Seven Tips for a Successful Cover Reveal Contest

 

A cover reveal is supposedly the perfect opportunity to build excitement about your newest novel, but how do you get anyone other than your mother to care?  My past cover reveals (all two of them) got lots of likes and more than a few comments, but they felt anticlimactic to me.  I love my covers.  I want my readers to be as excited about them as I am.  But how?

On the flight  home from Malice, the answer came to me.  Host a cover reveal contest!

Now all I had to do was figure out how to do it.  In case any of you want to try one too, here are my key learnings:
 

Seven tips for a successful cover reveal contest:

Follow the rules.  My favorite social media marketing tool is Facebook, but Facebook is persnickety about contests.  There are rules, rules and more rules.  Follow them and all is golden.  Don’t?  You might get yourself banned to Facebook purgatory.  A place where your Facebook privileges are suspended or even revoked completely. Facebook rules, including those pertaining to contests, are at this page.

Have a single web page that summarizes the contest.  I write for multiple blogs, but I posted the first day of the contest on my personal blog.  This included the disclaimers and instructions for all days of the week-long contest.  That way even as the contest continued to plug along, I had a single place I could refer people. Even though I thought I was clear in every post, I had multiple entries that I needed to correct each day.

Make it a week-long event

In my case, there were 5 key elements in the cover I wanted to highlight, so I spread the contest out over 5 days, with a unique prize each day. The grand prize round two was days later.  Even my husband, who had seen the cover multiple times, started to wonder what the next “reveal” would be.  And the participants created stories about how the 5 elements might fit together—some of them surprisingly close to the truth!

Have a grand finale

The final reveal, of course is the grand finale, but shouldn’t there be a grand prize to go along with it?  In my case, I honored my fellow Agatha nominees for Best First Novel by giving a set of autographed copies of all 5 of the nominated books. 

Ask for a little help from your friends

In this case, my friends are my street team.  I had a special contest for a signed ARC of my book to street team members who shared the post.  That got me reach to readers I’d never otherwise find.

Be involved

I’ll admit, this contest took a lot more time than I thought it would.  Posting the contest was only the start.  I also had to check in on the posts several times a day, note who had shared each post and how many times, and reply to the relevant comments.  I also had to re-direct people who accidentally posted their answers on the wrong page.  I firmly believe that time spent interacting with my readers (and future readers) is time well spent.  I don’t recommend doing this, however, if you’re up against a deadline.  Make sure you leave plenty of time for contest administration.

Advertise!

What good is a contest if no one enters?  I advertised in several ways, all low cost and low time:

·        Posts on my personal and author Facebook pages.  I started a week before the contest, and posted daily throughout it.

·        Cheap Facebook post promotions.  I was hesitant to do this, in case my contest violated any of the oh-so-grumpily-enforced Facebook rules, but I put on my big girl pants and did it anyway. I paid between $2 and $5 a day to boost the day’s post.  Honestly, except for the final day, my organic  reach far exceeded my paid reach.

·        Posts in relevant Facebook groups.  I belong to 5 cozy mystery groups, and I posted to every one of them.  If you’re going to do that, be sure to follow the group rules.

·        Dedicated blog posts.  I dedicated the contest-week posts on Killer Hobbies and my Whole Life Yoga blog to the contest.

·         An author newsletter article with a link to the contest.

If I’d had more time and energy I would also have posted on Twitter and advertised in Goodreads groups.  Alas, that will have to wait for next year’s contest.

The results? 

Considering my author page only had less than 600 fans and I’m a newer author, I was pleased with the interaction.

·        Each day of the contest, my author page post was seen by 900 – 1200 people, 90% of that reach was organic.

·       The final reveal post has been seen by over 2300 people.  Four times the number of fans of the page it is posted on.  Considering I didn’t promote that post and Facebook’s organic reach is usually about 5%, that is notable.

·        Each day’s contest had 60 – 90 entries.

·        The final contest (which required following the contest for 5 days and e-mailing me personally) had 54 entries.

·        The “likes” on my Facebook author page grew by 70.  (Not a lot, but since I wasn’t targeting that, I thought over 10% growth in a week was interesting.)

·        Many of the contestants contacted me personally to say how much fun they’d had and to thank me for the contest.

Will I do it again?  You bet!  The fun I had alone was worth the costs of the prizes! Next year I plan to make it  even more exciting.

How about you?  Have you ever run a cover reveal contest?  If so, how did it go?  What ideas would you add to my list above?  And even more importantly, what do you think of my new cover?

