Book Launching 101

This is a guest post by TC Avey who is a Christian devoted to God, family and friends. She is passionate about encouraging Christians to live a life dedicated to Christ as well as helping them understand the importance of preserving our national freedoms through knowledge and love. She blogs at Wisdom of a Fool. You can also follow her on Twitter and GoodReads. Her book, The Precipice: When Everything We Know Ends, is available for purchase on Amazon by clicking here.

I recently launched my book, The Precipice: When Everything We Know Ends.

I spent months preparing for this event. I can’t tell you the amount of time and effort that went into my launch—forget the blood, sweat, and tears of editing and publishing. I’m talking about the LAUNCH!

You see, it’s not enough to simply write and publish an awesome book. You can be the world’s next bestselling author, but if the world doesn’t know your book exists, it doesn’t matter how great the content is (click to tweet).

Therefore, it’s imperative you invest time and effort into your launch.

One of the initial things you need to do is start following people like Kimanzi to help you formulate your game plan (it’s what I’ve been doing for a few years and it’s been very helpful). Next, keep these things in mind as you prepare to send your book into the world.

First, build relationships with people.

Not the type of relationship where you want to sell them something (even though you hope they purchase your book), but the type of relationship that can withstand them NOT buying it.

Not everyone, even your close buddies and family will pay money to read your work. Some people don’t like reading, they aren’t passionate about the topic matter, they don’t have the time, they don’t have an eReader and you haven’t published in print, or whatever. You need to accept there will be some who won’t buy your book.

There’s also the issue that sometimes people acquire your book but they never leave a review on Amazon (or other sites)—despite how often you’ve told them the importance reviews are for future sells.

During these disappointing times to you as an author, you need to have built relationships that can withstand this type of hurt and/or disappointment.

Therefore, build relationships without an agenda (click to tweet).

After you’ve built relationships, ask people to help promote your book.

One of the best things I did was offer to write interview Q&A for people or to do a Guest Post on their blog.

Often people want to help, they just don’t have the time. Offering to do a Guest Post relieves them of the pressure of thinking up something to say about your book outside the review they’ve already agreed to write.

From my own experience in interviewing people, I’ve realized sometimes it’s hard to come up with questions, especially if an author has done five interviews already. If you (the author) have Q&A sets ready for your launch team to utilize, it will benefit everyone.

The weeks leading up to the release of my book I made sets of Q&A and had them ready in case people asked for question ideas. When anyone wanted to use a set of Q&A, I gave it to them exclusively. I never repeated them. While some of the interviews were very similar, none were identical.

This kept the content fresh for readers who may follow many of the same blogs you’re interviewed on.

TIP: The mistake I made was in cramming too much into one week!

During my launch week I did 9 Interviews and 7 Guest Posts. I bombarded social media outlets with the message, “I wrote a book”.

Days one and two of my launch had solid sells. This put my book on Amazon’s Best Seller List in all three categories I had it listed. I was beyond excited.

But by the end of the week, my sales had fizzled. People were tired of hearing about my book. Yet I remained on Amazon’s Best Seller List. Surely this would help promote my book, right?

Nope.

Being on Amazon’s Best Seller List does not guarantee additional sales. I won’t say it’s not helpful, it made me smile, but an author can’t rely on it to further get the message out: “here’s a book worth reading”.

It would have been better to have planned a 2-3 day launch using only a handful of my Interviews/Guest Posts and have the others slowly and consistently published in the following weeks.

As it was, the week after my launch I wasn’t sure what to do. I’d used up many of my resources, not to mention all the energy I’d spent in such a short amount of time. Yes, I was still on Amazon’s Best Seller List, but how was I going to stay there?

Now, I’m back to square one—building relationships and asking people if I can do Interviews and/or Guest Posts. Seems like a never-ending cycle. But it’s part of marketing a book.

I believe in my book. I believe in its message. So it’s worth all the time and effort to get it, not only on Amazon’s Best Seller List (I like to smile), but also into the hands of people I truly believe will benefit from reading it.

If you’re contemplating publishing a book, be prepared. There’s more to it than simply making it available (click to tweet). You’ve got to believe in it. Let it motivate you to reach out and meet new people. Allow it to be a spring-board for building relationships.

Because once you’ve reached someone with your book, there’s another opportunity to connect with them on a deeper level than simply selling a product.

What about you, do you have a plan for launching your book into the world?  If you have launched a book, what advice do you have for aspiring authors?

SPECIAL OFFER- One commenter will be randomly selected to win an ebook copy of The Precipice: When Everything We Know Ends. The Winner will be announced next week and contacted via email.