2020 Book Hunt Promo

TLDR – Michelle borrowed an Idea from Olalla Author Greg Olson and we hid a bunch of books around the neighborhood.

Book Hunt Idea

When we lived in Olalla, WA many moons ago we joined the “Fans of Olalla” Facebook group to meet some neighbors. First Xmas we noticed a post from local Olalla Author Greg Olson. Every year he hides some of his books around Olalla. On Xmas eve he posts vague pictures as clues where the books are hidden. When people find the books they post a picture with the book to let people know the book has been found. Checking this year Greg’s been doing it for 15 years and is giving out a golden ticket this year.

Always looking for ways to promote Michelle’s book we decided we should copy Greg and host a book scavenger hunt in Stepaside, our local neighborhood. Such a great promotion because it’s not really a promotion it’s a hunt and fun for kids! As a bonus, it puts Michelle out to the local community as an author, if she wants. So far she’s been pretty quiet about publishing a book.

Prep work

Covid times, the books needed to quarantined. Being a marketing genius, and Xmas lover Michelle involved the elves in the preparation process. She set up some photo shoots with the elves getting the books ready and quarantining them. While she was working on that I worked on a little promo graphic. A few days before Xmas eve Michelle started posting to the local Facebook groups about the hunt. She had a good engagement and feedback from people in the group – Excellent this idea might work.

Hiding some books

Around 0900 we bundled up and set off to hide the books. It’s 2 degrees out; we all wore plenty of layers. Except for Maddex, the kid is hot. Holding his bare hand I can feel the heat of his hand through my thick leather gloves. 90 minutes and 12,000 steps later five books were hidden and I took the cold kids home while Michelle went off to hide the final two books.

After we made it home Michelle hide in her office and went into work mode. She posted all of the clues and waited for the results. Took less than 20 minutes for the first book to be found. All but one of the books were found 90 minutes after the posts went up. The last one was found about 5 hours later in the dark after Michelle gave a second hint. Fun morning and a great promotion

Clue examples

Impressive watching Michelle put herself out there with these book promotions. This one more the other because she told parents at the school, people she sees every day of the week, she wrote a book. Beaming with pride right now watching Michelle make her dreams come true.