Launch Week Recap

Well, Traitor's Hope is out in the world and doing its thing. The week leading up to and away from the launch were both interesting and I learned a lot from them....Because I don't want this post to sound whiny, I'll start with the good stuff, and move on from there. Honestly, I'm so wiped emotionally from the past two weeks I don't have much energy for this post, but I feel the need to get it down on "paper" while it's still fresh so here goes.

Good things that came out of the whole* launch process:
*Keep in mind that the launch process is ongoing, started long before October 9th and will continue far past today, but those are the two weeks we're going to focus on for the moment.

• Two amazing reviews of both Traitor's Hope and Blade's Edge by book bloggers who not only loved the books but who are also very thorough and thoughtful reviewers. The reviews on Blushing Bibliophile are wonderful and thoughtful but contain mild spoilers. The reviews on Jena Brown Writes are spoilerless and perfect and so thoughtful they almost made me cry. You can find her review of Blade's Edge here, and of Traitor's Hope here. Honestly, these four reviews make up for everything else that went wrong on launch week. I write for myself, I publish for readers who want to read the same books that I wish there were more of, and it makes me SOOOO happy when readers find my books and it's just what they were looking for. 
• Traitor's Hope also received a solid and thoughtful review from the talented Nick Bryan, author of the Hobson & Choi books (which I really do recommend, if you haven't read them already). 
• Readership of Blade's Edge likely more than doubled in the past week. I ran a free promotion on Blade's Edge and over 4000 people downloaded it. Even if only 25% of those people ever read it, that's still a huge increase in audience. Yay! Hopefully, they'll love it and then read Traitor's Hope next! (One can dream.) 
• Blade's Edge's ranking on Amazon skyrocketed during the free promotion! #67 was its highest in the WHOLE STORE and it was #1 in its top three categories! :-)
• The Traitor's Hope launch party was in the black! In other words, enough books sold at the launch party to cover the costs of the party with a bit left over! Yay!
• Traitor's Hope was the #3 bestseller in Winnipeg for its launch week! Yay! 
• I gained lots of facebook and twitter followers thanks to the blog tour and giveaway, and had some fun interactions with folks on both platforms. Yay!
• It was so lovely to see people at the book launch at McNally's and hang out with folks before during and after the event! The reading went well and the aikido demonstration was kick ass! Photos will be coming soon, once I get them from my photographer. SUPER YAY!
  

Less than good things that came out of the whole launch process:

• Fake reviews. I was surprised and dismayed to find that a handful of the reviewers who signed up specifically to do a review for the blog tour didn't read the book and instead paraphrased existing reviews along with the book's description in order to fake a review. It was like grading high school papers all over again, except I didn't have the gumption to call anyone out on it. I didn't realize this was a thing that happens, but I have confirmed with other authors that it, sadly, is a thing. 
• Not much sell through. So far, the thousands of downloads of Blade's Edge have not turned into more than a handful of sales of Traitor's Hope. Not that I expected many, but I was hoping for more than this. 
• The blog tour has generated a lot of entries to win a free copy of the books, but not much in terms of people actually purchasing the books. I had an inkling this might be the case, but had thought at least a handful of people would actually buy the books. Apparently not.
• Missed posts on the tour. There were a number of bloggers who missed their posts, or posted late, or didn't post what they said they would. The poor organizer had to prod them many times and it left me feeling like almost no one actually cared about the book at all (an overreaction I'm sure, but hey launch week is a touchy week for author feelings). 

That's all I can think of for now, and honestly, I need to go write a bit to put some balm on my soul (yep, I totally just massacred that metaphor, you're welcome). The whole launch process is surprisingly emotionally draining even the second time around, and even with adjusted expectations after everything I learned the first time around. Now I need a definite break from social media (even though that's probably a terrible idea in terms of marketing momentum). 

So, there you have it. A very brief launch week recap. I'll try to provide more details for those who are interested in a follow-up post. In the meantime, I'm off to start new projects and think about other things for a while. I leave you with visuals to some of the highlights I mentioned!