In today’s episode, I’m going to share the top 4 questions authors should ask when planning a book launch.
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In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- The four questions to ask before planning your book launch
- How to determine your main goal
- Timing required for a book launch
- Why the first 30 days are the most crucial
- If pre-order sales are something you should consider
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Hot New Releases on Amazon
- KDP preorder information
- KDP policy on changing preorder date
- Setting up preorders on Amazon Advantage
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Godly Gain Segment:
Each week, I share a Godly Gain segment for entrepreneurs who want to keep Christ at the center of their business.
Today’s scripture: “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.” Proverbs 16:9 (NLT)
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Can’t listen right now? Read the transcript below:
Today’s podcast is episode seven titled, “The Top Four Questions Authors Should Ask When Planning a Book Launch.”
I know this is going to bring you one step closer to getting your message to more people, so be prepared to shine. The first question you should ask on planning a book launch is what is my primary goal? I have many authors that ask me, what should I do for my book launch? How should I plan my book launch? What should I include? What should I do?
The first question I ask them is what is your primary goal? Because there are always many goals, and you could say, I want to reach all of these goals: I want to reach best-seller status and be able to put in my bio that I’m a best-selling author. I want to have book sales. Show me the money. I want to grow my email list and grow my business through my book.
You may say, “Shelley, I want all of those goals.” However, I want you to tell me what is the one primary goal for your book launch. If you’re trying to do everything, sometimes you’ll never reach anything with your goals. However, if your goal is best-seller status, there is a very specific way you can achieve that. If your goal is book sales, you’re probably going to have to do a lot of work to really make sure you make back your return on the investment of time and your return on investment in your book, to make sure you are achieving your goal.
If your goal is to grow your email list, then there are specific strategies that you can consider. So right now, if you’re able, if you’re not driving, or if you’re not somewhere where you’re unable to write something down, I want you to write down for your upcoming book launch, if you have a book launch coming up, what is your primary goal?
Is it best-seller status? Is it book sales or growing your email list? Or maybe it’s something else. Write that down right now so that you can know what your goal is.
The second question I believe authors should ask when planning a book launch is, how far in advance do I need to plan? Sometimes you get in the moment and you think, “Okay, I’m ready to go, I’m publishing my book. Let’s do this.”
If you’re following my proven system at authoracademy.com, you may be publishing quality books fast. So you may not be thinking,you know, far ahead in advance enough to really plan for your book launch.
So, I want you to think. For most book launches, you need to start thinking about it and start planning at least six weeks in advance. This gives you time to write out your social media posts, to write out sample emails, emails you’ll send to your lists, to plan a blog tour, whatever you’re going to do. In next week’s episode, we’ll talk about seven different book launch events you can plan, so definitely don’t miss that episode. But if you’re planning a really big, big launch, you may need up to six months in advance for all the details. It can be really detailed. And sometimes you just go with the flow.
In 2012 I published a book, 21 Days of Gratitude Challenge. It’s now called The Gratitude Journal. When I was getting ready to release the book, to be honest, I didn’t have a plan on publishing it. It was a personal journal, a challenge, that I felt like God asked me to go through, and I ended up publishing it. So sometimes you may have a book like that. At the last moment, I felt like God gave me an idea to do a group promotion for a free day, and so I just organized it last minute. One week in advance. I mean, I only had one week to plan this launch. It was one of the most successful launches I have ever done, and I just truly believe it was because God blessed it.
So sometimes you don’t need months and months of planning. But just know in advance, these are some questions to ask and say, “Okay, how far in advance do I need to plan?” Because if you’re getting ready to launch a book [or] you’re getting ready to publish a book, you may need to start doing some planning for your launch as you’re finishing the publishing process.
Question number three is, “How can I make my first thirty days count?” Did you guys know that there is something called “Hot New Releases” on Amazon? Yes. There is a specific list on Amazon, and I will include the link to it in the show notes. However, you can also just Google “Hot New Releases” on Kindle or Amazon and you will find it there as well, but there is a specific list and your book is eligible for that list the first thirty days. So you want to be able to build momentum, and you want to be able to get up on that list and get as high as possible on that list.
So if you publish your book and then you don’t have a launch until forty-five days later, you’ve pretty much missed that window of opportunity. This is something to really be aware of, when you’re launching a book, that those first thirty days are crucial.
You want to give them a reason to buy now. So in those first thirty days in your book launch, give them a reason, so you might want to lower your price for a certain period of time. Maybe it’s two or three days. Maybe it’s a week. Maybe you will offer bonuses for those who buy during your launch, and I’ll go into more detail on that, some ideas, next week on next week’s episode. But that’s something else to consider.
Get creative and give them a reason to buy during those first thirty days. So you can get up on that “Hot New Releases” list. Get more exposure and potentially get more momentum on Amazon and have Amazon promoting for you.
The fourth question authors should ask when planning a book launch is, “Do I want to have my book for sale with pre-orders?” I have not done this very often, but I’m considering doing this for my upcoming book “Broken Crayons Still Color” because I’ve already talked a lot about the book.
