Inspired by Peter Jackson
For those of you eagerly awaiting the release of the movie, "The Hobbit", you may or may not be aware of director Peter Jackson's Facebook pages he set up to promote this upcoming movie; he has one for himself (Peter Jackson) and one for the movie (The Hobbit).
What I have particularly enjoyed are the tidbits he has been slowly releasing to the fans (mostly in the form of 10 minute production videos and photo stills) in a manner that gets people interested but at the same time, doesn't spoil the movie by giving away important information.
All of this got me thinking about how I had been promoting my gamebooks, and after considering the matter further, I realised that I hadn't really followed Peter's style of promoting my first two gamebooks at all. I basically said very little in the lead-up and then promoted harder once the books were released.
With approximately 9-12 months to go before the first gamebook in my "Mount Darkness" trilogy is released, Peter's approach has inspired me to adopt the same tactic for myself as I have plenty of time to build up a fan base of sorts. Granted, I am a virtually unknown author with a little known gamebook series, so I can hardly expect results comparable to Peter's. To illustrate, as I write, 456,536 people like Peter Jackson's Facebook page and 21 like mine. Nevertheless, if I can do something to increase this number and, at the same time, give some people some enjoyment in the form of tidbit announcements and information about my upcoming trilogy, I will be satisfied.
So, my plan is to use Facebook as my main promotional vehicle for my upcoming gamebooks and give people plenty of interesting information and articles in the lead-up to release. My signature at the bottom of this article has the link to my facebook page (J P Barnett), so if you feel like you would like to come along for the ride, feel free to visit my page and click the like button. I will try to provide regular material leading up to the release of the first book in the trilogy, "Journey to Mount Darkness", in the form of pictures, character biographies, story background and anything else interesting I can think of.
On my Facebook page, there are already articles about my existing books, including my first gamebook, "Invitation to a Feast" which is set in the same location, Woodland Forest, as my upcoming trilogy.
To begin this new promotional vehicle, the first article I will post on my Facebook wall will be a brief history of Woodland Forest itself, so you can become familiar with the place. My plan is to post this in about a week from now.
Oh, and one more thing - If I was to describe my Woodland Forest gamebook series, I would call it a cross between The Chronicles of Narnia and The Wind in the Willows (and perhaps a little of the Redwall series, by Brian Jaques). Furthermore, one reviewer once made a comment that it reminded him of the book, "Watership Down".
