Monday 28 November 2016

Cyber launches: how to organise them and how to attend them



Why a cyber launch?

Cyber launches can be great for inviting to you to your book launch a lot of people who are not geographically near to you ,who are pressed for time or who don’t like travelling.   

Logisitcs

Use Evenbrite or Facebook Events to create the invite. Use your own time zone but make sure that is clear to everyone. You can make the event all day long or just restrict it to a couple of hours. If the later, a good time is 6.30 p.m. to 8.30 p.m. Invite all of your friends and put it on your Facebook timeline and on Twitter at least once a day, at different times of the day. If you use Eventbrite you’ll need to create a Facebook page for the event as well. This page will remain active after the event. If you use a Facebook event, you might still like to create a page as well for post-party discussions and the party anyway is a great opportunity to invite people to like your page.

Prepare in advance

Get as much ready as you can in advance. Save all of your links into a file and all of your files into a folder. You can actually start posting ahead of the event. Whet your guests appetite.  

Some activities:

Pub Quiz

Make up about half a dozen questions to do with the book. They shouldn’t be only found in the book – you may want to offer the book as a prize. They can be to do with the background of the book or easily look-up-able in the Look Inside bit on Amazon.
Here is an example for Salford Stories:

Pub quiz questions:
1. Look at the cover of the book. Where is this photo taken from?
2. Can you name a story that is to do with water?
3. Can you name a pub mentioned in the book? Hint: you don’t need to have read it yet.
4. Salford always was a very forward-looking city. It was the first to provide three public amenities. What were they?
5. Easy one now. Famous painter from Salford. Hint: look at the pictures in the "Dirty Old Town" video. And Salford's theatre?
6. Here's a tricky one: why is the Ship Canal called the Manchester Ship Canal when most of it's in Salford? There are many acceptable answers.
Notice how number 6 is a tie-breaker?   

Notice also how there is also a subtle call to action here. The link on the title of the book takes them straight to the Amazon page.

If you’re working on an anthology, encourage each contributor to offer one prize and one question. Suggestions for prizes: another of the writer’s books, stationery, an object to do with the theme of the story, a service.

Raffle

Assign each guest a number as they come into the “room”. About twenty minutes before the end use a random number generator to pick a number. Again, if working with an anthology, you should be able to get a lot of prizes.  

Entertainment

  • Find music that goes with your book.
  • Find excerpts of films that are similar
  • Post a few extracts of your text. Imagine doing one five minute reading every hour.
  • Give some back ground to the book – just as you would if you were chatting live at a party.

Food and drink

This sounds a little crazy, I know. But yes, post up pictures of the food and drink you would like to offer at this party. It helps to set the mood and you never know if you put up a picture of something your viewer fancies and they go and find that or something similar, they might be more inclined to stay longer and buy a copy of the book. Take care as always about copyright. Free pictures are available from Pixa Bay    

Call to action

Make it easy for your visitors to buy the book. Avoid “Buy Now” buttons though you can have one of those on your Facebook page. Perhaps have a pinned notice at the top of your Facebook event or page linking to Amazon and every time you mention the book create another hyperlink.

How to be a host

Try to respond to every comment. If it gets hectic, at least “like” comments. If it’s slow, try to post something new at least every ten minutes for a short launch, every twenty for minutes for a longer one. You can also post on your Facebook timeline and your Twitter feed reminding your followers of the invite.

Give a good sense of starting and ending the party just as you would in real life.   

How to be a guest

You don’t need to be there the whole of the time but do pop in. If you intend to buy your friend’s book, this is probably a good time to do it. Seeing the sales go up will boost her morale. You can set your Facebook to notify you of all messages and you can get on with something else, only responding to what really interests you. You can also of course take along a contribution to the food or drink. Again use Pixa Bay.   

Milk it

Make this a real opportunity to network. Invite your guests to sign up for your newsletter / mailing list. Do you have one? I recommend Mailchimp. The free account goes a long way and by the time you need to pay you can probably more than afford it.                   
       
Happy launching!


                  
A list of things to do once your

Wednesday 16 November 2016

A list of things to do once your book is out



PLR

Public Lending Right
Register your book for PLR.  Even if you’ve only written a chapter, you can get some PLR. Don’t forget to register for Irish PLR at the same time. 

ALCS

Author’s Licensing and Collecting Agency Register here. This can be very lucrative as well for any articles you have had published.  

Other web sites

Are you a member of a professional organisation such as the Society of Authors or the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Are you attached to a university and might they consider this research? 

CV and Publication list

Update this every time as you get out get new publications. It’s not a bad idea to keep your CV on Linked-in. Download a copy every time you update. 

Your own web site

Not got one yet? There are arguments that say you can have one before you’re published. Certainly as soon as you’re published you should have one. Weebly, one-com, Blogger and WordPress offer cheap / free solutions. You really want one that you can author yourself, though it’s a good idea to get advice form an expert when you set up the template. And do get a proper domain name.   

Set up a Facebook page

You might consider having one for you as an author and then a separate one for each book. Keep it going forever. Have a call to action button on the landing page i.e. a link to where visitors can buy the book.
Facebook reminds you if you haven’t been to your page for a while. 

Blog

Consider writing a blog if you don’t already. It might be about writing or it might be about your book. You might keep a blog for posting excerpts of your work. You might keep separate blogs for separate items – I do. You can also share posts with other bloggers and go on blog tours.            

Video

Make a book trailer for each publication. This is so easy with Windows Movie Maker. Post it on You Tube,  Take care not to use copyright material. Free pictures are available at Free Pics    and free music at Free Music Archive. 

Book Tweet  

You can get Book Buzzer  to tweet your book weekly or monthly. Make sure you put up plenty of ordinary friendly tweets to stop this seeming spammy.    

Author central

Register with Arthur Central. This is on Amazon and allows Amazon readers to find you

Postcards

Make postcards. Book covers look so good on a post card. Vista Print is a good option.   

More ideas




Thursday 3 November 2016

Some current marketing ploys



This is just snapshot of what we’re doing right now:

Imprints celebration

This takes place on 3 December and guys, WE’RE SOLD OUT. We’re meeting for two hours in a London pub. There will be a chance for attendees to buy books – though there will only be a limited amount there. Some folk will read from their work. We’ll all exchange contact details and marketing tips. We’ll also be giving some tips as publishers and talking about next year’s plans. We’re organising a big book swap as well.

Making a book trailer

I always enjoy doing this though I can’t do it for every book. I ask each contributor to provide a copyright-free image and a tagline. I put them together artistically and find some nice copyright free music. Anyone can do this using Windows Movie maker. Absolutely free images can be obtained from https://pixabay.com/ and free music from http://freemusicarchive.org. Many authors provide pictures they or friends and family have created themselves. This is often an even better solution.

Marketing checklist

We have a minimum checklist that every book goes through. We currently have six titles at various stages going through this. Next time I’ll post a tidied up version of this. Each book is at a slightly different stage.   

Marketing toolkit

This is for proactive authors who can arrange their own book tour. We’ll provide twenty books upfront free of charge. These can go through the till at the bookshop signing and we’ll invoice the bookshop. Then we’ll top up the number of books. It’s important to allow at least ten days between events for this to work, though we can discuss each case individually. At the end of the tour the author may buy the books at cost plus10% within one week of end of tour. Or they can hold on to them until they’ve sold them all and pay us back at normal author discount rate. This amount can even be allowed against royalties.

Cyber launch

We’re now trying to arrange this for each title. This can be quite fun and quite effective. More about this in another post. It can certainly be extremely rewarding with twenty or so authors working on it at the same time.

I need a time machine

There is never enough time to do it all. Always we end up doing what we can manage. And actually, I’m not even sure that a time machine will help all that much. We still all have only so many heartbeats and days on this earth. If we all pull together, though we can make it happen.