Regular readers of my blog know that I have been very honest about my publishing journey, starting with my very first post The First Cut is the Deepest. Part of that journey has required marketing, something I had virtually no experience with before embarking on this venture. If I’m being perfectly honest, it’s my least favorite part of being an author, but I recognize that it’s a necessary part, and I’ve tried any number of things from guesting on other blogs to Goodreads and other giveaways.
What I’ve discovered is this: Regardless of the platform, there’s the good and the not so good. [An example of the not-so-good would be the time the guy who won a paperback copy of The Hanged Man’s Noose immediately turned around and tried to sell it on Amazon as a signed author copy.] But this post is about my Facebook Release Day Party, held August 21st on my Facebook Author page. I’d never hosted a FB party before, but my publisher, Imajin Books, was keen on the idea, and so I referred a lot to this post by author Kristina Stanley when I was setting it up. Here’s what I learned:
Advance Preparation
The first step was to pick a date and time. I decided on the actual release date of Skeletons — August 21 — and the time as 3 to 5 p.m. EST. You can’t please everybody in every time zone, so I went with what worked best for me.
The next step was to contact other authors via my various Yahoo groups (Sisters in Crime – Guppy Branch, Short Mystery Fiction Society, other Imajin authors, as an example) to see if any of them would be willing to donate an eBook copy of one of their titles. I suggested eBooks, as this keeps the cost affordable for authors. This was a definite “Good.” I had several authors offer (so many, in fact, that I had to turn some down). In the end, I had 20 authors, plus me, donating eBooks as prizes. You can see the list of authors here.
That “Good” turned out to be too much of a good thing. There was no way I could reasonably expect to giveaway 20 books individually in two hours, while trying to help promote those authors at the same time. I created an Excel spreadsheet with the authors’ names, email address, book title, genre, and decided to “bundle” the books. For example, the “Colorful” bundle included Blood Red Homicide by Gail Baugniet and The Blue Diamond by Lynn Franklin. A “Short Story” bundle included collections by Terrie Farley Moran, B.K. Stevens, and Conda V. Douglas.
Once I’d done that, I added a blurb about each book to the spreadsheet, as well as a trivia question and answer (these I got from Amazon). The idea was that folks would answer the trivia question for a chance to win — but they’d also visit the author’s book page. I also created a folder of book covers.
At this point I was feeling pretty smug. My spreadsheet had all the information I needed and my folder had all the book covers. I then proceeded to create posts on Amazon, scheduled for December 25th (so as not to inadvertently post before the party). Each post included information on the bundle and the book covers, with the authors tagged in the post. Here comes the bad. The Events page does not allow you to use pre-prepared posts. Unfortunately, I figured that out AFTER I’d created all of them! I was, however, able to post a detailed description of the event, which I did about two weeks in advance.
The next pre-event step included getting a banner made to use on Facebook and on my website as a promo. I tried to do this on Canva, but couldn’t seem to come up with anything professional. I hired a graphic artist on Fiverr, and was very pleased with the result ($5US).
The final step was to send out invitations. Facebook limits invitations to friends, and caps at 500. I was told to send out about a week in advance, and that timing seemed to work. I also posted the banner on Facebook in various groups, and on Twitter.
Event Day
My plan was to post one bundle every 10-15 minutes, followed by individual posts about each book. I used my previously scheduled posts and copy and pasted them (I still had to add the photos, but at least I didn’t have to rewrite them). If I was doing this again, I’d make a word document with each post. Simpler to copy and paste!
Things went well for the first 30 minutes or so, but quickly went south. It was hard to keep up with posting, commenting, selecting winners — and I’d neglected to pin my “Welcome” thread to the top and so completely forgot about it. Somewhere along the way, my earlier party posts stopped showing up. To this day, they remain frozen in cyberspace, completely inaccessible. That is a definite “Bad” and to my mind, a real failing in the Facebook party platform.
