Anna David's Blog, page 17

Party Girl Excerpt, Chapter 1

 

This week features an audio excerpt—the first chapter of my recently re-released first book, Party Girl!

And now I give you...

Chapter 1

It is a truth universally acknowledged that crazy things happen at weddings. Or at least that’s what I tell myself as my activities segue from outrageous to risqué to downright depraved.

There’s the bathroom blow job incident, which I categorize as “outrageous” rather than “downright depraved,” solely due to the fact that my 82-year-old stepdad walks in while I’m going down on the cousin of the bride in the pool house bathroom. Because of his 82-ness (the stepdad, not the cousin, thankfully), he was prone to more “senior moments” than non-senior moments—and thus is easily convinced that what had just happened never in fact happened. By the time I’m done talking to him, I’ve actually managed to convince him that not only was there no blow job, but also there had been no cousin of the bride. I’m pretty sure if I’d kept going I could have gotten him to believe there was no wedding. But the point is, in convincing my stepdad, I’m pretty sure I convince myself. And thus: outrageous, not downright depraved. 

Don’t bother asking me how I go from sitting next to the cousin and finding him mildly attractive—not gorgeous, just mildly attractive, someone I might have gone out with had he asked me—to kneeling down in front of him while he sat on Mom’s bidet. It wouldn’t have been my style to have asked, “Care for a blow job in the bathroom?” At least I don’t think so. It’s possible that after a bottle or so of good wedding champagne, Amelia Stone is replaced by Paris Hilton minus the millions, plus a good 20 pounds, but since my exploits haven’t been caught on tape—note to exes, not that I know of—I can only venture this as a guess. I’d like to imagine that I happened to visit the restroom just as he was leaving and that our sudden passion erupted spontaneously. But by the end of the night—well, morning— the whole cousin incident was so comparatively pristine, I may as well have been a virgin in white in that bathroom. 

Later, I find myself in the sauna with the groomsmen. It had been my mom’s idea, that all the “young people” from the wedding should sauna and swim, but somehow it got down to just two guys and me. By this point, I know that I’m way more than mildly intoxicated, but since technically I’m on vacation, aren’t I supposed to be? If I were this drunk in LA, someone would probably bring out the coke and I’d thus be able to alleviate my alcohol buzz a bit, but parties at Mom’s house tend to be pretty short on drugs—at least non-SSRI ones. And since in some ways there’s no better high than having two men vying for your attention, I figure it’s just as well that I’m not holding.

“I’m going to be graduating in May,” Mitch says, as he offers me a sip of his warm Amstel Light. “Medical school has been a bitch.” 

“Oh, but now you’re going to have to do your residency,” Mitch’s alleged best friend Chris interjects, while interjecting his body into the minuscule space that exists between Mitch and me. “You’ll be working, like, 90-hour weeks for no money.” 

“Which is so much worse than ‘doing your residency’ at Paramount for a salary just above the poverty line?” Mitch lobs back, looking at me.

I swear I never get tired of the attention of boys. But I prefer direct attention, rather than transparent male dick-swinging contests. Do they honestly think that the one who gets the last dig in will win my affection? Don’t they know that being an assistant and a student, even a medical student, aren’t exactly lady-killer positions to be in, and that they should perhaps be digging into their personal arsenals for more compelling things to compete over? 

I stand up and they’re silenced. “Last one in has to do a shot,” I say and before I’ve even finished the sentence, they’re pushing each other aside in their zeal to jump into the pool. I stand at the sauna door, cold air rushing in, their wet towels at my feet. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear that the two of them just wanted to have sex with each other.

***

“Okay, we’re going to sleep now,” I instruct them, as I try to get as comfortable as I can while lodged between these two guys in a double bed. “Sleep.”

I honestly think we’re going to bed. Was anyone ever that naive? I can’t even sleep on two Ambien by myself, but the birds are dangerously close to chirping—a horrifyingly depressing time to still be partying, as I’ve recently learned—this is the only bed left in the house, and neither of these guys are in any condition to drive. I turn toward Chris, who’s facing the wall. Mitch is on the other side, facing the other wall.

