How To Plan An Epic Book Launch And Grow Your Fan Base

You have done it. You have finished your book!

After months, if not years, of writing, editing, and re-editing, it’s time to hit “publish” and share your book with the world.

Are you ready for the challenge? 

Keep reading and we’ll make sure you are! 

For your book to be a success, you must market it. Tell everyone about it and why it matters! You need to let the world know what you’re doing. Maybe even give away free copies to get some buzz. But before that, you must launch your book.

Book launches are an important part of promoting your book. They help you get the word out about your book and start your promotional campaign.

Whether you’re a first-time indie writer releasing your first book or an experienced pro, we have some great insights, tips, and tricks for successfully launching your next book.

What is a Book Launch? 

A book launch is a promotional and marketing strategy that aims to bring awareness to your new book, which leads to sales.

But there is more to it than that. It leads to opportunities, more readers finding your work, and building your presence as an author. 

A successful book launch is the starting point for a more extended, broader marketing campaign, and who knows, maybe even a book tour.

The Benefits of a Book Launch 

If you’re planning a book launch, you’ll need to plan everything from the venue to the catering to the marketing strategy. You’ll also need to consider what kind of audience you want to reach. If you’re looking to sell books, then you’ll need to think about how you will get them in front of potential customers.

Here are some of these benefits to look forward to if you plan your book launch.

Opportunities to connect with your readers

When you host a book launch, you provide new readers with the opportunity to form a connection with you. You open up your world to them. This makes them more likely to recommend your work to friends via word of mouth, book clubs, and social media. 

Publicity

A book launch can give you the opportunity to increase your publicity as an author, and get your name out there. 

Celebrate your success

Your book launch is an opportunity to celebrate all your hard work. Include your friends, family, and everyone involved in your publishing process. 

The feeling of completion

Once you host your book launch, you can relax knowing your work is finally complete. Take some solace in the achievement, at least for now, you have done the hard work of writing.

Essentials To Have Before You Launch Your Book 

You ideally want to have the basics in place before you launch your book. 

Let’s cover all the things you may want to have before you get that book out there. 

Author website 

Get your author website as soon as possible. You want to state your online presence before you launch your book. Your website will help you promote your book and sell more copies.

Author bio

Writing the perfect bio gives your readers an idea of exactly who is the source of your work. Apart from just letting readers know who you are, it’s also an important tool to frame yourself as someone whose books are worth buying. 

We recommend having an about page on your website, hence another reason why you need an author website to launch your book. 

Book cover

Your book cover is what first draws a person’s attention to your book, even before they notice who the author is. Ensure you have an enticing book cover design before you launch your book. We have some creative ways of making a book cover that sells. Check out our blog on book cover design. 

Reader magnet

A reader magnet is an offer that allows readers to sign up for your newsletter or website. You can use it to promote a book launch or another event. Readers will appreciate the opportunity to get exclusive offers and discounts.

Email service provider

An email service provider like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, etc., will help you collect your subscribers’ email addresses and send emails to them. Once you are ready, you can use your email lists and servers to communicate your book launch to your readers.

Social media presence

Having an online presence through social media is important in connecting with your audience and sharing the news of your book release. You can use your Facebook page, Twitter account, Instagram account, etc. to share the news of the book launch.

Book description

You want to have an enticing book cover description to share with your audience. Your book cover attracts, your book description seals the deal. Here’s more on writing a great book description if you need it.

Determine your pricing strategy

You need to figure out what you will charge for each product. If you are charging $10 for an eBook, then you should probably charge $20 for your hard copy, for example.

Create a Goodreads account. 

You can create an author profile and add books you’ve written to your profile. If you haven’t already done so, you’ll need to register your book with Amazon. Once you’re registered, you can link your Goodreads account to your Amazon Author Central page.

Planning Your Book Launch

You’re now ready to get creative and publish your book!

Planning a book launch can help you feel less anxious as the launch day approaches, but don’t worry if you haven’t planned anything yet.

We’ve got you covered!

To launch your book, follow these steps.

