What is a Book Launch?

What is a book launch?

What do you do for a book launch? How do you even make a plan for this kind of thing? All these are brilliant questions and ones I’ve been trying to get a handle on for the last two years. I’m going to share with you a few things I’ve done and how I’ve done them. The first thing to realize is that not all book launches look the same for everyone. What you might do if you have an agent will look different from an indie author going it on their own. The second and most important thing to realize is that you can always learn from what didn’t work last time, so don’t be intimidated. Last but not least, it’s important to remember is that you don’t have to get it right the first time. So now let’s get to what I’ve been doing and what is coming up.

What does launching a book look like for me?

I’ve scoured the internet for ideas and made lists of what I could and couldn’t do based on my marketing budget, knowledge of marketing, and time allowance. I fully admit some things I could have done, but I was too much of a coward to do them; like contacting local media on my first book launch. This time around I toughened up and bit the bullet and did it this time. I have seen little come out of it, but I might need to reevaluate how I did it and fix that.

So the first thing I do is look at my marketing budget. My budget is $0. You might ask yourself how do I get away with a marketing budget that small. Well, here is a little background of my current situation. My first job is as a caregiver for this job. My pay from that job is room and board. I’m also a writing coach, but that is slowly getting off the ground, so no income from that yet. Don’t forget that I’m also a full-time author, but I don’t have the marketing budget to bring in mass amounts of book sales. Along with that I also sell writing workshops, and more on my buymeacoffee where some subscribe to help me pay for things like the Discord server for our writing group On the Wings for Writers. As you can see, that is a lot of jobs but not a lot of income, hence my $0 marketing budget.

Next, let’s look at your knowledge of marketing. Marketing anything is an always shifting target. One thing I’ve done is learn from others. I follow other authors on social media. Read blog posts and more from other authors and monitor book marketing in media around me. You can also take courses and learn more that way.

What is your time allowance? Do you work a full-time job and publish novels on the side? Do you have a family with an active life outside of school that requires large chunks of your time? Inspect what time you can dedicate to marketing with the knowledge, budget, and tools at your disposal. Do you have time to learn how to use Canva or other marketing design applications? Have you built up an audience on social media that will help you with word of mouth? With my schedule of daily tasks, I haven’t in the past looked into the new and upcoming social media platforms because I didn’t have the time to master them in time. I’m lucky that I only have to look into one social media platform to try this time around.

How did I set this up?

I knew by the end of the year that I was going to publish my novel in March. So I started six months beforehand making a list of launch tasks. Here is my list of tasks.