Recently, CompletelyNovel hosted a rather unusual event called, One Big Book Launch. Rather than one author releasing one book to friends, family, and whoever else they could bring along, ten authors joined together to launch their books simultaneously. The event was hugely successful, and showed how collaboration between authors can be very rewarding. Below are 4 reasons why you should be collaborating with other authors, taken from the One Big Book Launch:
1. Share Readers
Each of the authors brought along a loyal group of friends and readers to One Big Book Launch, adding up to a sizeable crowd of people who love books! It gave the authors a chance to present their book to an audience they would otherwise never have encountered. They had an opportunity to give presentations and readings, and enjoyed their own tables where they could display, discuss, and sell their work. The crowd thoroughly enjoyed both the talks and the meeting and greeting, and authors discovered a new fanbase and made quite a few sales!
2. Share Partners
The event proved a great way of pooling both self-published and traditionally published authors’ resources, with publishers like Egmont, No Exit Press and Bloomsbury participating. The event was organised by CompletelyNovel, the self-publishing platform of three of the authors, and Egmont made goody bags for everyone. The fact that were several publishers involved increased the gravitas of the occasion, making it much more of an industry ‘event’. Don't be afraid to collaborate with writers from different publishers, and with different genres to yours!
3. Share Publicity
Every extra bit of limelight one of the ten books received in the run-up to the event served to make the other nine more visible as well. J. Paul Henderson’s The Last Bus to Coffeeville was selected as Starbucks’ ‘Book of the Month’ for May a little before the big night. The increased buzz surrounding his book from achieving this transferred to the event as well.
In this way, the authors could share in each others’ success, and develop a partnership. It also meant the event had ten marketing efforts devoted to it, rather than one. Ten blogs, ten lots of social media, and the work of co-host LiterallyPR and CompletelyNovel, all helped lead to an impressive online presence and attendance on the night.
4. Do something new
The collaboration itself was a unique selling point, as innovative events always make for a great evening out. Ten authors getting together to enjoy their big day turned something that can feel like a PR exercise into something that felt like a proper party.
CompletelyNovel are dedicated to finding new ways of using their community of authors to help market their books, and this showed the power of such a community. The more authors collaborate, the more they’ll be building a strong community that will only result in more opportunities to benefit from each others’ resources and advice.
So why not join forces with fellow authors to raise the profile of your brilliant books?
CompletelyNovel offers a whole host of advice for writers in their advice hub. Head on over to read, write and get published the CompletelyNovel way.
Any ideas that help would-be authors to promote and sell copies of their books are welcome.
The onus is on authors to do promotional work because publishers rarely invest money promoting debut novelists.