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.
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!
