry, didn't realize you were still answering it.

At a recent geek con, I did get some handouts from authors. One was a trading card for a character that the author signed. The cleverest handout I got was a card with artwork and a QR code that led to a page where you could download the first free chapter. Attached to this was a temporary tattoo with a symbol for one of the groups in the book. Pretty cute.

 

[lovecraft68]

That actually sounds awesome. I deleted my original question when I realized the logistics involved with promoting erotica. Sorry, didn't realize you were still answering it.

At a recent geek con, I did get some handouts from authors. One was a trading card for a character that the author signed. The cleverest handout I got was a card with artwork and a QR code that led to a page where you could download the first free chapter. Attached to this was a temporary tattoo with a symbol for one of the groups in the book. Pretty cute.

I did a fetish con last year with my BDSM book, but also had binders with pictures of all my covers and descriptions and separated by kink.

I sold the e-books for $2 and they paid through the app on the wife's I-phone and we would e-mail them whatever format they wanted from my lap top.

I gave away a bunch of extra copies of the covers signed, people seemed to get a kick out of it even though I'm a damned nobody.

There were three other erotica authors there-lets face it, what other con could you unabashedly sell smut books-but none had thought of the selling e-versions, they just had their print books.

Two told me they were stealing my idea for the one coming this year

Now I need another gimmick which I'm working on, one of my daughters friends who has done some modeling, dressed in a latex cat suit and posing as "Bad Kitty" from my novel Every Dog has its day. Pics of her signed by her and me

I think all the years in the comic trade show market helped with these ideas. My wife on the other hand said I'm half writer, half PT Barnum.

 

[OliviaM]

I think all the years in the comic trade show market helped with these ideas. My wife on the other hand said I'm half writer, half PT Barnum.

My perception as someone looking at this from the outside, and listening to a lot of authors (mainstream and otherwise) talk about all this on panels, is that you kind of have to be a showman these days in order to make money selling books. The alternative is finding a publisher who will do all of that for you. But even people making a very good living selling mainstream or genre fiction have to maintain a social presence and hit up cons and do a lot of marketing.

Is this the first time in history that authors have had to take on that role? Did Dickens regularly make appearances and write letters to fans in order to promote his books? Poe sold so little at times, I'm sure he would have LOVED to have a twitter account to reach readers directly.

It's funny you should mention comics, because webcomics is what I really wanted to do, and still want. I just realized I could produce work a lot faster by writing. A comic page takes forever to produce and no time at all to read.

To the OP: people might also like hand drawn stuff on cards, if you have any inclination to do that sort of thing. I know I like a lot of amateur work on tumblr and deviantart.

 

[GoldenMaia]

For example

Just as a: 'how about this?'

http://louisaedwards.com/tradingcards.html

or

http://www.selena-blake.com/extras/romance-trading-cards/


See?

It seems really fun in an immature sort of way. I love the concept of having cards with the heroes/lovers and cutie stuff on them. Maybe I'll see about connecting with some artists and make them. More for give-aways than selling. Seems like a good way to point people to the book or engage readers already hooked on your story.

 

[lovecraft68]

a bit off topic, but whenever I see trading cards I remember the hue and cry over the serial killer trading cards that came out quite a few years ago, totally tasteless.

I owned five full sets at one time

 

[sr71plt]

You do know they were all gay.

So, interesting, intelligent, and artistic.

 

[sr71plt]

Never trading cards, but for fun I printed some stock photo pics that I've used for covers, on high gloss paper at work and signed them for a couple of local people who've read some of my work.

I've given out gifts to family of mouse pads with my mainstream covers in a collage on them (not the erotica ones, of course).