BellaOnline Forums Computers Blogs & Social Networking Running a Book Launch Party on Facebook

I'm planning on having a book launch party on Facebook on Friday, March 15th, and I thought I'd share all my notes here! That way people can chime in with questions and comments, and learn how the process works. I highly recommend, if you're writing a book, that you think about doing a launch party. It's a great way to draw interest to your book.

OK the first step is to have a fan page where you're building fans for your author activities. This is SEPARATE from your personal Facebook page. Your personal facebook page requires people to "friend" you and share their personal information with you. Most fans won't want to do that for privacy reasons. Instead you want to make a FAN page which lets them "like" you without sharing anything personal. That is the way to go.

So I already have a Facebook fan page for my author activities. You can see that here -

Lisa Shea Author Fan Page

So people can "like" that and still maintain their privacy.

I had it set up for my medieval novel series, there are 10 books so far in that series. Now that I am also doing murder mysteries, I'll have to tweak the way the title bar reads. But I'll worry about that in a little while.

The point right now is that your first step is to have that fan page. Create the fan page and ask all your family and friends to "like" it. Start posting regularly to it. That way, when you have your event, it is driving traffic to that fan page.

Post in this forum if you need any help setting up your fan page!

OK once you have your fan page, it's time to create the event. Think about your audience and then choose a time when a block of them could be available. If you're going for moms of school-age kids, I wouldn't go for midnight . If you're going for lively 20 year olds, 9pm might work better than 8am. With time zones you'll never find a perfect time for everyone, but you want to do your best.

So in my case I'm going for 9pm on Friday March 15th, the Ides of March. For east coasters that will be still within wakeful hours. For west coasters they'll just be home from work. And that leaves a few hours for the party on a night where many people can stay up a bit late.

So in Facebook, on the fan page, where one can normally click to make a status update or post a photo, there's a green button there for "offer, event". Clicking on that allows you to create an event.

Choose a meaningful name for it. The name will be part of all the broadcast messages so it needs to reinforce your event's theme. So

Lisa Shea's Aspen Allegations FB Launch Party

Add a "details" area that lures people in. Show them why they want to be there -

"Prizes! Games! Virtual Snacks! Come on by on Friday, March 15th at 9pm EST to celebrate the launch of Lisa Shea's first murder mystery novel, Aspen Allegations! You could win free books, mugs, t-shirts and other fun items. Be sure to share with friends and family - all are welcome!"

Then set the when date and time.

You've begun the process!

OK now your event needs an image. This gets tricky.

First, your image needs to be 714 pixels wide by 264 pixels high. It's a specific size. But that's not the tricky part .

The tricky part is that for the thumbnails Facebook is going to take a CENTER SQUARE of this image and use only that. So if you have a large image with large words, the Facebook thumbnail is going to be a strange chopped off piece of it.

So you need to make an image that is 714 x 264. Then you need to look at the SQUARE that is 264 x 264 in the middle of that image and that is where you start. Make that area look neat and readable. It's going to be shrunk to 200x200 for the thumbnail so make sure the words there are big enough.

Then when that area is set, fill around it with other words and descriptions. Make sure your banner in general talks about the fun people will have at your event. Remember, they're investing time into this. Give them a reason to come. Prizes. Games. Fun conversation.

Here's my full banner image. You can see the "square" area in its center.



So then when Facebook offers news or info about it, it looks like this -



Let me know if you have any questions so far!

OK now you have an event and it has a nice banner. The next step is to start getting people to sign up for it. You want to give them about a week's notice. That way they have time to plan their schedule around it, but it's not so far in advance that they forget about it. So now that your event is "live", you want to share the news.

First, on your fan page, there is now an entry for the event. Hit the "highlight" button (the star in the top right box of the event) to highlight that event. That way it's featured prominently on your fan page.

Next, go to the event's page. Under the event's main image is an icon with a gear. Use that to "share" your event. Share the news on your personal homepage and on any other pages you run. Encourage people to re-share the news. Do your sharing at a "popular time". I.e. sharing news about the event at 4am might not have a lot of people see it. Try to share the news at a time that makes sense for your audience, to get as many eyeballs as possible seeing that news. I did my shares at 9pm on the Saturday a week ahead.

So for example I shared the event on my personal homepage with the promo tag of "Free prizes! Fun games! Mark your calendars - Friday March 15th at 9pm EST is going to be a blast! I hope you can come share in the fun. I'll be there! Please share with family and friends - all are welcome!"

Send a link to your event page to your Twitter feed, your LinkedIn feed, your Google+ feed, put it in your forums, on your blog, and email it to your friends and family. Each new promotion you do helps to increase the visitor count.

Thank you Lisa for all this information.
One of the things I find helpful when setting up any graphics that have to fit into a specific place is to make templates and create the graphics in layers over the the template, then delete the template layer after it's worked out. So for your example, this is the template I'd use.

That is wonderful, Shala, thank you so much for sharing that!

Make sure you "join" your event yourself. Once you have joined it, you'll see even more details about your event. You'll see a list of who is going and who is invited. When you look at the event page you'll see an "Invite Friends" option beneath the main banner image.

Now you can invite all of your Facebook friends directly to the event. You have to click on them one by one, but once you get through that, your invitation list will be populated. They are then able to also invite their friends.

As you start to get attendees for your launch party, some people might post comments on the event page talking about how they're looking forward to attending. Respond to those, thanking people for their interest. That way they know you're a real person that is setting this up and that you care about it

People can get very cranky about being inundated with email, with good reason. I know I, myself, get cranky about email deluges So always make sure you make it clear to your invitees about how they can stop that stream of email messages. Make a post to your event page with something like this:

"If you're receiving notifications from this event and you'd rather not, it's very easy to silence them! Just click on the gear symbol beneath the event banner image. Then choose "Turn Off Notifications". Voila! You'll be all set!"

That way it's crystal clear for them to know how to do that.