Continuing along with our Building Your Author Brand series, I’d like to take a moment to speak about a way to announce a new release that you have upcoming. A Cover Reveal is a simple ad placed on social media sites which announces the cover of your book to your current and potential fans. Most of the time there is very little verbiage and just the cover as the main focus of the ad.

A Cover Reveal can do a few things for you:

1. Introduces your upcoming release to your fans
2. Gives you a photo ad that you can share all over social media, other than the site where you originally post it
3. Bumps up the hype and excitement about your upcoming release
4. Gets the word out to readers before your book is actually on the market
5. Can serve as an ad for pre-sales on Amazon or Smashwords

How soon before the book is released should you do a cover reveal? I’d say a good rule of thumb is about 2 weeks prior to the release. And I wouldn’t stop with just the one post. Each day you should post the ad in a different place. You don’t want to wear people out with it, but you are proud of your new creation and should let as many people know as you can that it is on its way. Many times this will stimulate comments on your blog or website which you can respond to and keep the hype going.

There are many promotion specialists around that you can hire to do a Cover Reveal Ad for you, and many of them will also do some type of launch or continuous promotion for you prior to the book release. Ask around to see who other authors have used and liked. Select-O-Grafix, LLC also does a Cover Reveal service for the ridiculously low price of $10 for a two month ad. Your cover is broadcast all over our social media sites once a week for that period of time. That allows you to still get the word out even after the book is released.

In my opinion, Cover Reveal ads are a great way to begin the hype about an upcoming release. Take advantage of the service and adding that in combination with some teasers (spoken about in a previous blog post) will go a long way to get your reader interested in your book.

Here is an example of what a Cover Reveal ad might look like:

Cover Reveal for this roller coaster ride of a story from Author Ron Hepner. Release date #/##/####. Click on the cover to buy your pre-release copy now.

Building your brand is the most important thing you can do as an author. It is how readers can find you and serves as a first impression for them to fall in love with your books. Use this and the previous tips to help you along the way.

I’m always interested in other things you may have done which has helped you build your brand. Please share so we can help those who follow in our footsteps.

Until next time…

Books by Kelly Abell     Cover Designs by Select-O-Grafix

Copyright 2014 by Kelly Abell