Develop your marketing plan

After you decide on your publishing and promotional goals, it’s time to develop your marketing plan, which will include sales and distribution strategies: What do you want? What can you afford? What are you willing to do? How many books do you plan to sell? What...

Pre-launch communications

Building anticipation for your book will help initial sales, so be sure to let people know ahead of time what your book is about and when it will be available. There are lots of ways to reach your readers: Write a series of posts for your own website/blog. Set up a...

Print-on-Demand

Print-on-demand (POD) is the ability to print an entire book “on demand” whenever you want to, in small quantities, at a reasonable price. There are several reasons you might want to do this. You can produce good-looking advance review copies early in the...

Book your venues

I spoke, or read from my book, or did the meet-and-greet thing, at about a dozen bookstores from Gig Harbor, Washington to South Pasadena, California. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, these appearances didn’t help me sell very many books and they were...

Recruit your friends

There will be a lot going on at your big launch party, so don’t try to do it all yourself. Your friends have been listening to you talking about this for a long time now; recruit them to help: Video your presentation (for social media sharing later). Take...

Prepare your presentation

You’ve been to other authors’ book launches — think about which ones were the most enjoyable, and why. What did the author talk about? What was the ratio of talking to reading? How aggressively did the author promote sales? How much time was spent on...

What to bring to your book launch

Things you must bring to your launch: Your speaking notes Your introduction, printed in large type. You’ve probably coordinated ahead of time with whomever will introduce you, but just in case they have a brain lapse and forget to bring the introduction...

What to do 1 to 2 months before you launch

You’re almost ready to launch! You’ve planned and developed materials, promoted like crazy and ramped up your social media presence. Now it’s time to plan and promote your book launch party. Here’s your to-do list: Plan your big launch event;...