Recently I've had to find bloggers to read my book so that I can have reviews or participate in my cover reveal I did for my most recent book. It is a very hard and daunting task trying to find people to help you out with this. When I first started I found a website that a VERY long list of blogger websites that I had to painstakingly go through, click on each one, (quite a few were no longer active) find out if they are accepting any books for review then find their contact information, like an email or a 'contact me' form. Finally I had to wait.... and wait... for them to get back to me.
In my first round I contacted 24 different websites (after visiting at least 50-75) I made an excel spreadsheet for myself with the webpage, the email address I sent my request to and the person's name (if I could find it on the website) If they contacted me back I had a column to check that off in. Only 5 contacted me back out of 24! For reviewing my book two said maybe, one said no and two said the magic word YES! It is extremely frustrating to go through all that to only have two be able to review it but I don't quite know how else to do it.
For my cover reveal I did it a bit differently. I found an author that was doing one and went to every page that her cover reveal was on and got the contact information for each page, this gave me 21 different bloggers. I knew they were all active because my fellow author just used their page. I contacted every one of them, creating a new excel spreadsheet. 11 got back to me. Much better numbers. 9 said yes (YAY) one said she already had someone on the date I wanted but would share a link to my page on her twitter and FB accounts (very nice) and one said no.
So the day came for the cover reveal, I didn't get any email's from the websites letting me know it was up and giving the the link so I went to each page and tried to find it. I found it on 5 pages. Some I had to search on their page for it because they do three or four people in one day. All first thing in the morning. I don't know if the others forgot or if I just couldn't find it but hey at least 5 participated. Now I know who to start out with for my next cover reveal/book launch. So being the nice person I am I posted each of those pages (throughout the day so as not to spam my followers all at once with different websites) on my FB author page, my Twitter account and had a link them on my webpage. I know for sure that two of the websites posted my cover reveal on twitter but I don't know about the others.
Here is what I have learned and what I am going to do for my authors that would like to do cover reveals, book launches, author interviews or anything else that comes up. You will contact me with what date you would like your thing (whatever it may be) to go up. I will let you know if its available. You can send me the information you would like put on the page a few days before hand. I will make sure that everything is on there and if you want it in a certain order let me know, if not I will do my best to make it eye catching. Here is where I am trying to be a little different from other bloggers that I've dealt with...
1)I will only do one post a day so it would be best to contact me earlier rather than later (in case I blow up and get a crazy amount of people wanting to post on this page). One a day gives the author the most viewing available. If I tried to put more than one on in a day the first one would get lost at the bottom of the pile and that's not fair.
2)I will get your twitter name (if you are on it) and post a link to my twitter account with your name so that people can read the post and find you on twitter to follow you.
3)I will email you in the morning a link to your post on my page so that you don't have to search for it and you can spread the word about the post however you would like.
4)On my FB author page I will attach a link to your post on my page so that my followers on FB can read about you and your book.
5)On my author website I will have a page dedicated to this page, so anyone visiting that website has the opportunity to click over here and see who is new on the page.
6)All the posts here are archived so even if it's not 'your day' you can still have a link to it and send people to see it whenever you like.
If anyone has other ideas or thoughts on how to make it easier to get people to see posts or how it would be easier as the author of the post on guest website just let me know I am always willing to take suggestions or criticisms (I'll take praise too if you like what you see)
In my first round I contacted 24 different websites (after visiting at least 50-75) I made an excel spreadsheet for myself with the webpage, the email address I sent my request to and the person's name (if I could find it on the website) If they contacted me back I had a column to check that off in. Only 5 contacted me back out of 24! For reviewing my book two said maybe, one said no and two said the magic word YES! It is extremely frustrating to go through all that to only have two be able to review it but I don't quite know how else to do it.
For my cover reveal I did it a bit differently. I found an author that was doing one and went to every page that her cover reveal was on and got the contact information for each page, this gave me 21 different bloggers. I knew they were all active because my fellow author just used their page. I contacted every one of them, creating a new excel spreadsheet. 11 got back to me. Much better numbers. 9 said yes (YAY) one said she already had someone on the date I wanted but would share a link to my page on her twitter and FB accounts (very nice) and one said no.
So the day came for the cover reveal, I didn't get any email's from the websites letting me know it was up and giving the the link so I went to each page and tried to find it. I found it on 5 pages. Some I had to search on their page for it because they do three or four people in one day. All first thing in the morning. I don't know if the others forgot or if I just couldn't find it but hey at least 5 participated. Now I know who to start out with for my next cover reveal/book launch. So being the nice person I am I posted each of those pages (throughout the day so as not to spam my followers all at once with different websites) on my FB author page, my Twitter account and had a link them on my webpage. I know for sure that two of the websites posted my cover reveal on twitter but I don't know about the others.
Here is what I have learned and what I am going to do for my authors that would like to do cover reveals, book launches, author interviews or anything else that comes up. You will contact me with what date you would like your thing (whatever it may be) to go up. I will let you know if its available. You can send me the information you would like put on the page a few days before hand. I will make sure that everything is on there and if you want it in a certain order let me know, if not I will do my best to make it eye catching. Here is where I am trying to be a little different from other bloggers that I've dealt with...
1)I will only do one post a day so it would be best to contact me earlier rather than later (in case I blow up and get a crazy amount of people wanting to post on this page). One a day gives the author the most viewing available. If I tried to put more than one on in a day the first one would get lost at the bottom of the pile and that's not fair.
2)I will get your twitter name (if you are on it) and post a link to my twitter account with your name so that people can read the post and find you on twitter to follow you.
3)I will email you in the morning a link to your post on my page so that you don't have to search for it and you can spread the word about the post however you would like.
4)On my FB author page I will attach a link to your post on my page so that my followers on FB can read about you and your book.
5)On my author website I will have a page dedicated to this page, so anyone visiting that website has the opportunity to click over here and see who is new on the page.
6)All the posts here are archived so even if it's not 'your day' you can still have a link to it and send people to see it whenever you like.
If anyone has other ideas or thoughts on how to make it easier to get people to see posts or how it would be easier as the author of the post on guest website just let me know I am always willing to take suggestions or criticisms (I'll take praise too if you like what you see)
Good luck to authors trying to make it. Welcome readers I hope you find a new love here.
No comments:
Post a Comment