A few minutes pass and I hear Mitch breathing heavily in that way that means he could be asleep. I sigh and feel more relaxed. My insomnia always seems embarrassing, and I’m all too relieved to be able to suffer through it without witnesses. Miraculously, I drift off for a moment or two.

And am awakened by lips on mine—specifically, lips belonging to Chris. My eyes swing open just in time for me to realize that Chris’s kissing skills aren’t half bad. Some people pride themselves on their gaydars. I pride myself on my kissdar because I can usually tell on sight if a guy is going to be one of those drench-your-face-with-saliva kissers, too-tentative pecking kissers or a possessor of one of those lizardlike tongues that darts into places it’s not wanted.

Most guys, unfortunately, fit into one of these categories. It’s the ones that don’t that drive us mad, in all the good ways. Unfortunately, their kissing skills always seem to accompany a tendency for unemployment, a lack of an IQ or just a general asshole-ishness. If they could kiss well and also possess qualities that actually made them good boyfriend material, women would probably maim and kill one another to have them.

I had assumed that Chris would be some combination of too-tentative and lizardlike—that he’d start out with inappropriate propriety and then swerve into too much without the required sensuality—and am startled to discover that he seems to know what he’s doing. He even knows the take-my-face-in-his-hands move.

I kiss him back, enjoying the secretiveness of the act. Despite all their lame competitiveness, despite the fact that Chris is an assistant at Paramount and that he attacks his alleged best friend who’s actually doing something useful with his life in a pathetic attempt to win a girl’s affection, I’m more attracted to him than I am to Mitch. 

Chris is kissing well enough that it’s impossible to say how many times we kiss—one time just seems to mesh into another. And then I’m utterly shocked when I feel a hand creeping from behind into my nether region. Had Chris and Mitch, in some sort of a silent pact, targeted my two most manipulatable zones and decided to each work one of them? The thrill of kissing someone while another hand works me from behind is unbelievable. I’m completely getting off on the anonymity of the hand (even though I obviously know whose hand it is) and on this wise solution to all that petty male competitiveness that was going on earlier, until I come back to earth and remember where we are. Which is in the guest bedroom directly below my mom and stepdad’s bedroom in their house, which I’m visiting for the weekend to see an old friend get married—not to blow his now-wife’s cousin and have a ménage à trois with two of his groomsmen.

“Wait—you have to stop!” I suddenly screech. I jump out of bed and the two of them look alarmed, if not altogether shocked. I grab a pillow off the bed. “I need to go somewhere where I can actually sleep,” I say, as if they’d been talking and I was tired of shushing them. Without another word, I stomp off to the den, where I promptly pass out on the couch.

LOVE THIS EXCERPT? GET THE BOOK HERE! 

Mimi MacLean on Being a Bad Ass Entrepreneur and Author

Mimi MacLean is an angel investor who focuses on female-led companies with something to say. A mom of five, she’s also a CPA, a Columbia Business School graduate and the host of The Badass CEO, a weekly podcast where she interviews entrepreneurs and high-level executives to discuss business strategies, life experiences and what a Badass CEO needs to know.

And I'm proud to say that Legacy Launch Pad released her first book, How to Be a Badass Female CEO: Slay the Competition and Reach the Top! Inspired by the statistic that fewer than two percent of female-led companies reach over a million in sales, How to Be a Badass Female CEO packs all of MacLean's myriad experiences into a guidebook for the female CEO's of tomorrow.

On this episode, we talked about her process of deciding to do a book as well as the fear that you're not even conscious of which creeps up right before the launch.

RELATED EPISODES & LINKS 

Gene Moran on How His Book Transformed His Business

How to Get on Podcasts to Promote Your Book with John Corcoran

How Do I Get Clients From My Book?

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM~

What to Do 60 Days, 30 Days and 7 Days Before Your Launch

 

After all the writing, editing, writing and writing your book is finally finished! Now what? Today, I’m answering the question what you do 60 days, 30 days and seven days before the launch.

60 Days Before Your Launch

Decide if you’re going to do a presales approach. In the past, with Amazon, all presales before the on-sale date counted toward first-week sales, which would increase the chances of a book hitting the NY Times bestseller list. Now with Amazon’s priority on new books, encouraging presales could adversely affect the algorithm that can make your book an Amazon bestseller.

