Stella Launch Day Review

Image: Eternal Press

I’ll be appearing over at Sage Cohen’s, Writing the Life Poetic blog as part of my STELLA blog tour later today. Tune in for some fun and a fantastic giveaway!

Boy, did I judge yesterday’s book launch wrong! There was me thinking an online launch party would be a relaxing day answering a few emails, posting some promotional activities, and getting involved with the celebration of my fellow Eternal Press authors’ books. No siree! It was exhausting work keeping up with all the emails and requests that came in, as well as staying on top of the three competitions I ran throughout the day.

The day started off slow enough; some house cleaning, clothes washing and of course, Sunday morning coffee and toast. The house was all mine, what with Gail having stayed at her friend’s house after Ladies’ Day at Musselburgh Race Course, and Laura being away to Guide Camp for the weekend.

At noon I logged on and sent my first couple of introductory emails to the EP Readers Forum. The emails began coming back and reached a peak of about 5 per minute – mostly UK readers at this point. At the same time I was advertising a Twitter-only competition, preparing and sending out a special edition of my newsletter, updating my blog and website, and thinking what competition to run on the EP Forum.

One quick lunch later and I decided to post three short excerpts at different times of the day so as to catch as many readers as possible. I would post three questions later with the prize being a free copy of STELLA.

Still the emails, Facebook replies, PR responses and Tweets came in. When east coast North America climbed out of bed – five hours behind me – the emails really started to flood in, peaking at around 17 per minute – or every time I hit Refresh! Seriously, I couldn’t keep up and several times I had to just break away from the computer and walk around the house, or make a cuppa to retain my sanity.

The Twitter competition was a massive success. I posted an easy question shortly after 4pm and by the 4:30pm deadline had over 50 Tweeted entries! The EP Readers Forum wasn’t so successful; nobody entered by the deadline but after a couple of late entries did come in I decided to leave it open overnight. When I checked my email this morning there were about a dozen or so new submissions.

Some of my friends and family popped in for a wee chat along the way – a huge thanks to Binny, Devon, Clare, Scott and Stevie. And to everyone who bought a copy during the launch day, a huge thanks from me for your support and for making the launch day such a success.

The best feedback of the day came from the winner of the Twitter competition, who read the whole book start to end durnig the day! Here’s what Ragna Brent said after reading STELLA: “I loved it! It’s not the kind of thing I would normally read but I totally loved it!! Seriously!!”

And that, dear readers, is why we do it.

Another side to the day that I hadn’t contemplated was the possibility of networking with other authors. It simply hadn’t crossed my mind that the other new authors would also be looking to make new contacts. And so it proved. I came away with two copies of newly released books (swapped for mine), four new blog tour spots, and two web interviews!

I finally called it a night from my bed when I signed off from my Netbook unable to keep going. It was almost midnight and I’d been promoting for almost 12 hours. I needed sleep!

Yesterday’s Competition Winners:

In the ‘Excerpt Competition’ on the EP forum, one free copy of STELLA was won by: TBA
In ‘The Patter Mailing List Competition’, one free copy of STELLA and signed promotional material, was one by: Fiona Young-Brown
In the ‘Twitter Only Competition’, one free copy of STELLA and signed promo material was won by: Ragna Brent

Congrats to all!

If you missed all of yesterday’s festivities, don’t forget it was only a launch and you can buy STELLA the e-book from the Eternal Press website any time. Click here to buy Stella

If it’s the paperback you’re after, I’ll release purchasing details once I have them, but the book will be available from Amazon and various other outlets very shortly.