The heat of summer has finally given way to crisp winter, which means Ooligan production is back in full swing. The Court of Venom team has worked all summer on our contact list that will be put to use once our galleys have been sent to the printer. Our main goal is to send out ARCs and DRCs to gain blurbs and advanced reviews, but getting these together is a matter of waiting for the blurbers to read the book. The good news for us is that we have quite a bit to work on in the meantime.
Our team has started laying out our social media strategy document (SMSD) as well as our branding brief. The latter will inform our team on what themes and palettes to use in our social media collateral. Since we already have not only our cover but also a fully designed booklet, we have a lot of our branding cut out for us. We’re focusing on dark blues, white, and gold, which are also the colors used in our beautifully designed tipsheet. Of course, we won’t be creating any social media posts with the design brief until we have our bulk upload sheet completed, and that won’t be available until we complete our SMSD.
The team has already got some amazing ideas for our future social media presence. One team member suggested creating a series of character posts to highlight the amazing characters in the book. Both Faultland and Laurel Everywhere did this, and it was well-received across our platforms. I can’t wait to create some for the amazing characters of Court of Venom too! Since we want to have most, if not all, of this done before we leave for winter break, we have our work cut out for us!
While the team cruises along on the SMSD, I’ve been reaching out to contacts in new and exciting ways. We intend to reach out to several fantasy-themed book boxes to get Court of Venom out to their subscribers, and we are also looking at fantasy BookTokers to promote Court of Venom. Since this is a fantasy book, we think TikTok will be a huge asset in reaching potential readers. We have quite a few other marketing projects in mind, but these need to wait until closer to the pub date in order to be successful. The next big project deadline we have is in January, when our press kits will be ready to send out. I’m so excited to see how hard the team is working and to see all of this happening so quickly. We are trying our best to get ahead on projects so that we can launch on our pub date even if production delays occur.
Put simply, the Court of Venom team is working on our social media strategy and branding, which we are aiming to complete before winter break to ensure that we can stay ahead of schedule in the event that production delays hamper us in the future. I have no doubts our amazing team is up to the challenge.