At this point, you should compile an Advanced Reader Team (ART) or, as we call it, a Launch Squad, and write and schedule a series of emails to them. This podcast episode and this Launch Squad Swipe Copy can help you with this.  

Other things to do at this point: decide if you’re going to do readings and events and reach out to make arrangements; make a promo video using an application like Apple’s Clips; and research, read and reach out to book blogs, podcast bookers and influencers for advance press. You can also decide if you want to pay to have reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. (It may not sell books, but it lends legitimacy.)

30 Days Before Your Launch

At this point, you should create your media kit on your site. (Here's an example of my current one for the upcoming re-release of Party Girl.). Include your photo, book cover image and book description. Once it's on your website, you can direct reviewers, bloggers and other media people to it.

Other activities:

Upload your book to BookFunnel and give the link to your ART.

Start sending out the emails to your entire ART list where you include updates of advance reviews, your appearances on podcast—anything that happened since the previous newsletter.

Make quote cards of your book’s best lines to post during release week. Canva is a great resource for this. 

Use Canva to create branded images for your Facebook cover, Twitter cover, LinkedIn cover and wherever else you want that feature your book cover. 

Amp up the blogging for guest posts on other sites. Pitch them to feature you and your book.

Update your website homepage with an image that features your book and shows your book cover. Include a link to buy your book.

Reach out to people who can help promote your book when it’s released.

Come up with a release week or day contest.

Create your Amazon Author account and optimize your keywords.

Create or update your Goodreads account. 

Research the best Amazon categories for your book. (I highly recommend using Publishers Rocket; my Launch Your Book course breaks this process down in detail.)

Continue to bug and delight your ART.

7 Days Before Your Launch

A few days before your release, make sure that the price of your ebook is 99 cents and get your ART to buy and review it before release day. Stay on top of them and don’t cave to the temptation to reach out to family and your inner circle when your ART inevitably gets flaky. Your family and inner circle probably don't have a history of buying books like yours on Amazon so their purchases may screw up the Amazon algorithm and the site won't then start recommending your book to other shoppers interested in the topic.

On release day, change the price of your book from 99 cents to whatever you’re selling it for.

Make sure the cover of your book is shown on the homepage of your site.

Swap out all your social media images for graphics that include your book cover. When you can, make the images click-able so they lead to your book’s Amazon page.

Post/promote the quote cards of your best lines on social media.

Post/promote your video.

Post/promote your contest.

Continue to bug and delight your ART.

Encourage your friends to help promote your book using a specific hashtag.

Take screengrabs of any Top 10 lists your book hits on Amazon and circulate them.

Do Facebook Lives, YouTube Lives and Instagram Lives giving people a behind-the-scenes look at your release process.

Do Instagram stories encouraging people to pop over to your Facebook page.

Update your newsletter sequence to include any news about the book’s success, specific reviews, your contest or anything else newsworthy.

For a million other launch ideas, check out my extensive launch guide.

_______________________________________________________________________

RELATED EPISODES

What Are the Exact Steps to Publishing a Book?

10 Free Ways to Promote a Book

Do People Look Down on Self-Publishing?

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM

QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
"Encouraging presales could adversely affect the algorithm that can make your book an Amazon bestseller."

What to Do 60 Days, 30 Days and the Week of Your Launch

 

After all the writing, editing, writing and writing your book is finally finished! Now what? Today, I’m answering the question what you do 60 days, 30 days and the week of your launch.

60 Days Before Your Release

Decide if you’re going to do a presales approach. In the past, with Amazon, all presales before the on-sale date counted toward first-week sales, which would increase the chances of a book hitting the NY Times bestseller list. Now with Amazon’s priority on new books, encouraging presales could adversely affect the algorithm that can make your book an Amazon bestseller.

At this point, you should compile an Advanced Reader Team (ART) or, as we call it, a Launch Squad, and write and schedule a series of emails to them. This podcast episode and this Launch Squad Swipe Copy can help you with this.  

Other things to do at this point: decide if you’re going to do readings and events and reach out to make arrangements; make a promo video using an application like Apple’s Clips; and research, read and reach out to book blogs, podcast bookers and influencers for advance press. You can also decide if you want to pay to have reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. (It may not sell books, but it lends legitimacy.)

