Secrets to Planning a Rockin' Twitter Party

I know consider myself a Twitter Party Addict. I have managed three of my own and hopped on the bandwagon of over twenty of them.

It's a great way to spread the word about your book and to play as an 'appetizer' to a larger launch party.
 
THE LAUNCH

Who says you can only have one book launch party? Well I say, have many. This is the main event for your book. You've been building up to this for months. Doing it on multiple platforms will afford your book a lot of visibility. But even though Twitter is always hopping, you need to promo it a bit.

THE BUILDUP

I usually start my book launches that include a Twitter Party, Blog Party and Facebook Party with a mini-blog tour which includes all the authors who will be part of my Facebook Virtual Launch Party. We do this to build up the buzz.

About 6 weeks before the party all of the authors involved in the big Facebook Party event tweet about the Twitter Party coming (using a hashtag for the book title & a link to our Party Map Page).

The mini blog party kicks off 1 week before the Twitter Party. It's used to build awareness of all of the book release events coming. The Twitter Appetizer Party (which runs the Friday before the Facebook Party) is used to drive even more traffic to the book sales pages for participating authors.

The Giveaway announcement. We run a giveaway announcement on twitter (a daily tweet from each participating author) with link to Party Map Page which has the schedule of the mini-blog tour, the Twitter Party, Facebook Party, links to all books, and rafflecopter.


THE TWITTER APPETIZER PARTY

We call it an appetizer because it's the night before the big Facebook Party event (which usually last for 8 hours on a Saturday and is run by a number of authors not limited to the launch guest of honor).

These usually last 3 hours. Three hours is enough time to run 3 trivia games, intro the book, shout out for prize winners and share links to big party coming the following day on Facebook.


The trick though is to have about 3 other people who you KNOW will be there to help you keep the party going, promo the party, and invite others.

A neat way to make sure you know who's coming is to use the mini-blog tour to build an invite list and later tweet a reminder to participants.

PARTY MUST DO LIST

For a twitter party to work, you need to have the Trivia Questions, links, etc preset (you can use hootsuite or socialoomph to do this in advance). This makes things much easier and allows facilitator to just do promo, invite tweets, and personal interaction with crowd.

Announcing the party should be done 60 to 30 minutes before by the 3 party facilitators. Invites to fans who are on twitter at the time & share a party favor if they show up is a great kickoff. Have a main prize of about $25 gift card that you will give out at end of night.
 
Kick off party with party jargon, a swag giveaway like bookmarks, introduction of participating authors, book, book trailer. Then start the games. Try to stick with games that are themes of the book. In between shout out a reminder about follow-on Facebook party, shout out winners and 'thank you' to participants before running next game. Sticking to 10 questions for each trivia works.
 

Trivia ideas. Movie lines, guess that tune, caption picture contest and many more depending how creative you are.

WOULD YOU GO TO A TWITTER RELEASE PARTY?


by LM Preston, YA & MG Author, http://www.lmpreston.com/

The History of The Indelibles

My Story About The Indelibles


As some of you know, I decided to independently publish Untraceable last September - at a time when I was at my lowest point in my writing career. A time when a lot of people gave up on me. A time when I felt I had failed and had no writing future.


As I started embarking on the indie process, I found out more about the Indie community, (a community I didn't even know existed). I slowly began to realize how many wonderful, committed, and talented authors there were out there - doing what I was doing. Trying to find a way in an industry that we all loved.


And most of all, the indie authors embraced me completely - they were so helpful and supportive and they did not hesitate to take me under their wing and help me.


At a time when I felt so alone.


Over that time, I met 25 wonderful indie authors who I admired and connected with. I reached out to them and formed a support group where we all could benefit from each other's experience. Since last fall, we have banned together to support each other - through the long and often difficult process of indie pubbing - as well as help support other indie authors we meet along the way.


Well tomorrow - we launch that group - the Indelibles! The 25 authors included are listed on the side of the blog and they each have wonderful books to share with you (Books Page).


Launch Party Events
To celebrate the launching of this group, we are having a PAR-TEE!! :)

• We are hosting a Kindle Fire giveaway this week.
• We are doing a Blog Hop with tons of giveaways from each Indelible on each blog.
• We are hosting a special Blogger chat Tues 1/17 from 8-9 PM EST to discuss writing and books.
• And we invite all of you to a special Writer Chat next Wed 1/18 from 8-9 EST to discuss any indie pubbing questions as well as offer more giveaways. (More deets announced Thursday).

Come back tomorrow (Monday) for more information on how to enter our contests.

Indelible Launch Inside Scoopage

A group of twenty five independently published authors have all banded together to support each other and get the word out about great indie publishing books and authors.

And guess what? We launch on Monday, January 9th. yay!

Who are we? "We are fun fierce and fabulous indie authors making a mark on readers."

Here's a sneak peek of what we have in store for you:

• A Kindle Fire Contest 
• Blog Hops with tons of giveaways and prizes
• A chat for bloggers to talk about books and give prizes away - just to thank our blogger buddies for their support and everything they do for books on their own time.
• A chat for writers and authors to discuss self publishing and indie publishing.
• And much more. Maybe even cupcakes!

Sound too good to be true? It's not. 

Come back Monday for the fun and schedule of events.

Meanwhile. to get a head start on the Kindle Fire Contest - you can simply FOLLOW this blog and our twitter page for more inside scoop.

Hope to see you all Monday! It will be Fun, Fierce, and Fabulous Day.