If you’re like me, the last thing you want to think about is a book launch. Once you’ve finished writing, rewriting, editing, polishing, and publishing your book, you’d love to wash your hands of the whole thing and move on to the next project. That’s fine if you don’t care if anyone reads that book to which you’ve dedicated so much time, effort, and money. However, if you want your words to go beyond your loyal friends and family who will read them no matter what, you have to successfully launch your book out into the world.
The crazy thing about a book launch is that you need to start the process super early. How early? I’m talking four to six months before your book is out. You may still be writing or have just hit the editing phase. You probably won’t have even started working with your cover designer, although you’ll want to jump on that pronto.
Vaulting into salesperson mode when you’re still writing or editing can be challenging, but there’s so much involved in launching your book that unless you’re willing to delay the publication, you just have to do it. Here are just a few of the tasks you’ll need to undertake for this book launch:
- You’re going to want to secure endorsements from the most prominent people you can. That means not only figuring out who to approach but how to get to them. Then, of course, you need to come up with a letter that convinces them to write the endorsement.
- If you don’t already have an author platform, you’ll want to start building one yesterday. Think of your platform as a combination of your author presence and a built-in fan base you’re going to cultivate with the help of your website, your blog, your newsletter, and your social media. This means, of course, that you need to establish all of the above well before your book is published.
- You’ll likely need sales material for readers and potential markets like libraries, along with a media kit.
- Professional reviews are always helpful. You have to figure out who to approach and do that months ahead of publication.
Book promotion also includes everything from writing your back cover and sales copy to approaching the media with press releases and setting up blog tours or speaking engagements when appropriate. You’ll also need to figure out how to best position yourself on world-mega-bookseller Amazon.
And as soon as your book is published, you’re going to have to try and get as many reader book reviews as possible.
Ahhh, I hear you thinking. Finally, something easy. Not so much, as I recently found out. I’ll write about that next week.
For now, if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed about the book launch to-do list, I have something that could help. When I was getting ready to promote Busting the Brass Ceiling–a book I co-authored with a tough, female cop who changed the face of policing when she sued the LAPD for sex discrimination–I did a ton of research into the ins and outs of the book launch. To make sense of it all, I created an informative, how-to book launch checklist, along with templated requests for endorsements, as well as professional and reader reviews. In short, I tried to simplify anything I found taxing or stressful. My Launch Package is available for $199 at https://incubationpress.com/promotion/. I hope it helps.
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