Tracy

          

Tracy Weber is the author of the award-winning Downward Dog Mysteries series featuring yoga teacher Kate Davidson and her feisty German shepherd, Bella. Tracy loves sharing her passion for yoga and animals in any form possible. Her first book, Murder Strikes a Pose won the Maxwell Award for Fiction was nominated for the Agatha award for Best First Novel. The second book in her series, A Killer Retreat, was released January, 2015 by Midnight Ink.

Tracy and her husband live in Seattle with their challenging yet amazing German shepherd Tasha. When she’s not writing, Tracy spends her time teaching yoga, walking Tasha, and sipping Blackthorn cider at her favorite ale house. 

Visit her at TracyWeberAuthor.com, friend her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/tracywe, or e-mail her at Tracy@WholeLifeYoga.com.

Lucky Cats or Cat’s Meow?

Authors are often asked for writing advice, but so far only a couple people have asked for mine. Good thing, because until this week, I didn’t have any unique advice. But I just returned from a vacation in Disney World, where dreams come true, and here’s my advice for aspiring writers:

Buy a Lucky Cat.

Three years ago I purchased my first Lucky Cat at the Japan Pavilion in Disney World’s EPCOT Center. The Lucky Cat has a history of more than 500 years in Japan, where people love them as mascots of good fortune and happiness. The painted, wooden cats are often placed at the entrance to a home or in store windows, and they come in ten colors, all with different associated good fortune, and are about an inch tall. In 2007 I selected the white cat, which brings good luck and happiness, hoping to find an agent for my debut novel, For Better, For Murder. I brought the cat home and placed it in a window near our front door. My agent called a few months later and subsequently sold my book—and its sequel.

Last week I returned to the Japan Pavilion and purchased the black cat, which protects from illness and evil spirits, and the gold cat, which makes dreams come true and brings good luck in wealth. When I arrived home from vacation, I learned For Better, For Murder was a 2009 Agatha Award Finalist for Best First Novel.

Now, normally I’m not into lucky talismans or magic or any sort of folderol, but I see a connection. What writer doesn’t dream of getting an agent or writing an award worthy book? That’s twice now I’ve visited Disney World, where dreams come true, and purchased Lucky Cats, only to have my dreams come true.

Yes, a trip to Disney was part of the connection too, but my vacation was the reason I missed two phone calls attempting to notify me of the Agatha nomination. And I’ve visited Disney other times. So I’m thinking the cats alone will do the trick. Plus, aren’t cats often associated with traditional or cozy mystery novels? See, another connection! Hey, right or wrong, I believe in my Lucky Cats.

More importantly, many thanks to the people who nominated my book for an Agatha. They made this dream come true, and to me, they will always be the cat’s meow!

Inkspot News - February 20, 2010

Lisa Bork's FOR BETTER, FOR MURDER has been nominated for an Agatha Award for Best First Novel. Congratulations, Lisa!

Keith Raffel is interviewed on Press:Here this Sunday, February 21 at 9AM (on the Bay Area's KNTV, cable channel 3). He discusses the suitability of Silicon Valley as a setting for mysteries and the factual basis of the characters in his bestselling SMASHER with NBC's Scott McGrew, NPR's Laura Sydell, and BBC's Maggie Shiels. To read Keith's comments on the interview and view the video clip, click here.

G.M. Malliet will visit Beth Groundwater's blog on Friday, February 26th. Come see what G.M.'s answers are to Beth's interview questions and feel free to ask your own in comments! G.M. is also interviewed by Oline H. Cogdill in the current issue of Mystery Scene Magazine.

Breaking News: Agatha to InkSpotter G.M. Malliet

The winners of the Agatha Awards were just announced at Saturday night's Malice Domestic banquet and guess who picked up the laurels for best first novel? Our own G.M. Malliet for Death of A Cozy Writer. Terrific. Fabulous. Fantastic. Congrats to Gin!

Planning a Blog Book Tour

Our guest blogger today is Beth Groundwater, author of the 2007 Agatha-nominee for Best First Novel, A Basket Case. Beth is a refreshing voice, a person whose candor shows through in all she does.

I’m in the throes of planning my first blog book tour, and I thought I’d share the process with Inkspot readers for two reasons. First, if you’re a reader, I’ll show you how much effort authors expend putting on an interesting tour and encourage you to participate in your favorite authors’ tours by reading and commenting on their guest blog posts. Secondly, if you’re an author who is curious about blog book tours and considering your own, I hope to give you enough information to decide whether or not to do one and to get you started.

So what is a blog book tour? Instead of traveling hither and yon making personal appearances to promote a new book release, instead an author visits online web logs, or blogs, from the comfort of his or her personal computer at home and posts articles as a guest on those blogs. The Blog Book Tours website at http://blogbooktours.blogspot.com/ has an excellent article from mystery author Liz Zelvin about using cyberschmoozing to plan your tour. Also there is a February 22 post from me about using the Goodreads social networking site for book promotion. Lastly, a helpful guide on planning a blog book tour can be found at: http://quickest.blogbooktourguide.ever.com/.

