Flibber T. Gibbet, An Adventure on the Hermit’s Trail will be published this summer. Readers can crack open the cover online in the preview slideshow above.
Encourage online readers to take your book off the shelf
Imagine your newly released book face out on a bookstore shelf, just waiting for an avid reader to reach for it. What’s the first thing they are going to do?
Now reel back that opening scene and imagine your reader glancing at the cover of your book for the first time online.
How are you going to translate that website experience into something reminiscent of the in-store type of experience your audience is most familiar and comfortable with?
As illustrator and partner Diana Durrand and I ready our soon-to-be-released young readers’ story Flibber T. Gibbet, An Adventure on the Hermit’s Trail for launch, that’s a question that needs answering. What has emerged for me as an author/producer/publisher is a web slider modelled on the in-store experience of deciding whether or not to buy a book.
The first thing visitors to my craigspencewriter.ca/flibber-t-gibbet page will see is the book’s cover, not as a stand alone reproduction, but as the first image in the slider posted at the top of this post. In that frame they get to: meet the main troublemaker of the story, Flibber T. Gibbet; see protagonist Lincoln Cranston, running up the Hermit’s Trail, where the story is set; and gain a sense of the audience the book is written for.
What would they do next? My guess is an interested browser might flip the book over and look at the back cover for a description. The second slider image goes there, offering readers an overview of the book’s highlights. (Please note: If they’ve got this far they’re already readers, even if they aren’t yet buyers.) The back cover foreshadows the adventures they will experience in the tale and gives a flavour of the author’s writing stye.
At that point, I’d want to know a bit more about the author and illustrator. So slide three takes our audience (Note: as an internet era writer I am redefining the nature and habits of potential readers) to a very brief introductory page, describing Diana’s credentials and achievements as an artist and my own as an author.
If I had my marketing hat on straight, I would insert a final slide, linking visitors to options for purchasing copies of Flibber T. Gibbet. But determining a distribution and sales strategy is a work in progress, one that will be the subject of future Books Unbound posts. So for now I’ve inserted a placeholder announcing the anticipated release of the book in print.
Stay tuned by going to my Connect page for options. Thanks for visiting.
