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There are many ways that you can build up excitement for your upcoming novel, but cover reveals, when done right, can be extremely helpful. Cover reveals will get your current fan base abuzz about your upcoming book, and through social media, word of mouth and advertising, you can ensure a very successful book launch as well. It will also help you spread the word to a wider number of your target audience. Cover reveals need to be made exciting, and there are several ways that you can achieve this.
1. Ensure you have an amazing book cover design
There are many ways to obtain a great cover design. You can design it yourself if you have the experience but this is typically not recommend for most authors as the final product is not typically professional. Because your cover design is arguably the most important marketing tool for your book, you do not want to DIY this unless you have the confidence or experience to do so. Another option would be to select a premade design. There are plenty of websites that offer professional premade cover designs for authors to choose from so you may want to consider this option. Finally, the best option – if you have the budget – is to hire a professional book cover designer to handle the design. With this option, you can relax having a professional take care of the process and have a completely custom design catered to your book.
2. Announce the date
Before you do your cover reveal, don’t forget to announce the date of the release at least four weeks before. This will give you enough time to generate a buzz for the cover. During this period, consider releasing a partial, teaser blurb of the book – where you will reveal just enough information to let the readers know what your book will be about, but still withhold enough information to add a little mystery to it. The teaser blurb could be quotes from the book, or small, teasing paragraphs that will create a certain amount of intrigue for your novel, without actually revealing any spoilers.
3. Launch a giveaway
To generate more excitement, you can decide to give away a certain number of copies of your book (authors usually do five) to your readers. You can turn this into a contest – for example, create a contest where your readers will make fan covers for your upcoming book, and the winners can be the fans who made the best covers, or fans who created covers that were closest to what the actual cover looks like. These kinds of contests work really well if you’re writing a series and the fans are already familiar with your characters and the general plot and storyline.
4. Reveal the blurb
Revealing the blurb of your novel goes together with the cover reveal because most readers will expect to read a blurb when they see the cover of your book. This doesn’t mean that they have to be revealed on the same day, but the blurb should always be revealed either before the cover reveal, or at the same time. If you reveal the blurb before you reveal the cover, it will help with creating even more excitement for your novel.
5. Release chapter excerpts
If you’re publishing the traditional way through a publishing house, you might not be legally allowed to post chapter excerpts on your blog, or website and other platforms. However, chapter excerpts will help in promoting your book if you’re self-publishing. Releasing one or two chapters on the same day as the cover reveal, or a few weeks after will help you to create a buzz among your current fans and readers. Additionally, it will allow new, prospective readers to get a glimpse of your stories and writing style, which will ensure a bigger number of sales upon the day you release your book.
6. Make it an event
If you have a large fan base, you can make the cover reveal a grand scale event, whether online or in your local bookstore where you will show a hardback or a paperback copy and maybe even read a few chapters. If you’re doing it as an online event, make sure to post links to the event to all of the social platforms where you’ve gathered a following. Then, you can reveal the cover on the selected date. A very good way to make the online event even better is if you organize a Q&A session where your readers will be able to ask you questions about the story, the setting and the characters.
Image credit: Mizrak on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0
Georgina Roy wants to live in a world filled with magic. As a 22-year-old art student, she’s moonlighting as a writer and is content to fill notebooks and sketchbooks with magical creatures and amazing new worlds. When she is not at school, or scribbling away in a notebook, you can usually find her curled up, reading a good urban fantasy novel, or writing on her laptop, trying to create her own.