The Ambitious Author

This year I’m doing something different to promote my books…

Posted on January 16, 2018 Updated on February 14, 2021

One of my goals this year is to be more intentional with each book launch.

A nice part of being an indie author is that you can do a “soft launch,” which means you hit the Publish button on Amazon, then send a note to your email list about the new book and move on to write the next one.  It’s nice to have that flexibility, but honestly, it’s effective only in maintaining a ho-hum writing career.

When I did my annual review of book sales for 2017, I noticed a very interesting trend. The books where I did a full launch for the release have sold a significantly higher number of copies per month, even after the launch. Almost 50% more, in some cases. 

I’ve long been a fan of preorders, because that gives you the ability to market your book launch effectively, even if you don’t plan to go all-out on each launch. Every one of my books can be preordered for 90 days before release, but I’ve tended to really focus my launch efforts on first-in-series books.

For next-in-series books, I send the preorder announcement and release day announcement to my email list, ask my launch team to post reviews, and do one or two guests posts on some key blogs that reach my target reader. I also change the final email in my automated welcome email sequence to announce the new release. But that’s pretty much it. 

This year, I’ll be putting more focus on each launch. I plan to release at least three novels and a novella this year, and am making sure each release date is spaced so that I can put more emphasis on promoting each launch. What will that emphasis look like? For starters,

• newsletter swaps with other authors in my genre,
• working with book reviewers early enough to confirm space in their schedule,
• Bookbub preorder announcements,
• and Bookbub cost-per-click ads targeting my name, so I can reach BB readers who have expressed interest in my books.

I may also do AMS ads for each new book and a few paid ads sites like EreaderNewsToday.com.

So what do you think? Do you put the same effort into every book launch? Are you ready to take on this goal with me for your 2018 releases? Here’s to a year of great launches!