Much of this article came about following a round-table discussion with several other writers published by Crooked Cat Books. I saw what I had written, and then thought it would make a good article for my blog.

For those who don’t know, Crooked Cat are a small-but-active publishing house. Several of my fellow RNA members are also published by them. As with all the smaller publishers, (and with many of the larger ones) the writer HAS to undertake his or her own publicity. We are in charge of our own “sales effort” on line and over “Social Media.”

As you will all, I am sure, know if you are reading this, I have my first book out on the 24th of October, with Crooked Cat.

If the hive mind can come up with anything else, then all suggestions would be gratefully received. I will pass any fresh ideas on to my fellow Crooked Cats.

For what it’s worth – this is what I’ve done so far

1. Built up the Twitter following – moderated Tweeters only (i.e. no one on the list who is not likely to buy a book) currently 3900 following me
2. Added #heartofstone to the end of all the Friday #ff tweets.
3. Prepared and loaded in Hootsuite a similar direct sales tweet to go out in the last few days before launch. Note – depending on system, you can only programme in up to 500 tweets in advance. This tweet will go to all 3900 followers.
4. Organised a Blog tour with Debbie Johnson (Brook Cottage Booktours) This starts on launch day.
5. Done – so far – 2 guest interviews, and hoping for several more. Hoping to make all these a little bit different from each other.
6. Joined all the major Author and Reader Facebook Groups – about 90 groups in all. Some have specific posting requirements, many allow you to post freely, some on specific days, and some allow a single post on your launch day. I am posting once per week in each (or as the Group requires) I am also trying to vary the posts a little so it isn’t boring.
7. Built up the Facebook friends list – now standing at 3000
8. Reorganised my Blog/Webpage on WordPress at JohnJacksonAuthor.com. Updating it more regularly.
9. Arranging a Thunderclap campaign (this will start in earnest next week)
10. Arranged a Facebook On-line Launch party for most of the day on the 24^th. This means I cover the main timezones where my friends live.

            On-Line Launch Party for Heart of Stone

11. Invited as many Facebook friends as allowed (you can only invite 500 people to a Facebook event, I’ve just discovered)
12. Arranged an Authors Page on Amazon.com so potential readers in the US and similar can see my bio.

John Jackson – Authors Page

13. Promulgated the Launch-party to all my Goodreads friends. You can link your Facebook event to your Goodreads page, and this doesn’t seem to have the same restrictions re number of invites.
14. Promulgated the launch party on my Amazon.com page.

Still to do:

1. Organise a Goodreads Giveaway and an Amazon.com giveaway. (You can’t do giveaways on Amazon.co.uk yet)
2. Solicit reviews. A couple in the pipeline. More required!!
3. I could do a bulk e-mail post, but I don’t have a book related email address list. I may send a single post to the address list generated from my e-mail outbox.

Of course, after the launch, the effort has to continue. I will be approaching all the local libraries, and the local independent bookshops. Crooked Cat books can now be supplied by Ingrams, the library services side of Amazon.

https://www.ingramcontent.com/

So there we are so far. I started work on this some time ago as you can imagine. It would be impossible to do, if given only one week, say.

Corrections, tips, suggestions and comments all welcome!

Come on, tell me! What did I miss?