Posted: April 30, 2024
Whether you’ve published a book before or not, it never hurts to be prepared to launch your book. The days and weeks leading up to your book’s release are the most important; they will make or break your book’s success.
While there isn’t any sure-fire way to make sure your book’s launch sends you to stardom, there are steps you can take to ensure the launch is as successful as it can be.
First and foremost—is your book ready? It still amazes me to this day how many authors release their book before it’s done. Some people even think that they can write the book’s first draft and publish it from there, skipping all of the most important editing steps. Running a first draft through Grammarly may help reduce typos, but it can never replace a proper, professional editor.
By now you should’ve gone through at least six rounds of editing with numerous people, including but not limited to several beta readers (ideally 5-10), a professional developmental/content editor, a professional copyeditor, and a professional proofreader. Your book should be designed (inside and out) to your liking, hopefully by trained professionals as well, since many book designing home-jobs are well-meaning but sloppy.
Social Media is a big way to prepare your book for launch simply by means of spreading the word. Be posting every day about your book—how you’re working on it, things you’re doing while working on it, every day activities to be a better writer, editing, marking up pages with red pen, concept art, outlines, fun facts, and more.
As you get closer to the launch of your book, you’ll want to be posting much more polished promotional material, but too much and your fans with lose interest. Imagine being bombarded with a constant stream of “BUY MY BOOK!” You’d tune out too, right?
A healthy balance is the key of 33-33-33. This means 33% promotion, 33% educational, 33% entertaining.
For example, promotion obviously means images like the book’s release date and other posts to get people to buy your book. Educational could be tips that have helped you in your writing that you’re sharing with other writers. It could also be a poll about writing, asking other people about their own writing and generally sharing information within the writing community. Entertaining is the most fun, and it can be anything from a professional book trailer to a fun game that has to do with your book, to memes or other images that you can relate back to your book or your writing process.
Try to be posting different things; don’t get repetitive. If you have trouble trying to come up with what to post, you can make a schedule and a plan. Or, if you’re totally social media savvy, this will be an easy thing for you.
Not only should you be posting, but comment on other people’s posts as well. Compliment them, open a discussion about genres or characters or editing. Support them and they are very likely to support you in return.
Of course, you shouldn’t shoulder this burden alone. This is where a launch team can come in very handy. “Launch Team” is a term that encompasses a variety of jobs, but the main two categories are reviewing and promoting.
When your book goes live, it will be fresh and new—not a single book review to its name. Aside from what you’ve said yourself about the book, people won’t know how it’s being accepted by the community, and oftentimes people will make purchases based on customer reviews.
That’s where your launch team and ARC readers come in. These people receive a copy of the book ahead of time (fully edited and polished and ready to go), read it, and prepare their review for the moment the book is available. If you can ensure that your book gets 10, 20, 50 reviews by the end of the first week, it will skyrocket to the top of the charts through the power of the algorithm.
However, ARC readers only sign up to receive a book and write your review, and even then, you can’t trust that 100% of them will deliver.
The launch team, along with reading and reviewing your book, also must sign up for helping you promote your book online. This puts a lot of work on you as well, as you must provide what they’ll write and what images they share—they can’t be expected to come up with this on their own.
You can divide up the work, run events leading up to the launch of the book with prizes for people who come up with good promotional ideas and enact them. Giving away free merchandise or signed copies of your book will always motivate enamored fans.
Again, you can’t expect 100% success with a Launch Team, which is why you must choose your people wisely. If you can, you’ll want 20 or 30 dedicated people you can trust to read the book, write a review, and help you with social media promotion. Dip into friends, coworkers, and distantly related family members (close family may unfortunately raise red flags in review algorithms). Beyond that, get as many people as you can in the secondary Team. As many as 200 members is, while ambitious, excellent to have, because even if only 20% of them participate, that’s still 40 people.
Before you go out recruiting for a launch team, you have to ask yourself the questions that your recruits will ask: “What is a Launch Team?” “What will I be expected to do?” “What can I get out of it?” You should know all these answers and more.
As for you—you’ve got to know the main goal of your book. Is it to generate pure revenue? To be your debut into the writing world? To build hype for the rest of the series? To finish off a series? Once you determine the goal, set it at the top of the list.
Why should people want to join your Launch Team?
Free books! A lot of people like to brag to their friends that they’re reading the latest book by Author X that isn’t even available yet. Some people just like to be a part of the process, to say that they were there. Others just like the free stuff and will do what they can to get it. If this is your debut book, give them reasons to be fans of yours, and they’ll be sure to come back for your next one.
