It’s been nearly two months since Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers made it in to readers’ hands, and since then, people have been asking me a few different questions:
How did your book launch go?
How many copies have you sold?
What else are you doing for book promotion?
Where do things go from here?
Now that things have cooled down a bit and I’ve had some time to reflect, I thought I’d give a summary of what I worked on for the launch, how it went, and where things are going from here…
Carcrash Parker Launch Recap
I held the Carcrash Parker book launch at my hometown bookstore, MainStreet BookEnds in Warner, New Hampshire, the Saturday after the book came out in July. I wanted something that was bigger, but not crazy big, and did a photo slide show about how the novel came to be, focusing mostly on the early Carcrash Parker adventure game project and the Glimrick-Carcrash back-and-forth between fantasy and real-world speak. More than forty people showed up, which was VERY cool to see, and we had a solid Q&A afterward, plus people stayed to hang out, talk writing, get their books signed, and in general have a good time. (Many thanks to Anastasia Glavas for the photos, and to Katharine Nevins for hosting and giving me a most excellent introduction!)
The launch was super fun, and in a lot of ways, it was the culmination of a REALLY big buildup. For the past few weeks I’d been busy mailing out pre-orders I’d gotten though my webstore, which I wanted to get out by launch day. This year I played it smart and used a 30-day free trial of Stamps.com to pay and print labels ahead of time instead of going to the post office and having the clerk manually print and scan every one, which made the process a LOT easier. (For future orders, though, I’ll almost certainly go back to mailing signed copies individually at the post office, since I don’t quite sell enough copies through the webstore to make the cost of the subscription worth it—or, I’ll just use a free service like PirateShip.
Earlier in August after the launch, I also took a trip down to New Jersey to do a joint event with my friend and fellow Vine Leaves author Elaina Battista-Parsons at Thunder Road Books in Spring Lake. It was a cool chance to take a business trip, do a joint event with another author, meet some new people, and put the book into the hands of a few more readers, which was very cool indeed. Many thanks to Elaina for inviting me—it was a great time!
I also stayed active in a few other ways with book promotion this summer—I moderated a book event for another writer friend, Polly Merritt Ingraham at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, New Hampshire, talked U2 on the With or Without You episode of the Blanketing Covers podcast, and sent news of Carcrash Parker off to some media outlets and potential book reviewers, one of which featured the book on their podcast, which was very cool indeed.
In addition to all of this, it’s been really cool to see people posting about the book on social media, sharing images, and reaching out via email or text to say that they got it, started reading it, and are liking it. I find keeping in touch with readers like this to be incredibly rewarding, and it’s been super-fun to see so many people’s different reactions to the novel.
All told, it was a LOT of work during a time where I was already pretty busy, so I was sorry to say that I experienced some bad burnout this summer and fell behind on some other projects (including work on my new novel…). I’m pretty happy with how it all went, though, and it definitely felt easier than preparing for when I first launched MFA Thesis Novel back in 2022.
What Else Happens From Here On the Book Promotion Front?
While a lot of the hype around a book happens in the first two or three months, in the 2020s world of indie sales, books are pretty evergreen, especially online. A lot of book promotion is ongoing, and relies on the book slowly making its way into the world through word of mouth, potential readers continually seeing the book via different outlets, and author promotion.
What does this look like in the real world? A lot of it consists of me continuing to put myself out there, share my stuff, do interesting things, and in general attract attention, which makes people want to check the book out. The book itself can attract attention too—the more people see the cover, hear the title, or have the book specifically recommended to them in some way, the more people are likely to check it out, give it a read, or subsequently recommend it to a friend.
To this end, I’ve got a few more events lined up for the coming months—in New Hampshire, I’ll be at the Hooksett Old Home Day Authors’ Alley gathering this Saturday the 20th, as well as doing another joint event with fellow NH author Josh Bresslin at Bookery in Manchester on Saturday, September 27th. Further on down the line, since I’ll be spending the second half of fall in Japan, I’ll also be presenting at the Japan Writers Conference, an English-language writing conference in Tokyo, on November 30.
On the digital front, I’d also like to go back to doing Instagram Lives, which I did a fair number of for MFA Thesis Novel and want to do for Carcrash Parker as well. The setup is pretty simple—I sign on, share some behind-the-scenes aspects of the novel, read an excerpt or two, and do a Q&A, and people can dip in and out as they please. I like it because it gives me a chance to connect with readers and share insights about the book in a low-stakes way, so if you want to check one out some evening or afternoon, just follow me on Instagram and watch for the Live signal.
What Else is Helpful for Indie Authors?
If you’re reading this and want to support my efforts as an indie author in some way, first off, THANK YOU!!!! This is incredibly helpful and means a lot. You can help by…
- Telling a Friend. Seriously! Word of mouth is powerful, so if you liked Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers and know someone else who would too, tell them about it!
- Leaving a Review. Online reviews (or even just star ratings) are SUPER helpful for indie reviewers because of the algorithms, the exposure that reviews bring in newsfeeds, and as social proof that people are reading and enjoying the book. Simple is fine, and complete honesty is the name of the game. In order from most to least helpful, the Carcrash Parker pages on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Storygraph are all great places to leave reviews.
- Sharing on Social Media. Many thanks to everyone who’s done this already! It’s always cool to see people sharing images of their books, which is both great encouragement for me and helpful for exposure.
Finally, if you haven’t already, I’ve been migrating more toward using my email list to share my author news and other cool stuff, so you can sign up for that if you want an easy way to keep in touch.
Thanks as always to everyone for reading as I continue treading the long, arduous, but incredibly rewarding author path. I’m also about halfway through the rough draft of a new novel project that I’m hoping to finish by this time next year, so here’s to progress, next steps, and continuing to put cool creative work out into the world.