30 Days Before Your Release

At this point, you should create your media kit on your site. (Here's an example of my current one for the upcoming re-release of Party Girl.). Include your photo, book cover image and book description. Once it's on your website, you can direct reviewers, bloggers and other media people to it.

Other activities:

Upload your book to BookFunnel and give the link to your ART.

Start sending out the emails to your entire ART list where you include updates of advance reviews, your appearances on podcast—anything that happened since the previous newsletter.

Make quote cards of your book’s best lines to post during release week. Canva is a great resource for this. 

Use Canva to create branded images for your Facebook cover, Twitter cover, LinkedIn cover and wherever else you want that feature your book cover. 

Amp up the blogging for guest posts on other sites. Pitch them to feature you and your book.

Update your website homepage with an image that features your book and shows your book cover. Include a link to buy your book.

Reach out to people who can help promote your book when it’s released.

Come up with a release week or day contest.

Create your Amazon Author account and optimize your keywords.

Create or update your Goodreads account. 

Research the best Amazon categories for your book. (I highly recommend using Publishers Rocket; my Launch Your Book course breaks this process down in detail.)

Continue to bug and delight your ART.

Release Week

A few days before your release, make sure that the price of your ebook is 99 cents and get your ART to buy and review it before release day. Stay on top of them and don’t cave to the temptation to reach out to family and your inner circle when your ART inevitably gets flaky. Your family and inner circle probably don't have a history of buying books like yours on Amazon so their purchases may screw up the Amazon algorithm and the site won't then start recommending your book to other shoppers interested in the topic.

On release day, change the price of your book from 99 cents to whatever you’re selling it for.

Make sure the cover of your book is shown on the homepage of your site.

Swap out all your social media images for graphics that include your book cover. When you can, make the images click-able so they lead to your book’s Amazon page.

Post/promote the quote cards of your best lines on social media.

Post/promote your video.

Post/promote your contest.

Continue to bug and delight your ART.

Encourage your friends to help promote your book using a specific hashtag.

Take screengrabs of any Top10 lists your book hits on Amazon and circulate them.

Do Facebook Lives, YouTube Lives and Instagram Lives giving people a behind-the-scenes look at your release process.

Do Instagram stories encouraging people to pop over to your Facebook page.

Update your newsletter sequence to include any news about the book’s success, specific reviews, your contest or anything else newsworthy.

For a million other launch ideas, check out my extensive launch guide.

_______________________________________________________________________

RELATED EPISODES

What Are the Exact Steps to Publishing a Book?

10 Free Ways to Promote a Book

Do People Look Down on Self-Publishing?

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM

QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
"Encouraging presales could adversely affect the algorithm that can make your book an Amazon bestseller."

Sarah Alaimo on Going From "I Can't Write a Book" to Launching Her Book

 

 Career happiness coach Sarah Alaimo wasn't really planning on writing a book. But one day her then-fiance, now-husband asked if she wanted to come out to LA for a book writing retreat. 

Sure, she said.

That retreat never happened because a pesky thing called COVID-19 intervened but she ended up connecting with the retreat leader (spoiler alert: me!!) One thing led to another and now her debut memoir, Pearls and Probation: Adventures of an Alcoholic Good Girl, is out.

So how did she walk through her fears and put pen to paper? How did she know what to do after that? How did she get clients from her book before it was even out? In this episode, we broke down every step. Come with us!

RELATED EPISODES & LINKS 

How Did Alex Strathdee Get 40,000 College Students to Read His Book?

What's the Difference Between a Ghostwriter, Editor and Coach?

Samantha Perkins on the Anxiety of Launching Your First Book

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM~

How Do I Re-Launch a Book?

Those of us who were published traditionally but have learned how to publish on our own often want to get the rights to our books back and have a go at publishing them ourselves. This post walks you through how I did it for Party Girl (to be re-released September 15th!)

1) Get the Rights Back.

Depending on when your book was published, the rights may have reverted back to you, as was the case with Party Girl. Check your contract for the answer. Getting my rights back was incredibly challenging but the reason it was such an ordeal was not that [HarperCollins] cared so much about holding the rights but that they didn't care. It was impossible to get them to even respond.

My point is: have a lawyer or agent check with the publisher.

2) Design a New Cover.