I have a guest blog post that, I’m not sure if it will be accepted, but if it is, it talks about that book and so I’m just thinking, I would like to have the book out there and up and available for pre-order, and so there are a couple of different ways to do it.
This is something to consider and to ask when you’re planning your book launch. On KDP you now have an opportunity to pre-order, set up your book for pre-order up to ninety days in advance. I did ask KDP’s support, and they said you can change your date one time. However, you can only change it once. So let’s say you set your date for ninety days in advance, but you get your book done earlier. I was thinking about that, you know, “What if I got my book done earlier than that ninety days?” Then you can move it up once, but you can only change it once. Then you need to upload your file at least ten days in advance. So you need to really plan that, make sure you leave a cushion.
I asked them, “Do the sales count towards best-seller status the day your book launches?” And they told me, “Yes, it does.” I have heard conflicting things on this, but I asked KDP support directly, and they said the pre-order sales do count for your best-seller status the day it releases. So those are just a few things about KDP.
Now, if you want to set up a print book for pre-sale, there are two ways you can do that. You can do it on your own website. You set up a sales page, take orders via your payment processor, and let your customers know when the orders will be shipped. And it’s a really cool way to do it, to build buzz, and you can easily do that. I have seen several of my colleagues do that.
You can also do it through Amazon Advantage, so it’s for sale on Amazon both in Kindle and print versions, and this is an option that my colleague Eric Van der Hope talks about, and he gives a step-by-step tutorial on how to do this. It’s with print books, and you actually fulfill the orders or your publisher can fulfill those orders, but as a self-published author we usually fulfill those orders. And Eric gives step-by-step instructions on how to do this in the book Indy Author’s Guide to Book Marketing Success. But I’ve given you this excerpt as a PDF for free for this episode, so you can download this and get the step-by-step instructions simply by signing up at authoraudience.com/7. There is a place to sign up and that way you can get all of those step-by-step instructions. It’s just too much to include in this podcast.
The pros of doing a print pre-order is that you can sell autographed copies and include other marketing materials in your books. You can also earn more royalties because if you’re ordering your books directly from CreateSpace or Ingram Spark, instead of them being sold through Amazon, you will earn more royalties that way. So if your goal is to really earn more income from your book launch, that may be an option.
The cons are that you have to do the work of shipping and handling. It’s pretty annoying. You have to do all the labels, have to figure it out. You have to do all of the administrative stuff, and your sales don’t count towards your best-seller rank on Amazon, so it won’t boost your best-seller rank on Amazon, so that’s something to consider as well.
However, pre-orders are a great way to build buzz and to be able to start marketing your book early. So those are the four questions that authors should ask when planning a book launch.
Make sure to listen next week as I talk about the seven different book launch events that you can consider when you’re planning your book launch. This is Shelley Hitz from authoraudience.com, helping to you reach more people with your message.
Lights, camera, action. It’s time for this week’s “take action” tip. I want you to sit down right now and write out your goal for your book launch. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s so important to know what is your primary goal. So write that down now if you didn’t do that earlier. And is that goal your best-seller status, book sales, or growing your email list? Or do you have another main goal? Do you want to increase the clients for the services you offer? Maybe there is something else that you have as your primary goal.
Write that down, right now, so that you know what that goal is, as you’re planning your book launch. Make sure to get all the show notes and resources from today’s episode, including the free excerpt of Indy Author’s Guide to Book Marketing Success, which shows you how to set up a pre-order using Amazon Advantage. Get all of that at authoraudience.com/7.
Before we end, I want to give you a backstage pass in this week’s Godly Gain Segment, which is all about keeping Christ at the center of all we do. Because in the end, if we only think about book sales, it’s just such an empty feeling. There is so much more to this life, and that’s what this segment is all about.
This week’s verse comes from Proverbs, and it’s Proverbs 6:9. It says, “We can make our plans but the Lord determines our steps.” So as a Christian, I strongly urge you to be praying as you’re planning your book launch. Ask God for wisdom, because we can make our plans, but ultimately, the Lord determines our steps and He can give us wisdom that we don’t even know and sometimes the things He asks us to do or He prompts us to do don’t make sense. But it’s what will be most successful. Just like the example I shared earlier, with my 21 Days of Gratitude Challenge launch. It didn’t make sense to only do one week. But that was what was most successful. It’s what I felt God was leading me to do. And so I highly recommend that you seek him. You pray. And you plan. It’s always good to plan and to have that strategy in place as well as praying and seeking God’s wisdom.
It’s my hope and my goal that these episodes are bringing you one step closer to being able to shine the light of Christ through your life and reach more people with your message. Whether that be in your books, in your social media marketing, in your products, and more.
I am so excited for you. Let me know if you’re planning a book launch and what you’re doing. Connect with me on Facebook, Facebook.com/authoraudience. And if you’re interested in really learning how to sell more books, make sure to get my training on “27 Ways to Sell More Books” at www.authoraudience.com/sell
Don’t miss next week’s episode, which is all about seven different book launch events you can plan to help build buzz and sell more books. I’ll see you next time.
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