CN Central: Promoting completelynovel

Have you guys thought of hosting an ‘open house’ type of event? You could find a venue, have some of the authors on hand, serve free food, hand out fliers, etc. You could have fliers about the event on university campuses, in bookshops, etc. (Plus, some of the independent bookshops might be interested serving as a venue and co-hosting the event to increase their own business)

People always turn up for free food, and interactive social events always provide networking opportunities…

Universities, especially English departments, might be good places to advertise. The social networking aspect of CN might particularly appeal to students.

As Heidi said, open house events may also prove fruitful. A central London location, perhaps a university campus…

And I imagine there are millions of unpublished authors – like me – who would be interested in the free-to-publish thing. I’m not sure how you reach them, though – in my case a librarian friend mentioned the site to me, so I guess you’ve contacted libraries already. Did you ask them to pass the word onto their readers’ and writers’ groups?

A publisher or agency on your side might help – imagine each rejection letter suggesting authors investigate CN. Even though form letters suck, I certainly appreciated ones that tried to offer constructive, albeit general, advice more than the standard ‘Dear Author, f- off’ sort. I’m not sure what you could offer in return, though – advertising? Even a link exchange would attract visitors.

Snowbooks strike me as a reasonably sized independent publisher who might be receptive to your approach, because they apparently pride themselves on being different.

I think an open house event would go down nicely. Infact we are helping the society of young publihsers to do a record breaking make-a-book-in-a-day even where they are getting some writers, editors and designers together the idea being to write, produce, print and sell a book all within one day. I think that will be open invite.
We should also try to do a launch party at some point (a launch can happen any time you want right?). I think it would be good to get some of the readers, writers, agents and publishers together with a bit of press as well. Of course you’re all invited!

Universities are great, we’ve got a lot of people from the UEA and Southampton already. Would be great to get some American institutions involved soon as well. We’ll get onto the libraries as well so they pass the word onto writers groups. Infact Anna and I are doing a presentation to the libraries association tomorrow!

The publisher/agency thing is spot on the money. I think there is a real opportunity to swap rejected authors for services on completelynovel such as book/author promotion. Snowbooks are very forward thinking, perhaps they could be among the first (you are very well informed Jonathon!).

Heidi, do you have any ideas about places in the US which would be good to go to? National libraries/ writers associations etc.

I think I need to make this text box bigger, is quite hard to write a long post…

A launch or open event is a great idea. Perhaps even better if you can work into it some of the bookish-socialising that makes the site so fun. Not quite sure how this would work – all I’m coming up with is name-badge-esque stickers which could pick up on some of the stuff discussed on the message boards: The book I’ve never finished is…, My guilt reading pleasure is…, My novel is like a cross between … and …
That sounds quite lame, though.

Book-in-a-day sounds ace, by the way.

I had an idea that I thought could be cool for getting noticed. Have some form of awards! That would be great because you could have rewards for completelynovel books as well as just best books of 2009. that way people would think, for example, “oh the new Carlos Ruis Zafon book got an award from these guys… who are these guys? hey, this site is pretty cool!” then they’d come on and check out the latest books on the site too! in theory.

just some blue sky thinking… would probably require some pretty dedicated readers, mind

Yeah sounds good. Perhaps we should try to get it sponsored by someone as well so we can give out some nice prizes like sony eBook readers etc.

Like it, keep them coming.

Oli

Yeah, that’d be excellent!
Hey, you could call the awards “Recognitions Of Brilliance In Novelwriting”, or ROBINs for short.
Hmm maybe not.

I’m thinking of maybe linking up to sites like Meetup.com – does anyone else here use that websiet. I know that lots of people in the start-up community do, but was wondering how many other people had heard of it.

How about the Hay on Wye Festival running May/June every year? London may be central but here we have a book festival in delightful countryside…in South East Wales that attracts thousands of book lovers of all genres. I am sure that this would be instrumental in spreading the word.

Anna went to the Hay on Wye last year just to check it out and enjoy the festival but we will aim to do a talk or have a table there for 2010. If you check out the article videos (browse → videos → from articles) Anna also did one or two about some other little festivals such as the way with words festival in Devon which were good as well.
Keep the ideas coming!