This part will be exciting. Because your publisher had the final say on your first cover, usually with very little input from you, chances are you didn't like it. When designing your new cover, ask yourself what you didn’t like about the first one. How can it be improved? Book covers today are Instagram-friendly, they’re bright, the letters are huge, they're gorgeous and that's what I wanted for the new Party Girl cover.

A big advantage in re-releasing a book is you can use the blurbs and reviews from the first version of your book in your new cover design.

3) Come up with New Keywords.

Research the latest keywords. For Party Girl, my team’s using the ever-reliable Publisher Rocket. You can use this affiliate link to purchase it for $97. 

4) Have a New Angle.

If you’re re-launching your book, you need a new angle. For Party Girl, that new angle is that back in 2007, Quit Lit wasn’t a thing. There weren’t sober bloggers or sober influencers, or a lot of recovery memoirs as there are now. Party Girl was one of the first books its kind.

5) Use the Latest Tools.

The new A+ Content from Amazon allows independent publishers to do some cool things to their book pages. Here's an example.

6) Transfer Your Amazon Reviews.

Have Amazon move the reviews from the original ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number) to the new ASIN. You'll need to call Amazon and provide both numbers. You can do this by clicking on “Help” in the upper right-hand corner of your KDP dashboard, then go to “Contact Us” at the bottom left.

7) Switch the Copyright.

Last but not least, after reversion, authors should consider updating the US Copyright Office’s records with their works’ new ownership information. The records held by the US Copyright Office will likely list your publisher as the copyright owner (“claimant”) and/or the point of contact for permission to use the work. After reversion, it is up to you (as the new owner of the copyright) to update this information.

Fortunately, new copyright owners can record a transfer of copyright with the Copyright Office to update these records. Updating the Copyright Office’s records after you revert rights establishes a public record of your new ownership rights. This will make it easier for future users to find accurate information about the current ownership status of your work. When people know who to contact for permission, it can help increase the dissemination of your work, and potentially your compensation if you license paid uses.

A transfer of copyright can be recorded by submitting a signed or certified, complete, and legible copy of the document being recorded (such as a rights reversion letter from your publisher) to the Copyright Office, together with the required fee (currently $105 for a single title) and Form DCS cover sheet. If accepted, the Register of Copyright will record the document and issue a certificate of recordation. As of July 2019, the processing time for recording transfers or other documents related to copyright is nine months. For more information on recording transfers of copyright ownership, see Copyright Office Circular 12: Recordation of Transfers and Other Documents.

8) Add a Call to Action.

Your goal as an author is to get people to buy your books and, more importantly, join your email list. Better than just a “how to reach me,” offer a cheat sheet or a quiz as an incentive to join your mail list. At Launch Pad, we put a QR code at the beginning and end of the book on the page so readers can simply scan it. Studies show the number one thing readers want to do when they finish a book is to connect with the author.

Also, at the end of your book, don't be afraid to ask for reviews. Just a quick “Hey, if you liked this book, please leave a review." If they’re reading your book on an e-reader, here’s how to make a special Amazon book review direct link. 

_______________________________________________________________________

RELATED EPISODES

What Are the Exact Steps to Publishing a Book?

How Do I Get Reviews for My Book?

How Does John Lee Dumas Launch a Book?

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM

QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
"The reason getting the rights back was such an ordeal was not that they [HarperCollins] cared so much about holding the rights but that they didn't care."

How Do I Throw a Book Launch Party?

 Know That It Won't Sell Books 

Bad news first: your party, no matter how awesome, won't help with book sales (unless the party is at a local book store but even then, you can only count on so many). Chances are, you'll actually be giving books away! So why do it? Because it's fun. Because you deserve to be celebrated. And because why not? So what are some ways to do it?

Rent a Venue

For Party Girl, I rented out the top floor of a (sadly now gone) restaurant next to Book Soup for the few hours after my book signing there. It was fun. It was an investment. I got great photos. End of story.

For my second book, Bought, I threw a party at a New York restaurant and that's when I started to wise up. Yes, I got lovely photos, yes I got to celebrate, yes it even got some press but it was a lot of trouble to go to for not a terrific payoff. And so I thought: I need to have a party that attracts a lot more buzz!