On that same Blog Book Tours website is a link to join the yahoogroup called blogbooktours, a classroom-type email list hosted by Dani Greer. The class cycles every four months through the topics of setting up your own blog and/or website, being a good tour host, social networking, planning your own tour and more. It’s best to join the group 4-6 months before you need to conduct your own blog book tour. Active participation is a must, so plan on dedicating some time to the group to get the most out of the training.

What can I add to this wealth of information? My own personal experience. I started collecting a list of potential host blogs over a year before planning my own tour. I got this information by noting what blogs posted information about author visits in the mystery fan email and social network communities where I hung out. I also searched for blogs related to my winter sports setting in Breckenridge, Colorado, and to my sleuth’s occupation, gift basket designing. Broadening your search beyond book review, author interview, and book genre blogs is important to capture a wider reader base.

It’s important to be organized and keep a spreadsheet or table of tour dates, links to blog websites, point of contact information for hosts, topic of each visit, and due dates for articles, photos, interview answers or whatever will be posted on each blog. Also, plan far enough ahead so you have time to write your articles. I started requesting guest appearance dates in February so I could spend March and April writing my articles. Most blogs request articles between 500-1000 words, and I am writing sixteen articles and answering two sets of interview questions. I plan to spend the whole month of May promoting the tour and responding to comments.
Promoting the tour is crucial. There’s no reason to go through all the work of writing the articles if you aren’t going to tell people about them. Sure, your hosts will promote your visits, but you also need to list the tour dates on your own website and/or blog, create event notices and update your daily status on your social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, or Goodreads, and send notices to your email groups. And lastly, to keep things fun and interesting, run a contest to give away something to one or more of your tour participants, such as autographed copies of your books, as I’m doing.

Will my blog book tour result in increased sales for my new mystery release, To Hell in a Handbasket? I sure hope so! I don’t know exactly how I will measure the response, but if I can come up with any analysis or lessons learned, Joanna Campbell Slan and I have talked about having me return to her personal blog, http://joannaslan.blogspot.com/ , with a report in July or August. So, stay tuned!

To see the planned stops on my May blog book tour, go to: http://bethgroundwater.com/Book_Blog_Tour.html . Every comment made on every one of my posts to the blogs included on the tour and on my own blog during the month of May at http://bethgroundwater.blogspot.com/ will qualify as an entry in a contest to win autographed copies of both books in my Claire Hanover gift basket designer mystery series: A Real Basket Case and To Hell in a Handbasket. Good luck and let’s have some fun!

Bio:

Beth Groundwater’s first amateur sleuth novel, A Real Basket Case, was published in hardcover in March, 2007 and was nominated for a Best First Novel Agatha Award. The second in the gift basket designer mystery series, To Hell in a Handbasket, will be released in May, 2009. Beth lives in Colorado Springs and enjoys gardening, skiing and traveling with her family. Please visit her website at http://bethgroundwater.com/ and her blog at http://bethgroundwater.blogspot.com/ .

Crime Fiction: Cure for (a) Depression?

One friend who lost her job told me she couldn’t really face the world just now. She wanted to hide from decisions on what to do next or where the money needed to support her family would come from. So what did she do? Take to her bed with a stack of crime fiction.

Perfect. In an age when malefactors abscond with millions stolen from charity while hard-working souls get laid off, why not escape into the world of crime fiction? In that world criminals get their comeuppance and the innocent triumph. As we turn the pages, we move from balance to disequilibrium and back to balance. Ah, if 2009 America (and Canada and the U.K.) were only that simple.

Not only can a piece of good crime fiction provide the escape we need, it can do so for almost nothing. I sold books at the LA Book Festival alongside my friend Cara Black, who writes the bestselling (and terrific) Aimée Leduc series. She’d say to passersby, “Do you want to go to Paris for $13?” What a pitch in these near-depression times!

So bookstores must be chock-full of eager readers, right? Judging from a few recent conversations with bookstore proprietors here in the Bay Area, I don’t think so. They're complaining about the business lassitude like the rest of us. Here’s my real question then: Why aren’t crime fiction sales picking up during this Great Depression II?

Keith

P.S. Hats off to fellow Inkspotters G.M. Malliet and Joanna Campbell Slan. Gin’s Death of a Cozy Writer and Joanna’s Paper, Scissors, Death were nominated for the Agatha Award for best first novel. CONGRATS!

P.P.S. Normally, Agathas are determined by voters at the Malice Domestic Conference May 1-3. Gin is threatening to settle this one via an arm wrestling contest. I just hope it’s webcast live.