This Tool Sets You Up for a Successful Book Launch!

Book launches can be exciting – and nerve-racking! You’ve spent so much time thinking, writing, giving up sleep, neglecting your housework, and eating too many snacks. But you finished the book, your cover looks fantastic, and you made sure that your agent was involved in your initial marketing meeting with the publisher (hint, hint). Now, it’s time for you to begin planning to start thinking about your book launch – woohoo!

Today’s post is to set you up for success and give you solid practical tools that can build momentum for your launch.

Let’s start with two questions:

• What activities are often involved in a book launch?
• What can you control in this process?

You might have listed guest posting, podcast interviews, launch parties, radio, television, sponsored ad placement, and posting on social media. If you’ve launched a book before, you’ve experienced the dizzying amount of activity required. You may have turned yourself inside out attempting to game out social media algorithms or emailed everyone you know to interview you on their podcast.

Will these opportunities contribute to book sales? Indirectly, yes. It depends. You can post to social media (and you should!); however, the platform controls your audience’s visibility. You can guest post or do podcast interviews (and you should!), but you have limited ability to track the success of those – and how would you measure success even if you could track it?

There’s one tool that can drive book sales, AND you have complete control over the process and tracking data.

Your mailing list.

Email marketing is still the gold standard in sales conversion. Results are mixed on social media’s ability to woo consumers from the platform to purchasing. Email marketing works because your readers give you permission through their email addresses and therefore, they say, “Yes, I would like to have a personal connection with you.” Social media creates an illusion of personal connection, but there’s so much noise on social media. When someone reads an email from you, they are less tempted to flip over to TikTok or swipe to the next Instagram post.

Second – and vitally important: YOU have control over how you communicate to your audience. Since it’s your list, you control the content and how often it’s distributed.

Finally, this is only true for some, but generally, the size of an author’s email list correlates to book sales. If your email list is on the smaller side, never forget this: EVERYONE starts from zero—everyone, including your favorite best-selling authors. You are in good company, and you can do this!

Let’s get practical! I’m going to share essential email marketing tips that may be new information for some and a valuable refresher for others:

1. For your launch, activate a “Tiny Elephant Bite” growth plan. Any increase in your mailing list will help you! If you have a year until your launch and your email list is under 5,000, consider attempting to grow your email list by 10-25%. If your launch is six months away, then go for 10%. How to do this: Calculate that number and divide it by the months until your launch. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Shooting for a monthly goal is less intimidating than focusing on the big one. Small wins will build your confidence and keep you motivated.
2. Next, look at your email marketing data to see when you had a spike in subscribers. See if you can track down why there was a spike. Was it a specific social media post, podcast interview, speaking event, contest, etc? If you can track down the source of your growth spikes, then work to replicate those conditions to see if more growth can happen.
3. Do you have regular opportunities to invite people to sign up for your email newsletter? Do you have an effective invitation sign-up on your website. If no one has signed up in months, then it’s not effective. Good news! You have an opportunity to experiment with something fresh and new, so go for it! Need ideas? Check out popular authors ‘ websites in your genre to see how they woo people to sign up. If you’re at a speaking event, consider a sign-up tool like Textiful or using a QR code on a slide (linked to your email marketer) to make it easy for people to sign up for your list.
4. Does your lead magnet offer something valuable? Generally, people need an enticing incentive to sign up for anything. Again, check other authors to see what they’re giving away and see if you may need to revamp your lead magnet.
5. Consistency is key! Think of your email list as people you meet and promise to keep in touch with once your visit ends. Please keep up your end of the communication, or your audience will lose their connection to you. You can choose your frequency of communication, whether weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Just stick with it!

The bottom line is that your pre-launch efforts should be heavily swayed toward growing your email list and cultivating consistent engagement with your newsletter audience.

Concentrate your efforts on serving them, investing in what interests them, and offering them valuable resources that align with your brand and meet their needs.

By the time you start your launch efforts, your email list audience will be excited about your project and ready to support you!

I’D LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU: Do you have a book launch coming up – tell us about it! What has helped grow your email list? Are there any mistakes that you encourage others to avoid?