Feb 27, 2014

A Little Research

With two books coming out this year, I have a lot of work to do for promotion. As you've seen, I have my new Facebook pages all set up, but I figured I'd do some market research and find out what kind of things people like to see when an author is promoting a book. What will grab your interest for a new series? As an existing reader, what extras and snippets do you like to see?

These are some of the options I'm considering as part of my promotion work this year:

  • Soundtracks (posting songs that inspired me, etc)
  • Excerpts (these would be mostly brief, 1-2 line snippets, possibly with longer previews closer to the launch)
  • Previews of future books (obviously this only relates to Lady Raven, and would be after the release of the first book)
  • Cast lists (as if I were casting a movie adaptation of Lady Raven, and a cast list competition for readers of the Locked Within Trilogy)
  • Goodreads giveaways
  • Discount bundles
  • Twitter accounts for Lady Raven and Locked Within
  • Street teams (groups of people who share links and info about the books to help promote them)
Let me know what you think, and feel free to make suggestions!

2 comments:

  1. I don’t know much about promoting ones books, but I had a few ideas that you might want to think about.

    One. Posting scenes or snippets that got cut from your previous finished work. It might be fun for fans to see what was cut and why it was cut.

    Two. If you have the time you could post chapters from a short story that takes place in the world of your book every month or so while you’re writing the book/series. It should keep fans coming back to see what’s new and will give strangers to your work a good glimpse at your writing style and the setting of the books without giving away the books themselves.

    Three. Q&A broadcasts. We all know fans of an author always have questions for the writer about their books and writing process, so get a group of fans together to talk about your writing, record it, and then put it together into a broadcast that you can post on your bog and facebook pages.

    On that same note you could do “Shop-Talk” Broadcasts where you get together with other writers to talk about the writing process and your upcoming books.


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    Replies
    1. "Deleted scenes", that could be fun. There's not much that could be used from Silent Oath, since that involved a complete re-write, but there are a couple from Locked Within.

      I'm afraid my publisher has first refusal on all spin-offs and sequels of this series, which includes short stories, so it wouldn't be practical to have monthly short stories. I have one already published, Taking Sides: Cynthia, which is set between Locked Within and Silent Oath. Another one will be coming out this year, near Christmas, set between Silent Oath and Final Hope.

      Q&A is fun. That's definitely something I'd consider.

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