Over the past few weeks, I’ve been posting ideas with the intention of providing a service to my fellow authors—in particular, those new to the publishing game.
Anyone familiar with my work most likely knows about my most recent novel, Whizzers, and for a couple reasons. First, I’ve been promoting it since well before the book launch, which was July 2019. But secondly, and probably more importantly, I wrote extensively about the launch process itself, both beforehand and afterwards.
Not Just A Sales Job
Of course, the difficulty with a book launch of any sort is that you don’t want to sell to potential readers. No one likes to have friends, relatives, or, especially, strangers pushing a book on them. But you have to let people know the thing is coming out, and a launch event is one of many ways to do it.
For my Whizzers launch event, I took a multifaceted approach: yes, I did my best to enroll folks familiar with my previous books, and in some cases that worked. But I also reached out to reviewers, book bloggers, friends, networking connections, social media…you name it.
And I took on what I think is the most important strategy for a successful launch—giving my launch team and street team something they couldn’t get anywhere else.
Be Open, Be Flexible
If you’ve got a book launch coming up, even your first book, I’d recommend social media guru Frances Caballo’s interview with me about the success of the Whizzers launch. You can find that here.
I’d also refer folks back to a post I wrote about the difference between launch teams and street teams, which has many great ideas I’ve passed on from the Book Marketing Tools website.
Above all, though, I’d encourage my fellow writers to stay open to new ideas and be flexible in your approach. The online environment is dynamic, constantly evolving, and there’s a lot to all this stuff—probably more than you or I will ever know. Find what works for you, do your best, and leave the results to your readers.
You might be pleasantly surprised.
