Celebrating the WLC - Claude Bouchard talks Uniting a Community

Author Claude Bouchard

Member of the WLC

Things have changed and for the better.

Before November 11, 2011, I can’t say I was familiar with the WoMen’s Literary Café and, though we followed each other on Twitter, I didn’t actually know WLC’s founder, best-selling author, Melissa Foster. Things have changed and for the better.

Back to November 11^th… I was approached by AndyHolloman, an acquaintance on Twitter, who asked if I’d be interested in participating in a promotional event organized by WLC surrounding the launch of his first book. I had a quick look at the Café’s website, joined and signed up for the newsletter and after Andy pestered me again *wink*, I got in touch with Melissa to obtain further details about the launch event. She quickly and concisely responded to my questions, I liked her style and decided to give it a go.

I was immediately swept into a world-wind of activity and impressed by its organization, considering that the nine authors who would be participating in the event spanned from Canada all the way down to Mexico and most had fulltime jobs as sidelines to their writing careers. Through emails, Facebook and even a G+ video conference, this varied group was introduced, trained and built into a promotional team, thanks to Foster’s drive and generosity and the priceless assistance of author, Stacy Eaton, who I quickly dubbed Drill Sergeant, affectionately of course.

Though the event was slated to take place only a month later, from December 13^th to 15^th, work commenced immediately with a well orchestrated cross-promotion plan between authors and organizers, mainly via Twitter and Facebook. In addition, not one or two but three interviews were organized for each participating author, the results of which were then scheduled and posted on various blogs as the event approached. As if that wasn’t enough, each of our event books were featured on sites such as The Cheap Kindle Daily and event ads were run with the likes of Kindle NationDaily.

What kind of impact did all this have, you ask? Though I don’t divulge specific sales numbers, I can say that through my own marketing efforts, I had managed to progressively improve my monthly sales such that by October/November they had increased roughly tenfold compared to January 2011 and prior months. However, by adding WLC into my marketing strategy, I’m please to announce that my December sales were 176% of November’s. My Kindle sales for Vigilante, the novel featured in the promo event, closed at 232% of the preceding month. A final interesting statistic is that I sold exactly the same number of books in December 2011 as I had from April 2009 to January 31, 2011 inclusively!

The event has now officially ended over two weeks ago. However, with the cross-promotion and other help shared amongst the multitude of new writing colleagues and friends I have made thanks to the WLC, my sales continue to flourish and my reader base is growing. I have no regrets in having joined this wonderful community and I’ll be sticking around for the long haul. Things have changed and for the better.

 Author Claude Bouchard

http://www.claudebouchardbooks.com/apps/blog/ 

Claude ~  I am so very glad that you came on board with us. Your sense of humor when things get stressful is always enough to break the ice and chill us out! You have been awesome to work with - and I loving except my nick name! Thank you!    ~ Stacy - 'The Drill Sgt.'

To learn more about WoMen’s Literary Café 
(hosting both men and women), please visit:

http://www.womenslitcafe.com/

AUTHOR Promotions: http://womensliterarycafe.com/content/winter-events-authors

READER Events: http://womensliterarycafe.com/content/winter-events-readers

JOIN OUR TEAM: http://womensliterarycafe.com/content/support-wlc-authors