Tips for Writers: Affordable Bookmarks

The more time I spend on social media in the author/writer space, the more I realize how much we can help each other. I’m far from having all the answers, but what I do know, I will share. Let’s start with something that a lot of authors need and not all believe they can afford: bookmarks.

PLEASE READ BEFORE CONTINUING: I have no affiliation with and am not endorsing a particular product, site or app. The following reflects my experience with the sites mentioned. Yours may be vastly different and you use them at your discretion and full responsibility.

Affordable bookmarks start with a free or low cost design. I’m not taking the time to list every design program, just the two I have experience with.

Canva has a free option you can use to design the front and back of your bookmarks and allows you to save your graphics in most used formats. I have the Professional option (which costs money) because there are more available fonts and images with the correct rights usage to use on things like bookmarks and social media graphics.

Bookbrush is another powerful design program that has a free option. While I haven’t played around much with Bookbrush, two of my author besties use it all the time. I plan to use it for covers for the box sets I’m bringing out next year because of their super easy to use templates. Yes, they also have templates for bookmarks.

You might be thinking, why design my bookmark in another program, when I can just utilize VistaPrint’s design tool? My answer is: price.

Unless they are having a major discount, VistaPrint’s prices for bookmarks are not competitive. (Note: they have great quality and offer an array of promotional items that are really useful. I use them for other things, like full color business cards and vinyl banners. Just not bookmarks.)

And that takes us to the best option I’ve found for high quality, low priced bookmarks with a reasonable turn around time for delivery.

That is Bizay. You can order as few as 100 bookmarks and those 100 bookmarks will cost the same as 5 at VistaPrint. The difference on 500 bookmarks is astonishing. Regular price (as of writing this) at Bizay is about $25 and at VistaPrint for the same number it is $190. That’s a big difference to a budget conscious author like me. You could pay for a year of Canva Pro with what you save on 500 bookmarks. I’m just sayin’.

Bizay usually gives a 20% discount on first orders and their bookmarks go on sale frequently as well. (Right now those 500 bookmarks are on sale for $15.80.) They do charge shipping (although sometimes it is free with a promotion), but I found it to be reasonable.

Again, I’m not listing all the different options out there for bookmarks, just the one I settled on after doing a lot of research. To date, I’ve ordered four different bookmarks through Bizay and am happy with all of them.