Alright, in the first part of this blog, we covered Benefits and Goals of a Book Launch Team (BLT), along with a few other things.
Today, I want to walk through a little bit of the content and focus of your time together. We will take a quick look at both Online BLTs and Face to Face BLTs.
Online BLTs
Your content and focus will vary a lot depending on whether you are doing this face to face or online. If you are doing this online, people will not likely invest the time into much content (by that I mean serious discussion). Most of what you cover will likely be back and forth about what people have liked/not liked about the book.
I was a part of an online book launch team a while back. It was actually just before I took seriously ill and, as a result, I never actually finished the book. I hope to one day, but today is not that day.
During the weeks of the BLT (it ran about two months), the author seemed to focus primarily on one question: How do you think we can promote this book?
He asked for advice and ideas. For me, personally, I had no ideas. 🙁
He didn’t seem too concerned about what we thought of the book or what we got out of it. The book was finished and ready to go. He just wanted promotion ideas. That’s not a bad thing, it was just his focus.
If this is the best way for you to go, I would recommend you make use of something like www.bookfunnel.com to provide digital copies. As far as I can tell, bookfunnel does not use DRM (Digital Rights Media). Because of this, your book is a little less secure. There is always the possibility that someone in your BLT will manage to share it with others. I don’t think this is a huge risk, but it is something to keep in mind.
When I took part in the online BLT, the book provided was a PDF with a watermark on it. You can do this easily in MS Word.
For the actual interaction, I would recommend you set up a private group on Facebook as they are set up well for this kind of thing. I would lay out a reading plan (how much they will read each week) and a number of questions about the book (what did you like, what was fun, anything confusing, etc.).
One of the big advantages of an Online BLT is that you can have a HUGE amount of people involved. Having one hundred people in your BLT is not unrealistic, if it’s online.
Face to Face BLTs
This is fun. I wouldn’t pass up a Face to Face BLT… if you can do it. It’s a great way to interact with others about your book and to get some incredible feedback. It also is a great way to create some hype about the book and get word out there. Since you also need some people to leave reviews for the book, you have a lot of motivation for a BLT.
If you are going to do a Face to Face BLT, you need to have a plan.
You can just have a two hour meeting where you say, “So… umm…. tell me what you loved about the book,” but that’s kind of hit and miss. It’s a great way to kill your BLT. You should plan your BLT meeting well and pack a little more in than you think you’ll need in order to keep the momentum going.
Here’s a little about my experience.
Since I was dealing with a younger age, I knew we couldn’t spend a whole hour every week talking about what they liked. We had to cover a lot of stuff and keep the group moving. I worked with three groups of 10-14 year olds, but even if you are working with adults, consider the ideas below. They will add to the experience.
What I did was cover three things: 1) the book; 2) a publishing moment; 3) a writing moment.
1) The Book: As we focused in on the book, I asked important questions such as, “What stood out to you?” and “Who was your favorite character?” I also landed on negative stuff as in, “What would you change?” or “What did you not like?” I was encouraged by this time and received some really great feedback.
One young lady shared that she thought the book was her “favorite book ever.” One of the readers, as we spoke about the humor in the book, shared, “it wouldn’t matter if someone didn’t like the humor, the adventure is good enough to keep people.” This kind of thing not only strokes your ego, it also helps you understand how people who don’t know you will react to your book. This is important.
I mentioned this a bit in Part One of this series, but let me say it again. You will also get a lot of comments such as, “Why do you have double quotes here?” and “Is this a spelling mistake?” No matter how much you edit your book, it will not be perfect. Your BLT can help find last minute errors. That’s a good thing.
For our weeks together, I laid out the book in small, readable sections. Each week we would try to focus in on the section we read and touch on some of the spots we had worked through.
2) A Publishing Moment: One of the things I thought I would share with them was a little bit about the publishing process. I shared about getting feedback, working with proof copies, the challenge of getting artwork, book layout and more.
This turned out to be a VERY positive thing. When you think about 10-14 year olds talking about book layout, you might think “Danger, Shawn Robinson, Danger!” It’s hard to believe they could enjoy it. It actually turned out really well.
Remember, you have people there who are interested in reading and are interested in books. Showing them a little bit about what it takes to put a book together is not a boring thing, but creates curiosity and interest.
3) A Writing Moment: This was perhaps the best part of the process for a lot of them. We talked about writing and how to write a good story.
I spoke with them about writing detail (too much, too little and just the right amount). I spoke to them about characters and outlining your story. Part of the way we addressed this was to take a writing prompt and then start to design our story around that.
Here was one of the writing prompts we used: “You’re outside and you cut your arm. It’s the first deep cut you have ever received. You look down and are expecting to see bone and muscle, but instead you see wires.”
I know… it’s vague… but that’s the point. It’s shocking, challenging and leaves a LOT of room for imagination. I handed them a character sheet where we filled in a minor amount of detail about the characters. We spoke about the story and wrote out an outline. We talked about what kinds of issues we would face and how to make the story exciting (and avoid making the story boring).
This part was a highlight for a lot of the BLT members. When we were finished, they had a story plan! They had a minimum of four characters in the book, an outline of their story (either completed or partially completed) and a lot of ideas of how to put it together!
I know of one of them who is now writing her book based on what we outlined. Pretty awesome! She told me I can read the book after her parents read it. I’m really looking forward to it.
I ran the BLTs for 5 weeks in two of the locations and 4 weeks in another one. I am looking at launching two more BLTs for book two (Arestana: The Defense Quest) in just a little while.
In terms of size, a Face to Face BLT has to be smaller than an online one. I had 5-6 in each one, but we could have gone a little larger. If you’re meeting with adults, I would recommend a larger group (maybe 10-12 people or so).
So, there’s a little bit about Content and Focus. Here’s the plan for the BLT blogs:
Blog # 1: Benefits of a Book Launch Team, Goals for a Book Launch Team and The Give and Take of a Book Launch Team (what I offered them, what I asked of them).
Blog # 2: Content and Focus of the Book Launch Team
Blog # 4: Interaction and Responses with your Book Launch Team
Blog # 5: Steps to Run an Effective Book Launch Team (not part of the original four-part plan)
Alright, that’s enough for now.
Comment below with your BLT experiences!
Shawn
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[…] Part One of this series, we talked about the Benefits of a Book Launch Team and Goals and stuff. In Part Two of this series on Book Launch Teams (BLTs), we talking about content and focus in terms of Online or Face to Face […]