This week, we’re discussing book launches. Previously, we talked about the checklists you want to build before launching, and I gave you a checklist cheat sheet you can use to build your own. Now, I want to discuss some pre-launch strategies to help sell your book
If you’re new to the author space, you might not know that you can do a lot to sell your books before they even come out. The focus pre-launch is always on pre-orders. What’s the value of a pre-order? Not only do you get a book sale on the day the book comes out, but a high number of pre-orders can inform the algorithm that many people are excited about your book. This can help boost your organic rankings. Simply put, it means that Amazon, or whatever site you’re selling your books through, will push your book organically because many people are lined up and waiting to get it.
Today, we’re focusing on ways to encourage your readers to pre-order your book. The first and most vital is your email list. One of the challenges of being an author is that if we sell through websites like Amazon, Apple Books, or Kobo, we don’t own our audience. Amazon or Kobo owns the audience. An email list is our workaround. Social media can be used to some extent as well, but again, we don’t own our audience on social media. We’re just borrowing it from the platform.
An email list is different. It’s where you build your own followers. You have direct access to them through their inbox. Email lists are also hard and unforgiving because if you don’t deliver good content that someone is interested in, they will likely never open your email and thus never see the information you’re trying to communicate. At some point, I’ll probably do a video on email lists specifically, but just know that if you’re not building an email list, you should be. This email list is where you’re going to promote your pre-orders.
I wouldn’t recommend spamming people, but there is nothing wrong with sending out an email a month or two ahead of time and then periodically giving them other emails saying, “Hey, aren’t you excited about this book that’s coming out? Don’t forget to tell your friends. You can pre-order it here to read it as soon as it comes out.” By doing this, we’re tapping into our existing audience to hopefully give ourselves that launch day boost. Again, I wouldn’t send out more than two to four emails because we don’t want to annoy people, but it is important to communicate.
The next thing we can do to push pre-orders is to release teasers. This could be a cover reveal, exciting quotes from the book, or questions that we’re asking people. “Hey, what are you looking forward to the most in this new book?” All with some sort of link to the pre-order so that people know they can click it to prep for reading on the day it drops.
Sometimes it can feel a little weird to do this sort of promotion because it can feel like we’re faking excitement, but part of marketing’s job is to convey why someone should feel excited and to do that, we have to feel excited about it ourselves. So don’t be afraid to throw up social posts saying, “Hey, I am super pumped for this book that’s coming out and this is where you can pre-order it.” Again, we don’t want to spam people because if we do, they’re just going to write us off. But three or four posts about a new book that’s coming out in the weeks leading up to it is totally fine. Here’s the deal: if you don’t promote your book, nobody else will either. The more you can do to convey your excitement about it, the more other people are going to get excited about it as well.
The third thing we can do is ask for ARC reviewers. ARC stands for Advanced Reader Copy. These are copies of the book that we send out to people to read ahead of time so they can leave a review on launch day. This tactic requires a considerable amount of fortitude, but it can be used to tremendous effect. This is why sometimes you’ll see a book come out and it will already have 200 reviews as soon as it drops, or even maybe before it drops.
This is NOT trading a copy of your book for a good review. Instead, it’s giving the book to a reader and asking them for an honest review. This is why it requires fortitude. You have to be pretty confident that your book is fantastic to use this strategy. But it can be incredibly effective because once more, the algorithm sees all of those people leaving reviews. And if they’re good, it’s going to push the book harder.
The final thing you can do to promote your book before it comes out is interviews. There are a good number of podcasts that will interview authors, whether indie or trad, to talk about writing or the genre your book is in. This takes a considerable amount of prep work. This is one of the reasons why I recommended in our last video that we give ourselves enough time because it often takes a couple of months to organize the interviews, have them edited, and have them posted. But this is a fantastic way to get yourself in front of a new audience. So don’t be shy about reaching out.
These are some ways we can promote our book before it even comes out. Again, the goal is to drive pre-order numbers because if we can drive pre-order numbers, then it tells the algorithm that people are excited about our book and it’s more likely to get organic promotion when the book comes out.
YouTube Video Link: https://youtu.be/fn6gXQDjYgo
Thanks for reading and watching.
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