Bonus content has become almost a requirement for authors these days. It’s one of the easiest and lowest cost ways to promote a book. It can also be very daunting if you get to the point where you are trying to promote your book and you didn’t think of this beforehand!

I am personally a big proponent for the idea that your bonus content should be something that is created alongside the process of creating the book, not before or after, and here are a few ideas that I’ve used before, and some that have worked for other authors.

Sketches

Does your creation process involve doodling or drawing sketches of anything involved with the story? Keep all of those! It’s a great insight into the behind the scenes process and, if your audience likes them, you can always clean then up or hire someone to create a nicer version of them to release as art.

Mood boards

If you need to put together a mood board or collect images for inspiration for your stories, that would be a fantastic thing to share with your audience. You can turn it into collages and give a little explanation on what about it inspires you. It doesn’t have to be long, it just needs to be something that reflects your process and give some insight into the story to draw the audience in.

Deleted scenes

The things that could have been! Deleted scenes are a fantastic way to thank your audience for checking out your work by giving them a look at the things that didn’t make it. This could be an alternate ending that you decided didn’t work, a scene that was just unnecessary, or something that you threw in because you just really wanted to throw a fridge at something. Audiences like to see the things that could have been and it’s good to keep anything you may want to get rid of. Just in case.

Stuff that didn’t make it in

If you do a lot of worldbuilding or if you have a lot of ideas that just never seemed to make it to the final story, tell your audience about it! Even if it’s just notes, it’s an interesting thing to put into a newsletter, a blog post, or something that is just for your audience that can give them a bit more insight into the wider world of the story beyond the fiction that they already enjoy.

What are some kinds of bonus content that you enjoy?