1. Prepare for your book launch

Brainstorm

You want to start off with the idea-forming stage. Take your time to really think through how you would like to run your book launch and what the perfect book launch would look like to you. Maybe look at a big book launch event, book signing, or viral campaign for ideas. 

Research

Now that you’ve brainstormed some ideas, you may feel ready to ‘launch’ your book into readers’ hands. But before that, have a look at what other authors have done successfully. It’s always good to see what is proven to work. We have some great ideas for you. Keep scrolling to discover creative ways authors launched their books. 

Budget

You may have some big expectations to launch your book, but what is the cost involved? Once you have an idea of the elements you would like to include in your book launch, make sure you work out how much it is going to cost and if it fits into your overall budget. 

Plan your dates

If you are taking the traditional publishing route, you won’t have much choice in your book launch period. But if you are self-publishing, you’ll get to determine the dates.

Even if the book will become available to buy on one particular day, you should plan on having a focused promotion to allow for momentum before the actual book launch.  

Look at reserving your slots for guest blogging, and interviews, to make your presence and book launch known. 

2. Pre-launch marketing 

Build the buzz on social media 

In the weeks before your launch, you will want to build as much buzz as possible for your book.

We are talking about building buzz in a way that will have people participate in sharing the excitement about your book.

For most people, the best and easiest way to do this is through social media. It’s much easier to get friends and family to rally behind your book than it is to get complete strangers.

Giveaways are a great way to get your readers excited about your new release and active on the social media posts where you promote it. Naming the winner and asking them to post about their prize can extend the life of the campaign.

Meghan March promoted the release of Reveling in Sin with a giveaway of signed copies of all three books in the series. She took the opportunity to generate high engagement numbers!

Social media tools to utilize 

Facebook is an amazing platform to market your book launch. Find new readers for your book using Facebook. You can also target certain audiences based on demographics, interests, and behaviors.

Instagram is a social media platform that allows users to share photos and videos with friends and family. It also offers an easy way to connect with other people through its filters, hashtags, and location features. Instagram is a great place to promote your book because it allows you to showcase your personality, motivation, and writing process.

YouTube is another excellent place to put your book out there. Make a book trailer and upload it to YouTube. Discuss your process, read excerpts from your book, and share how you came up with the ideas for your book.

3. Building your pre-release list

Once you have your research, launch date, and social media marketing on the go. It is time to start building your pre-release list. 

A pre-release list is a list of people’s emails that are interested in buying your book or targeting people you know would be interested before the book comes out. 

Having a pre-release list is vital to building a willing and interested audience. You want to use this list to send emails on launch day and launch week so that you can be sure they download your book and leave reviews.

Your list can be a compilation of email subscribers to your website. This is why we highly recommend having a website and using a reader magnet to attract readers to sign up for your content! 

Effective Tools For Your Book Launch Preparation 

Preparation is key so you also need to have the right tools to help you plan and implement your book launch. 

Here are some great tools we recommend using. 

• Trello: It is a super user-friendly planning app. It allows you to manage all your tasks and subtasks with checklists and due dates. 
• Google Calendar: If you’re already using Google Calendar or another calendar app, it makes sense to add the dates for your book launch to it. Having a clear view of when everything is taking place is very important. 
• Asana: Asana is a project planning tool similar to Trello. It’s a good solution if you have a complex book project involving several collaborators.

Creative Ways To Announce Your Book 

Grabbing readers’ attention for a new book can be particularly challenging, especially in such a crowded marketplace. 

To help you brainstorm creative methods to launch your book we have put together a few ways to do so. 

1. Plan a book launch party

A book launch event is a fantastic opportunity to get your book noticed. You can gain publicity, media attention, and help your book become a bestseller.

It is an opportunity to meet other authors and get feedback on your book. You can choose to host your book launch online, or in person. If you are hosting it in person, you will need to plan ahead and make sure you have enough space for everyone.

It is indeed a party, but it is also a business event to drive the sales of your book. Your budget and resources will also determine whether you can host your book launch online or in person. 

Here are some helpful tips for planning a successful book launch party: 

Pick a date

A good rule of thumb is to choose a date to throw your book launch party close to your official book release date. This helps to maintain your book launch marketing momentum and encourages sales. 

