Yesterday was the release party at Facebook for Bride of Fae. It was so much fun – and exhausting – and I didn’t do any of the work!
Jessi Gibson is the Diva, and yesterday’s successful event is all — ALL — due to her hard work and fantastic organizational skills. I thought other independent author/publishers might be interested in the process, hence this post.
About a month ago, I booked the day with Jessi. I recommend booking at least a few weeks in advance for two reasons — time to prepare and time to promote.
You’ll prepare for the event by inviting your Facebook friends and lining up your prizes. Jessi has great ideas, so don’t worry if you’re not sure what you want to give away. She’s also connected with Promotional Book Tours a wonderful group of book bloggers who are hilarious and enthusiastic about all things books.
For the Bride event prizes we had a mix of books, ebooks, sparkly makeup in keeping with the book’s fairy theme, some gift cards, a DVD, and a month’s subscription to Netflix. I think the most popular prize was the custom book marker designed by Christine at TheBookSwagShop.
The Diva lines up the games, keeps track of the winners, and collects the information necessary to deliver the prizes. On the day of the event, I didn’t have to do anything. I was free to comment and play along. You can join in the judging or not. And if you have to leave early (as I did) it’s not a problem.
You can look at all the posts here to get an idea of how the day progressed. There are a lot of posts – it lasted eight hours! Personally, I don’t know how she does it. The party was fun, but there was a lot of information to keep track of. I think four hours is probably plenty, but with eight hours you have a greater likelihood the party will be going on outside readers’ work time.
Would I do it again? Definitely. It was a way to talk about my book without talking about my book and at the same time do something fun for the readers who, trust me, really know how to have a good time!
I was only around for part of it and it was awesome! Kudos to Jessi! I got exhausted just looking at everything going on. LOL! I’m definitely using her for my next release. 😀 Congrats, Linda, on such a successful party!
I agree – it wore me out just watching her work it. I think these events are great. Don’t forget to invite me when you have yours!
It was a fantastic party!!! I’m glad I got a chance to go…And I agree, Release Day Diva is the best. She allowed me to enjoy my own release party.
That was the best part. I was free to interact with people who wanted to ask me questions and didn’t have to worry whether I’d miss who won something.
I didn’t comment much but the party was tons of fun. Especially some of those caption picture games Jessi did! I’m glad you had a blast, I think that’s such a cool way to celebrate a book release and bring it public! Congratulations.
I just do love these parties. You can hang out with your friends and work those brains. If you are lucky you win a prize if you have even more luck you get to see many different writers that you may not have seen yet. So that just opens up the door to new books That’s a real win. I walk in a book store and look around like oh ok where to start who’s good and who’s not. Due to these parties I walk in grab what I want and get home and read. And oh boy you should see my reading list. And you make new friends too and that’s another win. I never walk away the looser from one of the parties. Good job. Let us pat you on the back too thanks