Book Release Day Party!

With my book releasing on July 21, I realized I should probably do something to celebrate. Because, you know, it’s a book, and I’ve had a really long dry spell, and even if I hadn’t, it’s exciting.

Some people throw parties. And I would, except:

• I’d have to figure out whom to invite, which is a lot harder than it sounds--I don't want certain friends to feel obligated to come and/or buy my book.
• I’m not sure anyone would come, because people have lives.
• I’d have to entertain people--I'm funny, but not necessarily THAT funny.
• I’d have to talk about my book, which I'm really bad at.
• I’d probably have to read my book. No, just, no.
• I’d be the center of attention

All of those items make me sweat, and I’m not even doing any of them!

So I decided instead, to throw a Facebook release day party. That’s a virtual party, where you invite people to check out your author page on a certain day or time, you tell them about your book, hold contests or giveaways and sometimes ask other authors to participate. It’s a lot less intimidating than a real party—if no one shows up you can blame it on a computer glitch, as opposed to assuming they don’t like you. J

Now, I have qualms Facebook parties too. I’ve attended many of them, and I’m not always sure the hosting author gets a benefit. The goal is to let people know about your book, but often the people attending already know or are simply popping in to say hi. Having other authors is helpful to expand your reach, but if their readers and yours don’t like the same types of books, it doesn’t seem to be much of a help, in my opinion. And they need to be interactive—you have to get past the screen and get people talking.

I came up with an idea that I hope will work. Because I write contemporary romance, I’ve only invited contemporary romance authors to participate with me. We have the same types of readers, so any readers they draw will ostensibly be interested in my book and vice versa. My books have a lot of food in them, so the theme of the party is food. Each author will pop in at a different “meal” during the day. Guests can stop by any time and there will be plenty of authors to visit.  At each meal, we will be talking about things that correspond to something in my book. So, for example, the hero and heroine have their first date at a hot dog stand for lunch. Therefore, at lunch time, we will be talking about first dates. I’ll give an excerpt from my book, others might ask what was the best or worst first date you had and we’ll all interact that way. And of course, there will be lots of prizes. In addition, every author participating is giving away a book and I’m compiling all of them into on big grand prize giveaway at the end—all you have to do is visit each author’s Facebook page and say hi to be entered. One lucky winner will have a summer’s worth of reading!

So I’m going to try this and see how it works. If you’d like to stop by, I’d love to see you there! https://www.facebook.com/Jennifer-Wilck-201342863240160/