It won’t come as a surprise to you that I love words. And I love writing. You have to have a love of writing to be a blogger. One of my stretch dreams is to one day write a book. I’d love to share my BLENDStyles journey — how I got started, what I would do differently, and the things that worked out better than I imagined. I’ve been researching everything it takes to make a book successful after you finish writing it, and today I’m going to share some tips and resources with you for planning a successful book launch.
Below is also one book I recently purchased and absolutely love it! If you haven’t checked it out, you definitely should!
How To Plan A Successful Book Launch
The first step is to sit down and write an amazing book. That will take you some time. And there will inevitably be revisions, both as you read back over the book yourself, and as you get feedback from anyone who is acting as a beta reader for you.
Find A Publisher or Publish It Yourself
This is no small question. There are a lot of pros and cons for both traditional publishing and self-publishing. You will have to choose the one that works best for your situation and meeting your goals.
Traditional Publishing
If you want to pursue traditional publishing, you will need to find a book agent who represents books in your genre AgentQuery and QueryTracker are both popular sites for helping authors find agents. When you find an agent who interests you, make sure to read the agency’s website and follow their submission guidelines carefully before sending your query letter.
Once you have an agent, the next step is looking for a publishing company that will take on your book. The good news is that your publisher will take care of things like editing, cover art, and book formatting. The news you might not like as much is that you won’t have total creative freedom over all of these decisions, especially as a first-time author.
Self-Publishing
If you are going to self-publish, you get to skip a couple of steps, and you get a lot of creative freedom, but you will be responsible for every aspect of the publishing which is going to take an investment of both money and time.
Plan ahead to pay for a professional editor. Unless you are a graphic designer, you should also hire a professional cover designer to create your cover art. Then you have to decide where you are going to make your book available and if you are going to invest in both print and ebooks from the beginning.
The Creative Pen has a great breakdown of more of the pros and cons of traditional vs self-publishing that you should check out if you still haven’t decided which is a better fit for you.
Get Ready For Book Launch Day
Once you have a finished book that is ready to launch, you are going to need to market it. If you decide to go the route of traditional publishing, your publisher might help with this (it’s important to talk about this before signing any contracts), but increasingly, even large publishing houses are looking to authors to use their own author platforms to generate publicity.
Start Promoting Before You Book Is Hot Off The Presses
In the months leading up to your launch day, use social media to talk about your book with your followers. Don’t give away too much, but tease enough of the book to get them excited. Regularly participate in Twitter chats or other forums with authors and readers.
Revamp your website to make your upcoming book a big focus. You should also be building an email list, and sending out regular updates about the process as well as the book itself. Seek out opportunities to guest post for other authors or bloggers to further help get your name and information about your book in front of new people.
If you are offering pre-orders (and you probably should), think about setting up an incentive to get people to pre-order. You will find more success with your early promotion if there is a call to action people can follow right then when they discover you.
Create A Launch Group
Invite your followers to join an exclusive launch group that will last one to two months before your book release date.
I’ve been in a couple of launch groups, and talked to people who have done others, and I think it works really well when you have a target group of people who are already excited to read your book.
- Have a simple application, so you can choose people who are going to be a great fit for your book and really work to promote it.
- Be clear what the perks are for joining the group – a free copy of the book, exclusive access to you for interviews, exclusive merch related to your book, copies to give away to friends, etc
- Be clear what you are going to ask them to do in the group – promote the book on social media, leave reviews on Amazon or GoodReads, provide testimonials, etc
- Set up a space where your launch group can interact with you and each other. Facebook groups or Slack are both great options for housing your launch group.
- Keep it fun! Don’t just show up every day to tell your group to go promote you again. Have contests, giveaway fun prizes (they don’t have to be huge). Build relationships — really get to know the people in your group and give them the opportunity to get to know you, too.
Throw A Launch Day Party
A book launch party is a super fun idea to both celebrate all of the hard work that went into making your book a reality as well as connecting with your readers and fans.
Make sure you send a special invitation to anyone in your launch group who lives near enough to attend. You could even live stream or video a bit of the event to share on social media so people who can’t attend in person can get in on the fun.
Launch Day Isn’t The End
There is a lot of lead-up to the launch of your book, but that won’t be the end of your journey. If your book is published in physical copies, contact local bookstores, libraries, and coffee shops to set up book signings. Make sure you are using your author platform and social media to let your followers know about any events they could attend, so they can meet you in person. It’s a great way to get people even more excited about your book and you.
You will also want to continue promoting your book on social media. It shouldn’t be the only thing you talk about, that would be boring for your followers, but you should schedule out regular promotions and reminders. Run ads on Facebook and Instagram.
Whether you are working with a publisher or doing it all yourself, you will need to put in a lot of work leading up to your book launch day and beyond. Set sales goals for each month and be diligent about tracking what is working and what isn’t, and make decisions about where your marketing will focus the next month based on that data.
If you are thinking about writing a book, tell me about it in the comments. I’d love to cheer you on!
XOXO,
BLENDstyles