What will they be expected to do? Read the book, for one. Given the length of your book, you should give your launch team ample time to read it before the Release date. This can be a few weeks to a full month or longer, though avid readers will typically finish an extra long book within 30 days if they’re dedicated. Keep in mind that even though they’re getting a free copy of your book out of the deal, they’re still volunteering their time for you; be respectful of that time.
Once they’ve read the book, if they enjoyed it, you’ll be expecting them to write a book review. If they didn’t finish the book or didn’t enjoy it, you often don’t want those reviews. Make sure that they write honestly, but anything less than 3 stars isn’t what you want, even if it means forfeiting that review.
People in your Launch team should also be expected to share promotional material. Nothing that they have to come up with themselves—you should be providing all that. But they should be prepared to upload or share images and other material to do with your book to help spread the word to their channels.
If you don’t know what to say, this is the kind of promotional material that you should rely on a professional to provide: quality artwork, a book trailer, clean and concise messages. To be able to get money out of it, you must be willing to put money into it.
Beyond that, you can also host events leading up to and following your book launch for your Team to participate in. They can come with ideas for how to promote your book, but then must also implement these ideas. It could be calling local libraries and/or bookstores to carry a copy of the book (after its release). For the later books of a series, you could host a contest for fans to design and vote on a bookmark or other piece of merchandise that could then be offered for sale or given away at an in-person Book Launch party. If you’re doing a book reading or signing at a library or bookstore, your launch team could go out and entice people to come check it out. There are so many things that your team could come up with as possible promotion for your book.
This is the big day—your book is being released. Everything you’ve done up to this point is to build up as much hype and reviews and pre-orders as possible.
You can host an in-person or virtual event for people to attend. I’ve seen this done with poetry and fiction books in the past; typically these events will cost a fee which includes a signed copy of the book and (for in-person events) snacks and refreshments.
At these events, you’ll be expected to talk about your book. Don’t worry if you’re no good at public speaking—people who attend these events know that most authors are reclusive or introverts; they’ll be understanding if you stutter or talk in circles. You’ll be fine as long as you have something planned to say—you’ve been working on this book for a long time; you should have something you can talk about! Besides, the presentation (if there is one) will be sandwiched between rounds of mingling and socializing, in which you can speak to people one-on-one, which is typically less daunting.
Of course, this event doesn’t need to take place on the actual day of release. If you’ve been contacting local author event organizers and can’t get anything on the exact day of the event, not to worry. You can host a free virtual event for the big day. You’ll still need to have something prepared to say, especially since there isn’t as much opportunity for a meet-and-greet during a virtual event. You could even just get a table at a larger in-person event if your only goal is that meet-and-greet atmosphere.
Don’t be shy about travelling for this event! If it helps your book, it’s worth it!
Once the book is released, it doesn’t end there. Continue sharing content and promotional material. Try to book events (if you can and want) to share your book with the world. If your book is appropriate for school children, try contacting your local elementary, middle, or secondary school to donate a copy of the book to their library—you might even be able to speak to the students about your new book (if you’re comfortable with that).
Keep in mind that books are almost always sold at a reduced price when they’re first released; then, after about a week, the price goes up to its normal price. On Amazon, you can have it set for your book to be “On Sale” at a reduced price so that all of your launch team members can purchase a copy of the book cheap to get that “Verified Purchase” sticker on their review.
You and your Launch team should make it clear when the price is going back to normal to encourage fans to purchase a copy before prices go up.
Staying within your comfort zone is important, but so is pushing those limits. Don’t go all in all at once but toe the line from time to time. As an author, you need to be able to talk about your book to strangers, so start with one stranger, then a small group. If you never get to the point of talking to a massive crowd, that’s okay.
Public speaking is always daunting because you’re afraid that you’ll embarrass yourself, which is why preparation is always key. If you’re talking about something you’re passionate about, you might even forget why you were nervous to begin with.
If you have a slideshow, keep words to a minimum—a good PowerPoint only has images and talking points; the rest is you. Know what you’re going to say and prepare in front of the mirror, in front of a friend or family member. It doesn’t have to be a script, just what you want to say, such as where you got your idea from, your journey writing the book, finding your key editors and designers, and/or everything you’ve learned along the way. It’s all from your own experience, and as long as you get over that initial bump in the road, it’ll only get easier from there.
From Pen to Published
Budgeting for Book Publication—Make a Plan
Navigating the World of Self-Publishing
Free Promo—Strategies to Promote Your Book
Tigerpetal Press is a small book press dedicated to publishing local authors and poets.