And so, for my next book, Reality Matters, I coerced some genuine reality stars (from The Bachelor, The Real World, Sober House and more) to show up and rallied to get the press there. Again, a lot of trouble for not a huge payoff. So figure out why you're doing your party and whether or not the planning is going to be fun. I'm a slow learner so it took me three times to realize I didn't think it was fun. For my next few books, I didn't do any parties.

But really, I concluded...

It's a Great Idea for Your First Book 

That's why we offer what we call a VIP Launch for clients of ours who want to come out to LA to get the celebrity treatment. We get the press there, we gather a crowd, we even get a red carpet featuring their book cover and secure meetings for them with movie and TV producers to discuss the viability of their book as a movie or TV show. My feeling is: if you can afford it and someone else is going to do the leg work, go for it! 

And Then There's the Marie Forleo Way

In many ways, Forleo was the first online marketer—and she's certainly the most glamorous. Her first book was called How to Make Every Man Want You and her husband is an actor who’s been on Sex and the City, for God's sake!

As legend has it, she was a bartender who started her mailing list by asking people who came in for drinks to sign up on a notebook. And she’s managed to not only show people how online businesses are done, get endorsed by Oprah and make millions in the process but also to incorporate her myriad interests (hip hop dancing anyone) into her business.

You get it: she doesn’t just break the rules; she makes new ones. And so when she was figuring out how to launch her book Everything is Figureoutable, she basically pulled an Erika Jayne: declaring herself a stage presence.

And she pulled it off, selling nearly 2,000 tickets for her New York launch, with people flying in from 42 states and 21 countries.

What'd she do? She danced! "Imagine," as she put it, "if a Beyoncé concert and a TED talk had a baby, then threw a block party."

Then she took it on the road, securing famous friends in every city to help bring the hype— Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach in Orlando, Chase Jarvis in Seattle and Brene Brown in Houston. She and her team went on to London and Australia.

Did it work? Well, the book became a #1 New York Times bestseller. Was that solely because of her Beyonce-like tour? Surely not. But it sure looks like that made the trip to the top fun.

______________________________________________________________________________

RELATED EPISODES & LINKS

A Play-by-Play Breakdown of How Rachel Hollis Launches a Book

Neal Pollack on How He Launched His Book 

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM

QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
"Your party, no matter how awesome, won't help with book sales. Chances are, you'll actually be giving books away! So why do it?"

10 Free Ways to Promote a Book

There are a million ways to launch a book—some expensive, some not so expensive and some utterly free. Today we're talking about 10 free ways to launch a book:

1) Create a sales page for your book.

Most authors have a website or a page on an existing site that contains a description of their book as well as the cover. But what if you approached the book as something you're selling and not something you hope people just buy? To understand the difference, check out this post. It explains how breaking the book pitching page down to a message from the author, with testimonials and bullet points, can make the book about the reader and not about the author.

2) Pitch media.

I've said this before but if you want media attention and don't know where to start, get thee-self to Help a Reporter Out (HARO). Subscribe to their newsletters and then, whenever a journalist is writing about a topic related to your book topic, reach out and explain why you're the ideal source. Also, search for journalists writing about your topic and pitch them ideas over Twitter or find their email addresses on sites like Hunter.IO. 

3) Put together a Launch Squad.

I talked about this in the Reviews episode but the best way to launch a book and get it to the #1 spot in all its categories is to gather a group of people to read the book a month ahead of time and then, a few days before the official release, buy the book on Amazon and post their review. It's a simple system and it's a system that works.

4) Create a book trailer using Clips.

There are a million ways to create book trailers but easily the easiest, quickest and least expensive is using the Clips app, which allows you to add images, text and music in less time than it would take you to research video editors on Fiverr. The videos you can make aren't fancy but they definitely do the trick.

5) DM your social media contacts.

It's laborious and certainly may irritate some but sliding into people's DMs can be an effective way to let them know about your book. You may think, "Well, I posted about it so they know." Er, chances are they didn't see the post and if they did, they got distracted by the cat video they watched right after. A Direct Message to your Instagram followers, Facebook friends and/or LinkedIn contacts—even if it's a generic one you copy and paste—will definitely move some copies.

6) Create quote cards on Canva.

