Defining Success: Accountable Online Marketing for Book Publishing was a full-day session run by BookNet Canada and the ABPBC on Thursday, September 18, 2008 at the SFU Downtown Campus, Vancouver BC.

10:00, 10:45 am: Event Marketing: Taking the Faces Out of Facebook from Evan Munday of Coach House Books
The Coach House Books Facebook Group has more than 1000 members (and continues to grow). Coach House publicist Evan Munday discussed how to channel online passion to drive turn out at offline events. Evan Munday is the publicist for Coach House Books, a Toronto-based literary press, where has worked for the past 2 1/2 years. He is also a sometime artist who has done illustrations for various magazines. He collaborated on a novel with author Jon Paul Fiorentino, Stripmalling, out in Spring 2009, and is semi-hard at work on a YA novel. He is also very funny.

Here’s what Evan had to say:

  • Over 1000 facebook users. Word of mouth is what drives more members.
  • Event marketing on facebook: If you have over 1000 members in your group, you can’t invite them to an event. Instead you have to send a message and ask people to rsvp.
  • With Facebook, we use the event as the publicity hook.
  • We [publishers] are all fishing in the same pond when we use our regular tactics. With Facebook Coach House is seeing new people at their events, people they’ve never met before.

Facebook Promotion of the Open House:

  • Coach House Books’ annual Open House: 132 confirmed guests on Facebook (doesn’t mean people will show up)
  • The Open House is for friends, readers, neighbours. No readings. Instead it’s a tour of offices and book table. Publicize on Facebook. Usually about 300 people come to the event.
  • This year we set up a ballot box. How do you know about Coach House: Author, friend, facebook, avid reader.
  • Only 30 respondents. 1/6th said the Facebook group, no other relationship to the press.
  • The Idea is to convert these unrelated strangers to Coach House book buyers. Get them talking about Coach House.

Evan’s Take-Away Lessons:

  1. Be selective about event marketing on Facebook
  2. Coach House has 60 events: Only invite people to bigger events, not all events.
  3. Be careful about location. 60% in TO, don’t waste their time with Calgary events.
  4. If members are outside TO, Coach House will create the event pages but maybe send only an email with links to all events across the country.
  5. Don’t harass people. Be judicious in messaging.
  6. Inject your personality. Make it seem like it’s not a marketing message.

Other Interesting Points:

  • Facebook referrals visit at least 5 pages and have a 43% bounce rate.
  • Nomediakings: Jim Munro, a self-publisher, drives a lot of traffic. We are unsure why. No link on the site.
  • Make Facebook the rec room of your publishing company. Post videos and links from the event.
  • All my friends are superheros: published in German by Random House, who created a very strange music video. (I’ll have to check it out.)

Things we don’t do:

  1. No Facebook ads becasue it costs money and sometimes there are minimum buys of $1000. They are also not effective.
  2. No Facebook Fan pages. Like Anansi. Instead of we have group, they have “Anansi”. You become a fan instead of joining group.
  3. In a Group: no applications, no analytics, little info on members, no ability to send targeted ads. Fan page might be better for your press. Know the options.
  4. Facebook pages: unlimited apps, extensive analysis, more info on members, ability to send targeted ads.
  5. No Free copies: HarperCollins. First 10 to send message get X. Idea is to get people excited and posting. Thinks it’s great but Coach House print runs are so low, we can’t do it. Eg. Quest for the Ice Fox: contest to win a $200 travel voucher, users had to find the fox.

Our Facebook Plan:

  1. start group
  2. invite friends
  3. make events and invite people
  4. see strangers at your event
  5. report on events (send photos to quill, blog, facebook group, encourages fun. “I’m sorry I missed that”. Come next time.

Q: How much time?
A: Very little time: 1 event week or every 2 weeks (15 min); post info. Ehren: online is his fulltime job is online, but blogging has moved to a publicist role now.

Q: Do you have a blog?
A: Coach House coffee room serves as a blog. (But really, the whole site is run on a content management system, which is what blog software is. The Coach House site, the whole site, is a blog, the coffee room is the bit that looks like what we think is a blog.)