The Ambitious Author

Inside Look at a Launch Team

Posted on February 14, 2018 Updated on February 13, 2018

You’ve heard me talk about launch teams several times, but I thought it would be helpful to share my experiences with my latest release. (This Treacherous Journey, released Feb. 6th, 2018.)

Before I began to prepare for this release, I had about 20 wonderful people on my launch team. I knew I wanted to grow the team for this new book, so about three months before the release date, I sent an invitation to my email list, explaining what the launch team was and offering the chance to join (through a screening process).

I was thrilled with the response, and grew the team to 189 members.

I sent the ARC (advanced review copy) out to the team about two months before release. I don’t recommend sending it any earlier than that, because those who read it right away will have forgotten the story by release day. Or at least lost some of their initial enthusiasm.

When I sent the book, I included the link to Goodreads, and asked people to post their review as soon as they finished the book. In hindsight, I wish I had also included instructions on how to actually post the review, as GR is not very intuitive. You have to click your star rating, then hover over the stars until it asks if you want to post a review. I ended up giving those instructions through email more than once. 🙂

Slowly but surely, my team began posting reviews on GR. It was exciting to see their feedback on the book! About a month away from the release date, I sent an email to the team thanking them for all the reviews and sharing more details about release details. The Goodreads reviews kept coming in, and by the release date, there were 40. Exciting!

ACX released the audiobook 3 days before the release of the ebook, so I sent an email to the launch team with the Amazon link and asked them to go ahead and post reviews on the audiobook format. Again, the reviews started coming in. By the morning of release, there were 12 showing on Amazon. Also, a number of those on my team have their own blogs where they posted reviews. More than I realized!

I sent my 4th and final email to my launch team on the morning of release (I had scheduled it in Mailerlite the day before). I shared a  bit of my overwhelming gratitude for all their help, and sent links for all the retailers, as well as Goodreads & Bookbub. The team did a fantastic job posting reviews and sharing about the book on social media!

By the end of Day Four after release, the book had 40 reviews on Amazon. By Day Seven, there were 71. Not to mention 72 reviews on Goodreads (a platform that has traditionally been hard to garner reviews on), as well as multiple reviews on the other retailers – and on the book’s page on Bookbub!

Over and above the reviews, the team shared about the book on social media for weeks before and during the book release. There’s no way to measure how that natural word of mouth helped!

If you’ve been on the fence about whether to start your launch team, or maybe it’s time to infuse some fresh inspiration into your existing team, I hope this post offers  encouragement!

And if you’re not sure what to do first — or maybe you would just love to learn some best practices and pro tips — feel free to check out the course I put together to walk through the steps. It’s not a long course, but packed with everything you need to know to put together a fantastic team.

Now it’s your turn! Do you have a launch team? What are your successes and challenges with your team?