The Results
The purpose of a Facebook Release Day Party is, of course, promotion. Did it work? Probably. By the end of the day, Skeletons in the Attic was #2 as a Hot New Release: Psychics (ahead of Stephen King and next to Heather Graham) and #7 as a Hot New Release in International Mystery and Crime.How much these results had to do with the party and how much had to do with my pre-sale promotion and release day blogs is difficult to measure. I do know that of the 249 people I invited, only 39 people attended, and several of those were the authors who donated books.
Would I do it again? I don’t know. Definitely not without a helper, someone to post while I replied to comments. I’ve also been told by other authors that the first Facebook party you host gets the most attendees; some authors I know have had as few as 14 guests, and 20 seems to be about the average. There’s also the amount of prep work involved, which as you can see from the beginning of this post, was considerable. And the whole “frozen in cyberspace” snafu. So I’m leaning strongly towards “no” and will probably look for an alternate Release Day strategy for my next book. That won’t be until sometime in 2017. Who knows what the next hot thing will be by then? I suppose only time will tell.
Thank you Dorothyanne! YOU are amazing!
Great information as usual, Judy. I didn’t “attend” your launch because I was madly reading your book – finished it today and loved it. Reviews to follow. You are amazing.
Thank you, Sheri. I suppose it’s true what they say: The harder I work, the luckier I get.
Great insights, Barbara. Thanks for sharing.
For the only Facebook party I hosted, I hired a personal assistant to actually run the party. She did a great job. I find that the joint parties work better — several authors host the party, and it takes place over a longer period, whether a whole day or several. More people get invited, more people attend, and sometimes the comments are a hoot! (In fact, the comments were the best part of some parties I’ve attended). I’ve heard complaints that the same people attend over and over, looking for freebies–however, if enough of them show up often enough, there’s a chance of hooking a new reader or several. Others say Facebook parties have had their day, which may be true. What’s next? No idea.
Wow, Judy! Thanks for sharing this information. All the hard work paid off by getting your book noticed. I think my link was in cyberspace as I tried to connect. So proud of your accomplishments!
Thank you Michael, for your good wishes. It was a lot more work that I expected, to be honest. I think, had I known, I might have hidden under that rock with you!
Thanks Grace. My hope is that by sharing my mistakes, especially, others might avoid them!
Wow, all that prep work makes me want to go hide under a rock! Writing is hard enough (as we all know), but then the real work begins. Kudos to you, and I hope the book is a huge success! 🙂
–Michael
Hi, Judy — Thank you for this post and for your willingness to share your experiences so that the rest of us can learn from them. Sorry that I missed the party. Good luck with your recent release.
Hi Victoria. I like the idea of a launch week. In fact, I like it so much I just checked, and it looks like you can set up a multi-day event. This, I believe, would offer more exposure for authors donating books, and be less chaotic. There would still be a lot of prep work, but I’d save myself some time by not duplicating some of my efforts. An Excellent suggestion and one I will seriously consider in future. Thank you!
Thank you Jane. I know I could only invite friends, and not pages. Perhaps that is why you could only respond as a friend. I’m glad it appeared to be going well, as honestly, midway through I felt as if I were on a roller coaster going off the rails! Thanks for all your support, including the copy of What She Fears.
The promotion leading up to the party and this very helpful post about its mechanics also spread the word and may have a longer tail than the two-hour window. I thought it was a fun idea, but scrolling through the posts had an inkling of how much work it was! Do you think a launch “week” with a bundle of books given away every day might be easier to manage and attract people who drop in outside your fixed time?
Hi Judy, thanks for sharing this analysis. From where I was sitting, it looked like it went really well. Lots of comments, some good interaction. If that helps. I learned that while I could post a new comment on the event page using my Author FB page, when I replied to comments it came from my personal FB page, no matter what I tried. If anyone has a fix for that, it would be helpful! But other than that, I watched the party, read the posts, and it seemed like a great success. And your rankings support that! Congratulations!