Ever Done A Book Cover Reveal Promotion?

A Cover Reveal is a rarely used promotion that can alert an author's old audience to the release of a new book or drum up interest among brand new readers--for a new book or a debut author!  So I was excited that Margaret Mizushima accepted when I asked her to share with my subscribers. I met her through my agent Terrie Wolf of AKA literary, the most nurturing agent and woman I know.  Please notice that this Margaret's first novel and she uses Twitter and Facebook for this promotion but it could be adpated to include other social networks or even all of those you belong to.

 

Frugal Book Promotion

An Idea for Book Cover Reveal

By Margaret Mizushima

 
There are many opportunities to drum up interest in your book prior to its launch, and the cover reveal is an important one. This is the first time your potential readers can see the artwork that captures the tone and other details of your story. My editor, Nike Power of Crooked Lane Books, came up with a plan to create excitement for the cover reveal of my first book: KillingTrail: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery. I’ll outline her idea below while weaving in my own ideas and suggestions.

Months ahead of time: If you haven’t already set up a Twitter and Facebook account, do so at once. Both are available at no charge. Go to Twitter.com, choose your Twitter handle (mine is @margmizu and Carolyn’s is @FrugalBookPromo), and get started. Your goal should be to develop follower connections with whom you can exchange tweets, retweets, and help promote each other’s work. To build your network, retweet for other authors and followers, look for pinned tweets on their profile pages to Retweet, and participate in group Shout-Outs, such as #WW (Writer Wednesday) and #FF (Follower Friday). This may sound complicated at first, but the author network on Twitter is quite active and friendly, and it becomes simple in time; and it’s fun to meet like-minded people from all over the world. Create a list of followers that you can develop friendships with and who are receptive to exchanging tweets; go into this list once a week or so and retweet the pinned tweet at the top of their profile page. Many times, they will return the favor. Be polite, say please and thank you, and welcome others into your network. They will want to participate.

Set up your page on Facebook as well; this can be a personal profile or an author profile. Authors typically have one and sometimes both. The personal profile allows you to choose your connections by asking for or accepting friend requests, while the author page connects you to readers when they click on the Like button on your page. Both are useful.

You can find author friends to grow your networks by researching members in the professional writer organizations you belong to, such as in my case, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers and Pikes Peak Writers.

One week before your cover reveal: Start tweeting about your cover reveal and post an invitation on your Facebook page. In my case, I tweeted “Pleased to announce cover reveal for #KillingTrail A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery on April 8, pub by @Crookedlanebooks and rep by @AKA_Terrie.” (Twitter only allows posts that are 140 characters long, so you must be frugal with your words.) This gave credit to my publisher and agent and allowed them to see the tweet immediately so that they could Retweet it for me.

Now, the relationships you’ve built on your retweet list will come into play. These authors will gladly retweet for you since you’ve already been helping promote their work. I also posted a similar notice on my Facebook page: “I’m pleased to announce the cover reveal for my first book, Killing Trail: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery, right here on Facebook. Please stop by on [put your designated cover reveal date in here] and join me.” My friends started clicking on Like and making comments right away. News spreads on these social media sites.

The day of your cover reveal: Post your cover on your Twitter profile page in a Pinned Tweet. (See mine at https://twitter.com/margmizu ) Use hash tags accordingly; I’m using #KillingTrail, #amwriting, #doglover and #mystery for many of my tweets. The first one is specific to my title, but the others are ways that authors and special interest groups (such as #doglovers) find each other by setting up a hash tag search. There are many retweet marketing groups that may be useful for you as well (e.g. #IARTG which stands for Indie Authors Retweet Group). Post your cover on your Facebook Page and send out an invitation for your friends to look at it. In my case, we planned the cover reveal day to coordinate with the launching of my Web site www.margaretmizushima.com.

On the Web site homepage, I have the book cover, a brief summary, and a link to Chapter One. There are also links to booksellers that are offered the book for pre-order before the release date. This page will be modified as more sellers pick up the book and as the release approaches, currently set for December 8, 2015.

Book cover reveals are exciting events for authors in general, so we usually support one another in our promotional activity. This staggered approach to posting a cover reveal is a great way to increase interest and it costs the author and publisher nothing but time. I hope you enjoy tweeting as much as I do, and please look me up after you get started. I would love to network with you.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret Mizushima is the author of Killing Trail: A Timber Creek K-9 Mystery to be released December 8, 2015 by Crooked Lane Books. It’savailable now for pre-order . Her short story “Hayhook” was selected to appear in the 2014 Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers anthology Crossing Colfax. She lives in Colorado with her husband and a multitude of animals; and she can be found on Facebook at Margaret Mizushima Author, on Twitter @margmizu, and on her Web site www.margaretmizushima.com .


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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The multi award-winning second edition of The Frugal Editor; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .