by Mollie Hunt
When my friend Sandy Murphy messaged me in the middle of the online book launch for my new cozy, Cat Conundrum, asking me if I’d write an article about my experience with book promotion during the pandemic, I said sure. Then when the launch—two hours of chat in the Facebook event discussion page—ended, I wondered if I’d done the right thing by saying yes. In fact, despite trying everything I thought of to launch a book from my office/bed/cat room, the endeavor became fraught with problems. I’m not a techie, nor do I know much about social media past the point-and-post part. But I possessed determination. There was no way this book, number seven in my series, was going to be born into the world without a party!
I started a few months ago with a lead-up to a cover reveal on my blogsite, a process I used for pre-pandemic launches as well. I incorporated giveaway contests for various small things and for a signed copy of the book. I did this through my author email, not Rafflecopter, and achieved moderate success. My cat Tyler drew the names. People loved that.
Once I revealed the cover, I began to promote the launch-day events. I posted everywhere: “Join me on National Cat Day, October 29, to celebrate the launch of Cat Conundrum, the seventh Crazy Cat Lady Cozy Mystery. There will be book giveaways, cat talk and tips, conversations, a grand prize, and possibly a Facebook Live reading hosted by Tyler the cat. Stop by anytime for prizes, conversation, cat tips, and more. Virtual catnip for all!” Such promises! Like a politician, I threw them out, hoping I’d figure out how to pull them off when the time came.
I managed to fulfill most of my campaign pledges except for the FB Live, which in spite of checking multiple instructional sites, remained a total mystery to me. Instead I made a YouTube video of myself reading the first chapter of the book to Tyler with the camera thankfully on him. I got all my topics down in Word so I could quickly cut and paste during the event. I came up with more prizes and a grand-prize basket, because who doesn’t love a good basket full of fun stuff? When the prescribed time came, I felt ready.
Or at least I thought I was.
Fate and Facebook thought differently. For the first forty minutes of the two-hour event, the comment feature refused to accept comments from anyone but me, no matter how many times I clicked the everyone button on the set-up page. You can imagine that the conversation proved awkwardly one-sided.
A friend popped in to co-host, and eventually the comment feature began working. I spent the remainder of my time posting cat tips, conversation starters, and promos for my book. I replied to all comments, which was fun but exhausting. I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anyone, now that they showed up, and though I didn’t have a huge number of attendees, more than enough came to keep me busy.
When three o’clock rolled around and the event ended, I resisted the urge to look at my book sales. Those results would come in later when people had time to go to Amazon to buy, if they so chose. If they remembered. If they didn’t get distracted by someone else’s book before they got to mine. This felt so different from the in-person book launch, and I yearned nostalgically for the days when a launch was held in a bookstore, soft lights and the smell of books all around. First the author read, I reminisced, live to an audience and not to my cat alone. Then came friendly questions and the buy-and-sign session. In the end, I’d pack up what books I remained, drive home, and collapse on the couch feeling like I did something. This online launch put me on the couch, but with the lonely sense of isolation instead.
It’s just another thing COVID has taken away from us. I have nothing against online events, in fact I like them, but some things cannot be replaced by an internet connection, and the good-old-fashioned, in-a-bookstore, here’s-my-new-book celebration is one of them.
So what can I tell you about marketing during the pandemic? For me, it’s been hard and isolated with dismal results. I think now that the book is out, I’ll hold off on any more complicated promotional offers until I can go back to the cat shows, book fairs, and conventions. Even as an introvert, that scene of enthusiasm and connection makes me smile as I think of it.
The Takeaway:
All is not lost! We have the internet—let’s use it to find new avenues of communication. Then when this is over, we’ll have a whole new set of fans ready to come to meet us in person and buy a signed book.
- Start a Facebook group: One bright spot has been a group I started called Cozy Cat Writers and Readers, where I encourage people to connect by telling stories, asking questions, and introducing themselves to each other. It’s doing well and forming bonds among all sorts of cat lovers, readers and writers alike.
- Keep up your blog posts: Choose intriguing topics. Unless it’s new and amazing, I suggest, for your sake and everyone else’s, to stay away from COVID and politics.
- Make new contacts: Take the time to seek others in your genre and make friends with them, not just FB friends, but friends who know you by name.
- You are a business: What if you were a restaurant or store, reopening under pandemic precautions? What will you do when you can go out in the world again? Where will you start? Make a plan.
I doubt things will ever go back to the way they were pre-COVID. Necessity is the mother of invention, and there have been some good things to come out of this crisis that I hope we extend into life after. But someday we will be allowed back in public. It will happen eventually.
- Be ready.
- Be determined.
- Don’t try to make today into yesterday.
- Don’t look backward but forward.
- Write, connect, be safe, be good to yourself and others, wear masks, and always keep up the good work.
- If you’re tech-challenged like I am, ask other authors who’ve done FB events for advice, work with another author—or two—so you can take turns promoting, answering questions, and can talk about each other’s books, and if all else fails, there are book-launch pros out there!
Mollie Hunt writes the award-winning Crazy Cat Lady cozy mystery series featuring Lynley Cannon, a sixty-something cat-shelter volunteer who finds more trouble than a cat in catnip, and the Cat Seasons sci-fantasy tetralogy where cats save the world. She also pens a bit of cat poetry. She’s a member of the Oregon Writers’ Colony, Sisters in Crime, the Cat Writers’ Association, and NIWA. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and a varying number of cats.
