I am thrilled to share her knowledge with all of you and I KNOW you'll love her tips for a great book launch!
Aloha from Maui! I’m the self-published author of the Lei Crime Series, with three novels and one minibook, Building an Author Platform that can Launch Anything, out in one year. I wrote the minibook last summer after Blood Orchids, the first in the Lei Crime Series had debuted to commercial and critical success. Here are some fresh tips that I’m using now to build on the momentum of my books—hope you find some of them helpful!
1. Build your platform prior to your launch by PIF’ing. PIF is the phrase I’ve borrowed and used in my minibook to describe “paying it forward”—the process of building enough social media collateral to support the favors you will call in for your book launch. This takes the form of hosting other bloggers, retweeting/tweeting others’ posts, promoting others’ books you love, posting reviews of others’ books, etc.
2. Top Quality. Don’t put your book out until it’s as great as you can possibly make it, and then revise some more. Don’t stint on editing. The best marketing in the world won’t sell more than a few hundred copies of a mediocre book.
3. Great cover. In a world of DIY covers, make yours truly outstanding. Raine Thomas and Kendall Grey are authors whose covers I’ve consistently found to be of the quality a traditional publisher would put out. I’m proud of my books’ covers; I have original photographs done for each one by my pro photographer husband, combined with the exceptional design skills of Julie Metz Design in New York. I spend $2,000 on each cover (and that’s my “frequent customer rate!)and it’s the biggest expense of a new book—it’s money well spent, because people DO judge a book by its cover.
3. Great cover. In a world of DIY covers, make yours truly outstanding. Raine Thomas and Kendall Grey are authors whose covers I’ve consistently found to be of the quality a traditional publisher would put out. I’m proud of my books’ covers; I have original photographs done for each one by my pro photographer husband, combined with the exceptional design skills of Julie Metz Design in New York. I spend $2,000 on each cover (and that’s my “frequent customer rate!)and it’s the biggest expense of a new book—it’s money well spent, because people DO judge a book by its cover.
4. Build brand recognition: this goes along with your cover. Once I had my Blood Orchids cover, my web designer then coordinated my Twitter, Facebook page, and Mailchimp account. All three Lei Crime Series covers have the same “look and feel” so that readers can easily spot them in a book lineup, grabbing new ones (hopefully!) when they come out with easy recognition. For a great coordinated site and package, check out my webgal Betsy Cohen at http://www.positiveelement.com/.
5. Build anticipation with your blog networks with a hoopla launch date. Have a countdown, a contest, schedule a blog tour, etc. This is the time to begin to call in those favors you built up with your friends and fans through PIF!
6. Send out Advance Reader Copies (ARC) to some of your fans in return for immediate reviews when your book goes live. These fans are worth their weight in gold—and for the privilege of an advance read of your book, all they have to do is post their review of your book when it’s available for purchase. Try to have at least 5 reviews that go up immediately upon the book going live. This will help the book “storm the lists” with a good initial rush and again, will help with visibility. (This is perfectly ethical—publishers do it every day!)
7. Load your book to Amazon with careful attention to categories and tags. I’m no expert on this, but from what I understand, choosing these carefully helps your book achieve “bestseller” status and also targets it to readers accurately through Amazon’s algorythms. (for more information, consult Rachel Thompson at BadRedheadMedia.)
8. Mailchimp Campaign: I’ve written a blog post on this with all the good reasons to build an email list of dedicated fans. Develop an email announcement of your book with embedded purchase links, and when your new book comes out, hopefully they immediately buy it, resulting in that initial boost that helps your book ride a wave of visibility to bestseller.
9. Contests, giveaways and other events. Use your blog and FB for these, and have other bloggers (with good reader traffic!) host your contests. This builds goodwill with them, since your giveaway attracts traffic to their blog, and is good for you because hopefully their followers will also become yours. Do A GOODREADS BOOK GIVEAWAY! Huge exposure on this—both my book giveaways attracted over 800 people competing for one book. Hopefully these folks will go on to buy my books after one of them wins. In any case, they will recognize my books again when they see them. (Caveat: Goodreads does giveaways for hard copies only.)
10. Submit the book to review sites. I think this is more effective than a blog tour; all that work, writing blog posts, is great for building relationships (and should be more of an ongoing) but submitting your book to a list of book reviewers who will read and write about it, posting directly to READERS—is what you want. I did close to a hundred guest blogs with my first book and about killed myself. Now, I focus on writing the next book and I cultivate relationships with book bloggers and reviewers, and get them copies the minute my new book is ready.
One of the tough things about the new Wild West of self-publishing is that you have to do it ALL—not just write a great book. That’s just step one! Embrace the idea that you’re not just a writer—you’re a businessperson. I hope some of these ten tips help you have a great book launch.
Do you have any tips that have helped you have a great launch?
5. Build anticipation with your blog networks with a hoopla launch date. Have a countdown, a contest, schedule a blog tour, etc. This is the time to begin to call in those favors you built up with your friends and fans through PIF!
6. Send out Advance Reader Copies (ARC) to some of your fans in return for immediate reviews when your book goes live. These fans are worth their weight in gold—and for the privilege of an advance read of your book, all they have to do is post their review of your book when it’s available for purchase. Try to have at least 5 reviews that go up immediately upon the book going live. This will help the book “storm the lists” with a good initial rush and again, will help with visibility. (This is perfectly ethical—publishers do it every day!)
7. Load your book to Amazon with careful attention to categories and tags. I’m no expert on this, but from what I understand, choosing these carefully helps your book achieve “bestseller” status and also targets it to readers accurately through Amazon’s algorythms. (for more information, consult Rachel Thompson at BadRedheadMedia.)
8. Mailchimp Campaign: I’ve written a blog post on this with all the good reasons to build an email list of dedicated fans. Develop an email announcement of your book with embedded purchase links, and when your new book comes out, hopefully they immediately buy it, resulting in that initial boost that helps your book ride a wave of visibility to bestseller.
9. Contests, giveaways and other events. Use your blog and FB for these, and have other bloggers (with good reader traffic!) host your contests. This builds goodwill with them, since your giveaway attracts traffic to their blog, and is good for you because hopefully their followers will also become yours. Do A GOODREADS BOOK GIVEAWAY! Huge exposure on this—both my book giveaways attracted over 800 people competing for one book. Hopefully these folks will go on to buy my books after one of them wins. In any case, they will recognize my books again when they see them. (Caveat: Goodreads does giveaways for hard copies only.)
10. Submit the book to review sites. I think this is more effective than a blog tour; all that work, writing blog posts, is great for building relationships (and should be more of an ongoing) but submitting your book to a list of book reviewers who will read and write about it, posting directly to READERS—is what you want. I did close to a hundred guest blogs with my first book and about killed myself. Now, I focus on writing the next book and I cultivate relationships with book bloggers and reviewers, and get them copies the minute my new book is ready.
One of the tough things about the new Wild West of self-publishing is that you have to do it ALL—not just write a great book. That’s just step one! Embrace the idea that you’re not just a writer—you’re a businessperson. I hope some of these ten tips help you have a great book launch.
Do you have any tips that have helped you have a great launch?
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