How to Make Your Mark and Get a Dollar Deal
Do your book sales shout that you’re invisible? Even after you spent all that money advertising, setting up at book fairs, and slipping your books into the Little Free Book kiosks?
If you’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’re not a celebrity and need to make your handle memorable, try this:
I, being of non-celebrity status, have been making my mark by gifting snack bags to the unsung heroes I meet daily… and… it’s working. To stand out from the crowd, you have to be doing something different. I am becoming memorable with snack bags.
Who’d a thunk? Snack bags. Why snack bags, you ask?
Three reasons I give away snack bags:
- Unsung heroes like delivery drivers, postal workers, nurses, and clerks need to know they are appreciated.
- Grab and go snacks can be the saving grace against dehydration and exhaustion – literally.
- They can be shared.
Who doesn’t remember the time a customer gave them a useful gift?
Here’s what an Alexie Linn snack bag looks like today:
- A white #6 paper bag with an Alexie Linn label plastered on the front that contains:
- A lunch-size bag of a salty snack, like Cheez-its
- A few mini–Tootsie Rolls
- A cold beverage like water or Capri-Sun
- In season, I add an orange or an apple
What’s also in the snack bag?
- An imprinted fridge magnet touting Alexie Linn books
- A coaster with the same imprint
- A sample short story (like a prequel novelette for a series) and bookmarks – also with the Alexie Linn imprint
I hand a snack bag to each delivery person that brings me something – like, but not limited to, Amazon, FedEx, and UPS delivery drivers. I tell each one that the snack bag is to show my appreciation for them. Which it is.
But what if they are getting more than one bag? They can leave extras in the break room or pass it on to anyone else.
Am I making my mark? My sales say ‘Yes!’ These are advertising dollars well spent. I let the snacks do the talking.
What else does the talking? A great deal! One you can only grab here and now. And here’s one just for you as a reader of this email.
Click the link below to snag The Personal Transformation of Queenie: A Joan Freed Life-Changing Mystery and Adventure eBook for just 99 cents with the code. It’s all about the code.

Two women lay sprawled in front of my truck. They are very dead. Queenie sits like a statue on the passenger side of my vintage Chevy pick-up looking like the circus fat lady that she thinks she is – but she’s not laughing. I am on sabbatical in the Kaibab National Forest, feeding my own free spirit with life changing time by myself, much needed and anticipated after my last exhausting coaching case.
I know none of these women, but the two dead ones seem to have known me because they have magically materialized near each of my camps for a couple of seasons now. I met Queenie last evening and was simply lending a hand – or, in this case my truck and nutritional expertise – to a woman in temporary need. Our less than 24-hour kinship was an uncomplicated ‘women helping women’ moment – I thought.
While this could be a wearisome story of murder and mayhem, it isn’t. It’s the story of how one woman’s life changing personal transformation had a ripple effect in solving a cold case and enriching personal growth.
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