COVER REVEALS & HOW THEY WORK
So if you're been following my channel, or my blog, you'll have seen that I've done a cover reveal recently. Since this is something that's pretty common place now - especially in the indie world, I thought I would do a piece on what cover reveals are, and how they work. Plus throw in some tips and tricks to getting your cover out there and noticed. I'm writing this piece while getting ready for my second cover reveal of the year for Walk A Mile so I'm multi-tasking and giving you some tips that have spoken to me as I work.
So what is a cover reveal? Well, as it says in the name, it's when you reveal the cover for your upcoming book. You usually approach bloggers, vloggers and bookstagramers to help you spread the word. Along with the awesome cover, you'll reveal the release date and, usually, the pre-order link for everyone to go 1-click that bad boy! It can be framed to fit any number of blogs. I did mine with Dying Thoughts - Sixth Change on my youtube channel, and plan to do the same with Walk A Mile. On top of that, I had numerous bloggers etc reveal the cover on their platforms and send out the ARC link and the pre-order link.
They can be a ton of fun, but they are also a lot of work. You need to have some idea of who you're contacting, and collate that information in an easy to find place. I use Google forms to get people to sign up and then email them up to two weeks before the cover reveal will go live. This is for a number of reasons. One, it's easy for me to have everything in one place. Two, it allows the bloggers to queue up their posts. Three, it means that when I thank them on my vlog, I have their links all handy. It also means that I can work out who followed through and who didn't, which I'll get to in a moment.
So what is the point of a cover reveal? It's basically one of the many steps you take before that final publication date. It's all about driving up the hype about your book, about getting people excited and invested and it allows them to see a small part of what you've worked on. The work usually starts long before the actual date. I typically send out the google form link about 6 weeks before I'm even close to sharing the cover. That way I can post in various Facebook groups, all over social media and drum up interest from those awesome bloggers.
It's also the chance to get your buy link out there for the first time. If you're doing ARC, you can add that to the cover reveal info packet. If you're unsure what to provide the bloggers with, here's a few things I include:
1. The cover - this seems obvious, but I figured I'd expand on it a little. For my cover reveal, I had gifs made for both the vlog itself and for the people sharing the cover to use. So those got included in the email. I also had an instagram post ready, so I included that as well for anyone to share.
2. The blurb - this should seem obvious too, but you never know. If you're just sending out the cover, then people are gonna wonder what the hell the book is about, right? So you send the blurb along with everything else.
3. Any links - this can be buy links, or ARC links, or links to a pre-sale giveaway. Basically you want to give everything you want shared in the email.
4. The release date - They need to know this because otherwise no one knows when you're book goes live. And if they wanna one-click they wanna know when it'll turn up on their e-reader.
5. An author bio - This is one that I've only recently started adding. I didn't do it with Sixth Change, but I've decided to do it with Walk A Mile, simply because those blog posts look great with something about the author included.
6. An author photo - See above, no good having a bio if you don't have the photo to go with it!
7. Anything else you want included - this speaks for itself. For me it's things like the time my vlog will go live and when I'd prefer the bloggers to post. For other people it can be something else.
Going back to the fact that not everyone will follow through, I just want to touch on this briefly. Sometimes you'll have blogger who sign up but don't actually post on the day, and yeah that sucks, but it's not a reason to get upset over. Sometimes other commitments have come up, or they simply forgot. This is usually why I like to nudge people a few days before to remind them of the date, the time and all of that stuff.
And ARC, if you don't know, are Advanced Reader Copies, they are a way for you to get reviews on your book come release day. I plan to expand on this a little more in another piece, but basically I find it's best to pair that form with the cover reveal form. You might not get any sign ups, but the form is out there and it's a good starting point.
So that's cover reveals for you -do you have any tips or tricks you'd like to share? Let me know in the comments down below!
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