Publicity Tip #47 ~
If you’re an avid reader with a penchant for social media or an author trying to gain a following, you’ve either heard of Goodreads or belong to the rapidly expanding platform. Goodreads has a variety of different publicity options to help authors get noticed and readers to find new books – have you thought of doing a cover reveal?
If you’re not currently part of the Goodreads Author Program then you may be unaware that cover reveals are even an option with Goodreads. While this publicity tactic tends to be of greater benefit to authors who already have a solid following, there is a way to have it work for newbies.
It’s all about “creating buzz” around your and your book.
Once you’re an official Goodreads Author (by claiming a book you’ve already published or creating one soon to be published with a legitimate ISBN or ASIN) you create an “Event.” This event is your Cover Reveal. It should be set for two or three months before your book is do to be released.
Then, tell EVERYONE about it – this is the buzz-building part.
Whether you have 2 “friends” on Goodreads, 200 or anything in between or beyond the point is to let people know. You are able to connect to your facebook page and manually type in people’s email addresses (a.k.a that email list you’ve been collecting in order to tell people about your book).
You pick the day and time, and then when it arrives you upload your new cover (first time seen by public eyes) to your book page and communicate with people via your blog or an Author Q&A for the next hour.
Here’s my event (and you’re all invited!) –
COVER REVEAL for TIME’S TEMPEST: The Chronicles of Xannia, Book 1
Notice that I’m offering an incentive to entice readers to come to the reveal – a free book of prequel short stories that are a companion to the main book.
I’m also running a short pay-per-click ad campaign to let other science fiction readers on Goodreads know about the event.
There’s no guarantee that you’ll have 5 or 50 people ‘attend’ this online event, but so many more people are now aware of your book that the bit of time and effort it takes to put this together is worth it.
Categories: Publicity
infinite-pathways.org 
Thank you! This was very helpful. Hope your “event” was a success! My cover reveal fast approaches (7/16/15), and I’m working on the publicity.
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Good luck with your cover reveal Jen! While mine did not meet my expectations in one respect (several friends said they’d stop by and didn’t) on the other hand I have a great resource/conversation for my readers to check out regarding the dialogue that happened during the reveal.
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