Choose a venue or platform 

If you’re looking at hosting an in-person event, you should look at ideal venues that align with your new book. This could be a bookstore, local cafe, or hotel.  You want a venue that works well with your book’s potential audience. 

If you’re taking the online route, look at hosting a livestream event on an online live streaming platform such as Youtube, Zoom, or Instagram live.  You can have a livestream with guests and readers. You can answer any questions or comments in real-time about the book.   

Prepare a speech 

Prepare a short speech to thank your audience for their support and share more about your personal experience writing and publishing the new book. 

Tips for writing a speech:

1. Make it personal. Talk about what inspired you to write the book and what it means to you.  
2. Make it inspiring. Share what you hope readers will take away from it.
3. Make it interesting. Share some behind-the-scenes stories or interesting facts about the book itself, and give your viewers insight into what they can expect from your book
4. Make sure you add some fun facts about the book. You could share some behind-the-scenes stories about the writing process, or maybe even share some interesting facts about yourself. Your readers will love hearing about your experiences and getting to know you a bit better!

2. Give away prizes 

Promote your event by offering promotional giveaways. These could include t-shirts, mugs, pens, stickers, buttons, or even tickets to future events. You can also offer free books, wearable items, and gift cards to name a few. This will help you get more people interested in your work, and increase the number of people who might attend your next event

3. Have a book signing

If you’re planning on doing an in-person event why not have a Book Signing? It’s a great way to engage your audience and add that extra personal touch. You can also sell books at events like this.

4. Promote your book on promotional sites

You want your book to succeed and reach as many people as possible. 

If you want to get your book discovered, you need to go beyond just posting it online. You need to promote it. 

Book promotion websites are services that have lists based on your book interests. When you launch a new book, they will send out emails to all the people on their list about your book.

To get you started in the right direction to take, here are some free book promotion sites worth checking out. 

1. Book Angel: It is free to list your book on Book Angel. They have over 1000 visitors a month and over 5000 people who subscribe to the promotional mailing list. 
2. BookDoggy: This site gets around 6000 visitors each month and will permanently list your book on their site for free. They feature new and discounted books. 
3. Indie Book Lounge: If you are an indie author with a new book, the Indie book lounge is the way to go. The site sees more than 12000 visitors monthly. 

5. Have an online blog tour 

A blog tour is similar to a book tour where authors would go to different book stores or coffee shops and speak about their books in order to promote them. The difference is that it’s a completely online “tour” taking place on book promoter’s blogs.

During a virtual book tour, you find blogs with big followings of readers interested in your genre or niche. You then ask them for an opportunity to write about your new book.

This is a great marketing opportunity for authors to reach a larger audience than a traditional book tour would. It also generates links that send interested visitors to your own website.

A blog tour works well if you find the right blogs to be featured on. 

Post Book Launch: What To Do Next For Long-Term Book Sales

So now you have launched your book, the next question is: where to go from here?

How can you continue to promote, market, and keep bringing in traffic so that your book doesn’t drop off the face of the earth? Here are two things you can focus your energy on next:

1. Write another book

Having more than one book creates momentum. Keep writing! Look at how George R.R Martin created a massive fan-base with his series Game of Thrones which is now a big-time TV show. How did he do it? By setting up and writing not just one book but a series. 

A series is a great way to build your brand and keep traffic growing with increased interest in your books.

2. Turn your writing into a business

Go beyond your book. Look at creating a business as an author. You can offer coaching, a writing course, or an automated email course that gets readers engaged after they have finished your book. Constantly keep your subscribers and readers in the loop and update them on your writing journey. 

We’re Here To Help You Build Your Brand and Launch Your Book 

As you prepare to launch your book, your mind strives to find out all the ways through which you can promote your book and grow your audience for it.

Today, the best way to promote is to create a website for your book launch website.

You may be concerned about all the trouble you’ll have to go through to create your online book launch site, right?

There are a ton of great author marketing services available online. We specialize in website design services for authors that make launching your book that much easier. 

Having a professional author website is a great way to put your work out there. It will enable you to grow yourself and your book and help establish your online presence as an author. Feel free to reach out to us to discuss your website needs.