Lisa and Shannon have done such a fabulous job with their posts I feel like I should open with an apology!
I’m a newbie to the whole “marketing” thing myself – so much so that instead of doing it in any kind of savvy way – I’m more “OMG I WROTE THIS BOOK I THINK IT’S COOL WANNA READ IT?”
Luckily, the HOURGLASS cover made it way easier to apply some polish to my enthusiasm.
I first saw the cover image this past September, and I was completely blown away. It’s so representative of the way Emerson’s world is throughout the story – something is NOT right – and the image is creepy in a truly delicious way.
I can say this because I had nothing to do with it. All the genius belongs to Egmont USA.
There was sort of an unspoken agreement between myself and Egmont USA about HOURGLASS. I wouldn’t talk about it, they wouldn’t talk about it. It was SO incredibly difficult to keep details about the story under wraps. Basically the only thing we let out was that it was a “timeslip” novel. No description on my site, nothing on Goodreads or Amazon, nothing anywhere. I’d been living in the HOURGLASS world for over two years, and the desire to share it was … INSANE. But I kept my mouth closed, miraculously.
In an attempt to harness my … um … overzealousness for my story, I used my energy to brainstorm a unique way to reveal my cover. The internet was the obvious vehicle, and I knew I needed to reach a wide audience. Choosing which sites to use seemed daunting at first, but considering whoever participated would have to keep a lid on the cover, I decided on four whose owners I knew well: Mundie Moms, Eve’s Fan Garden, Young Adult Books Central, and Twilight Lexicon.
The first three sites had snippets of HOURGLASS that they each posted on days one, two, and three, along with a giveaway that tied in to the story. (At first I had planned to take screenshots of different parts of the cover, but changed tactics along the way.) The final site, Twilight Lexicon, did a review of HOURGLASS and then posted a reveal trailer I made (not an actual book trailer, just a tease).
At the end was a shot of the cover.
The result was more than I ever could have expected.
The reveal trailer was viewed over 1,200 times in 48 hours, and the Twilight Lexicon received 200 + quite a few entries to win the signed Advanced Readers Copy they gave away. My blog and Twitter followers increased (and now I’m super worried about actually saying something entertaining to keep them around), and so did HOURGLASS’S Goodreads numbers. I like to think it’s because I actually got to post a synopsis, which might have been more exciting to me than revealing the cover.
It’s my fictional world. I want to SHARE it with you.
Sometimes marketing feels like a dirty word. But the basic truth is that publishing houses, and these days authors themselves, have to actively drum up (another word that feels dirty) “buzz.”
I really appreciated the fact that Egmont chose to keep my marketing window smaller than most, so that hopefully interest in the story won’t spin out before the sale date.
I certainly hope so, because in my little writer’s heart, I’m still stuck on “OMG I WROTE THIS BOOK I THINK IT’S COOL WANNA READ IT?”