Canva is God's gift to those who are flummoxed by Photoshop, easily allowing all of us to use the same font, colors and images from our book cover to highlight some of the book's best lines.

7) Throw a virtual party.

Whether it's on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or Zoom, a virtual launch is a great way to gather folks from across the globe. But rather than just throwing a party to celebrate your book, try to incentivize people to come. For Make Your Mess Your Memoir, I threw a "Messy Pitch Party" where I asked two writer friends to co-host and we allowed guests to pitch their book ideas to us.

8) Submit your book for a Readers Favorite review.

I did that for Make Your Mess Your Memoir and ended up with a lovely early review that I could post in places (and which Readers Favorite also posted in a few spots. You can also pay for reviews in Kirkus (click here for info) and Publishers Weekly (click here for info). You can also submit your book to BookBub for a featured new release or a featured release (while those cost money, you will more than earn back your investment if they select your book to feature). 

9) Make mock-ups of your cover.

An amazing site called Adazing gives subscribers an opportunity to upload their book cover and create images of that cover in a field, in a library, being held by a group of children and every other scenario you can possibly imagine. While you can pull the sneaky move I used to and just keep getting mock-ups of different covers by inserting new fake email addresses, the best money you could ever spend is investing in the software so you can continue to create mock-ups of your cover, guilt-free! This affiliate link gets you access to the entire $198 archive for more than half off. 

10) Ask friends with newsletter lists and popular blogs to mail for you and/or allow you to guest post.

All of our lives would be easier if we had lots of friends with massive email lists. But we make do what we have, which is a few friends who have maybe not massive ones. It doesn't matter. If you have a friend with one person on their list, that is one more reader for you. And that reader could love your book so much, he or she tells his entire list of a million about you. You just never know. I did this for Make Your Mess Your Memoir and also did guest blog posts on a couple of writing websites and all of it helped. 

_______________________________________________________________________________

RELATED EPISODES & LINKS

How Do I Get Media Attention From My Book?

How Do I Get Reviews For My Book?

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM

QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:
"If you have a friend with one person on their list, that is one more reader for you. And that reader could love your book so much, he or she tells his entire list of a million about you."

What Are the Exact Steps to Publishing a Book?

Write and Rewrite

Then you have your book edited. This part is obvious, no? But after that, you have the book edited three times: first a developmental edit, then a copy edit to fix grammatical errors and missing words and then a proofread to catch all the mistakes the copy editor missed. Please note: these should be three different people since our eyes fill in words that may be missing and that's why you need three different sets of eyes on it.

Lay the Book Out

You can hire a layout designer, upload it to Amazon directly or use Vellum software. A layout designer is going to be the most expensive, the Amazon upload is going to be the least (it's free) and Vellum software, which you can purchase using this affiliate link, is $249 for a lifetime license. I personally love it (I only have affiliate accounts for products I love) but it is, for the moment, Mac only. (Sorry, PC-ers! Still love you, though.)

Design a Cover

While you can, of course, be designing a cover far before you do the layout, you shouldn't begin designing it until you've finalized your title. (I have learned this the hard way.)

Much like with layout, there are free, medium-priced and expensive options. You can design a cover that's not half-bad on Amazon if you're going to sell exclusively on Amazon but you can also design a free cover using Canva that looks, in my opinion, a million times better. (My Launch Your Book course walks you through how.) 

Keep in mind that you only need a front cover if you're doing ebook only but you also need a back cover if you're doing a paperback and you need a back cover plus flap copy if you're also doing a hardcover. Make sure that your bio and book description and blurbs have been finalized before designing the back cover. (I have also learned this the hard way.)

Cover designer costs cover the gamut but I have found that paying more doesn't always mean you get a better cover. My favorite designer charges $500 a cover whereas I've hired others who weren't as good who charged $1k and over. Good cover designers, much like good editors, are worth their weight in proverbial gold so if you find a good one, hang onto them for future books. (This page lists potential options for who to hire but it's wholly unvetted. These are just people I've heard of who do freelance book work.)

Determine the Best Categories for Your Book

Unlike keywords, categories are something everyone sees. Categories within Amazon are what’s known as BISACS (Book Industry Standards and Communications) but all you really need to know is that these are the lists within Amazon where your book is categorized so it's how people get the glory of being a #1 bestselling author—it means that their book was selling more than any other in its category at that time.

They get a Bestseller tag next to their book title, which they can screengrab and share and they never lose that status: once your book has earned this, you are always a #1 bestselling author.

Remember: You Are Looking for Very Specific Categories

If you select “Non-Fiction” or “Memoir,” you will be competing against tens of thousands of books so there’s no way your book will get to the top of the charts but if you go into a main category like “Memoir” and then pick a sub-category or a sub-category within that sub-category, your chances of hitting the #1 spot increase exponentially.

Here's an example: within “Self-help” there’s “Abuse,” “Anger management,” “Anxieties and phobias,” “Creativity,” “Death and grief." Then, within “Death and grief,” there's “Grief and bereavement,” “Pet loss,” “Suicides,” “Motivational new age,” “Personal transformation. These sub-subcategories are your key to success.

Your Secret Category Tool

I highly recommend researching potential categories using Publishers Rocket, Dave Chesson's software (you can use this affiliate link to get it for $97 and it's the best money you can possibly invest in your book career).

Let the software guide you to categories you may not have thought of as it shows you how many books you need to sell to hit the top 10 in that category; for example, it will tell you that you have to sell 80 books to hit the top 10 in dating.

If you put your keyword phrase in “Competition Analyzer” in Rocket, it will pull up ALL the categories using that keyword; then click “Unleash categories” and it will list every category that keyword is listed in. I highly recommend creating a spreadsheet as you do your research.

An important point: don’t pick a category because it’s not competitive but the books in it sell well IF IT DOESN’T FIT YOUR BOOK; trying to game the system in this way will backfire because people will find your book when searching for a different kind of book and not buy yours (thereby hurting your book in the algorithm because you want the people who come upon your book page to BUY) and may even buy it and then write a nasty review because your book wasn’t what they wanted!

The Myth of the Two Categories

When you upload your book on KDP, it asks you to provide two categories but if you call or email Amazon, you can request eight more; here’s how:

Go to www/author.amazon.com/en_US/contact, click “How We Can Help” and select “Amazon Book Page”

Then select “Update Amazon Categories” – it says You can submit a single request for all category updates. Add a line per marketplace, using the example below.

Example: ASIN or ISBN, .COM, UK, DE, JP, etc., eBook or book, preferred category

It says you can only submit a single request but it’s worked for us to submit all eight new categories at once. It usually takes between 24-48 hours for those categories to be updated. 

You never actually SEE all 10 categories on your book at once; usually, it’s three at a time.

Keywords and all the Rest

While keywords is a whole topic onto itself (which I go into in detail in the Launch Your Book course), the most important recommendation I can make is to use Publishers Rocket to do your research and then use your keywords not just in the backend of Amazon but also in your title, subtitle, bio, description and everywhere else. 

There are a million other tiny things you can do to enhance your launch and make it a success but those are the necessities.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

RELATED EPISODES & LINKS

How Long Does It Take to Publish a Book?

Do People Look Down on Self-Publishing? 

What's the Difference Between a Ghostwriter, Editor and Coach?

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM

QUOTE OF THE POD:

"Cover designer costs cover the gamut but I have found that paying more doesn't always mean you get a better cover."

How to Get on Podcasts to Promote Your Book with John Corcoran

John Corcoran may be my new favorite human. A former White House speechwriter and attorney who worked in Hollywood, he now runs Rise25, which helps businesses get more clients, referral partners and strategic partners through their done-for-you podcast service.

In the brief time we've known each other, he's introduced me to countless people, advised me on my business and given me ideas that have sent my head spinning, in all the right ways. This man is a fount of wisdom!

And Corcoran isn't just an expert in podcasts—he's an expert in getting podcasts to further your career.

He's been in the podcasting game over a decade and his show, Smart Business Revolution, is a must for anyone building a business (and if you're an author, I do hope you're building a business that your book can support).

In this episode, he explains how you can promote your book on podcasts, when you should be reaching out and why having your own podcast is the best promotional tool of all.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

RELATED EPISODES & LINKS

The Debut of Launch Pad with Dave Chesson

Affiliate link to Dave Chesson's AMAZING Publisher Rocket software

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM~