Have you written and published a book and wondered if other author’s book launch experience was the same or totally different from yours? Maybe the launch didn’t go as planned and garner as much attention as hoped. Maybe the launch exceeded your expectations.
In this article, we asked nine authors “What did the first month after your book launch look like?”. The answers may surprise you and give you insight into how to plan your book’s launch. The biggest takeaway we learned is the importance of marketing and promoting your book.
“What did the first month after your book launch look like?”
1. Dan Sofer
“In Jerusalem, British bachelor Dave Schwarz wasn’t looking for mystery and adventure. He just wanted to find a wife. But when he discovers the magical key to any girl’s heart, his troubles only begin.”
I wrote my first novel, A Love and Beyond, over seven years. Although I invested in professional editing and covers, I devoted little thought to genres or book marketing.
Needless to say, the launch in 2015 was disappointing. Reviews trickled in. Readers told me they loved the book, which even won first place in a literary competition, but getting the word out was difficult. By the end of the first month, I had sold about fifty copies, two thirds as ebooks, and during the following months, sales petered out.
So began my journey into reader expectations, book categories, advertising, and email lists. Now I study the genre and marketing aspects of a novel before I start writing. My writing career still has some way to go, but it seems to be moving in the right direction.
2. Paul Antony Jones
“After a devastating car crash leaves her addicted to pills and her best friend dead, Meredith Gale has finally been pushed to her breaking point.”
I’m lucky to have a great publisher (Aethon Books) who really took away all the worry of marketing Paths Between Worlds. They set up interviews and ran their marketing plan, which just left me to worry whether the book would first resonate with readers (my primary concern with any new release), then gain enough traction and reviews to grab the attention of Amazon’s algorithm. I’m lucky to have a great reader following from my first series (Extinction Point) who really helped to give the book that initial boost, so it all worked out swimmingly, thank goodness.
3. Micah Ackerman
“STRAIGHT OUT OF THE HEADLINES!! NORTH KOREA STARTS THE NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST!!!! World War Three is here.”
The first month after my book launch was filled with excitement and promise. I saw a great number of sales and reviews on Amazon. It was at the height of ebook sales back when every reader had a Kindle. Friends and family got the ball rolling along with my mailing list and the social media network that I built up. I have a website and blogging really helped push interest. It’s so important to stay “out there” and to keep blogging and releasing fresh material. Maintain that mailing list and stay motivated. Nothing happens overnight, write for the love of it not for results. Sadly a couple of months later my personal life blew up, I went through a messy divorce and fell out of the “loop” only now am I starting to make a comeback.
4. Mike Faricy
“Anthony DiMento, more commonly known as Beau, has a problem. A $250,000 problem!”
My answer to your question may be a bit different than many writers. I’m blessed to
be writing full time. It took me almost fifteen years to get to this point. I started writing
years back on a legal pad at my dining room table. My first six or seven books were
written in the dark, either before sunrise or after the kids went to bed. I’m pretty
disciplined in my approach, and I work off a rough outline for each of my works. My
books have a one month preorder where they are available at a discounted preorder
price. My experience has been that if they go live with a decent number of preorders,
Amazon will include them in two to four emails to individuals who have expressed an
interest or purchased similar works. The emails are sent over the course of two to three
weeks following my release date. I have no idea when the Amazon emails will be sent
out, but either I receive them, or they are forwarded to me from fans.
Two days after the book release I send an email to my list of followers and post on a
number of free Facebook sites that the book is now available and it’s free if you read it
on Kindle Unlimited. I have not had much success with paid Facebook ads. Once the
manuscript was completed and sent to my editor, the following morning, I begin work on
the next book. I run paid ads on my books and boxsets, usually scheduled a month in
advance and the new release is integrated into that schedule. I occasionally look at the
numbers but don’t obsess over sales or pages read. I’ve found that for me, focusing on
writing the next book and trying to make it better than the previous one is the simplest
and best policy.
5. Danielle Girard
“When the daughter of San Francisco socialites is brutally assaulted, Jamie Vail makes it her mission to find the attacker.”
The first month after a book launch is a busy time—exciting, unnerving, a calm after all the work of writing, revising, and editing. But there is also still much to do. On the fun side, initial reviews start to come in and people post pictures with your book. YOUR. BOOK. That is such a thrill. Every author gets some bad reviews, but I feel fortunate that the positive ones way outnumber the bad. Then, there are book signings and events to promote your title. And here is where the work is—a book is like a fledgling bird: it doesn’t fly on its own. You have to promote yourself and the title. Give it away to people who might talk about it. Be interviewed and participate at conferences and on panels. Put yourself and your book in front of as many people as you can. And then—and this is most important—get back to work on the next book!
6. Irina Shapiro
“When a young woman vanishes without a trace from a quaint fishing village on the coast of England, only one person knows the truth, but he remains silent allowing the authorities to search for her in vain.”
I released the first book in ‘The Hands of Time’ Series, named The Hands of Time, in December 2011. At the time, I was a newbie indie author and didn’t know much about marketing or launching a book. In fact, most of the promotional sites I use now weren’t even around, nor were the free webinars or helpful blog posts. I was entirely on my own. Luckily for me, my first book, The Inheritance, went to 202 in the paid Amazon store since I was one of the first people to sign up for Kindle Select and utilize their free days. I got thousands of downloads, which resulted in my book shooting up in ranking and hovering near the top for nearly a month.
Thankfully, enough people liked The Inheritance to give my new offering a try. By today’s standards, my launch wasn’t very successful, but given where I was at the time and my limited resources it did pretty well. So well, in fact, that the book turned into a six-book series since readers kept asking me to continue the story. The Hands of Time was my first foray into writing a series and I have written several series since, which have done even better.
7. David A. Willson
“Fifteen-year-old Nara Dall has never liked secrets. Yet it seems that her life is filled with them, from the ugly scar on her back to the strange powers she possesses.”
Looking for Dei was my debut novel, had 100,000 words and I had never done any creative writing of that magnitude before. I had accumulated ideas for the story over the previous several years but didn’t begin writing in earnest until May of 2016. After seemingly-endless rewriting, editing, and proofreading, it finally launched on March 17th, 2018.
42 pre-order sales led the way at launch, which was bolstered by another 607 combined ebook/paperback sales in the following thirty days. The novel was not in Kindle Unlimited at the time, so these sales include distribution through Smashwords, primarily on Kobo and Barnes & Noble.
Reviews came in steadily, however. I had personally emailed over 300 book reviewers/bloggers, done a 99¢ promotion and engaged a couple of ARC programs (Netgalley, Hidden Gems). By day 31, I already had 20 reviews. That number would balloon to 70 only a month later. The reviews were excellent, to my delight, but the content of many warmed my heart. Looking for Dei was intended to be both entertaining and encouraging, and many of the reviews showed that I had achieved much of what I had hoped to do in the hearts and minds of my young adult audience. I was thrilled!
Peppered between days spent experimenting with advertising methods, I finalized ideas for the sequel. The challenge of self-publishing, the many skills that needed to be developed and the alternating frustration and elation that came with a new business venture kept my attention to the exclusion of all other hobbies and interests. It was a manic time.
In the months since then, I refocused on writing, and have now just recently launched book two to cap the series, which I called The Godseeker Duet. I’m now scratching ideas for an entirely different novel and quite enjoying the author’s journey.
8. Susan Brown
“When their mother disappears, twins Addie and Jacob Medway are carried off to the Nova Scotia town of Port St. George by their distraught father. But there’s something weird about this town, something that is changing them.”
In a word, my first launch attempts for Dragons of Wind and Waves were pathetic! I posted on Facebook and Twitter and saw excessively ho-hum sales. As a traditionally published author, now venturing into the Indie territory, I had no idea what to do.
Networking!
Another writer, Toni Kief, and I formed a marketing group, Writers Cooperative of the Pacific Northwest (www.wcpnc-coop.com). The mission of the Co-op is to stop reinventing the wheel and pool our marketing knowledge. Quite a few other writers have leaped in and as a group, we’re learning the ins and outs of online and in-person marketing. It’s not my forte, but I’ve developed a newsletter mailing list and figured out the basics of targeting and using promotional platforms. This relaunch of Dragons of Wind and Waves had much better results — close to a thousand downloads, additional sales, and some visibility.
I intended this as a soft launch, trying a bit of this and that (Fussy Librarian, raising my book in the Amazon ranking for visibility, and close attention to Kindle Unlimited page reads afterwards). My goal in this relaunch is visibility and to recoup my expenses. I have three other stand-alone books in the series and I’m already seeing small sales increases for them. I hope there will be more, as well as additional reviews (fingers crossed for positive!).
It’s a lot like doing a jigsaw puzzle for me. I stare at each piece and try to picture the whole. Meanwhile, I keep slogging. Marketing takes me away from writing, but I don’t see other options if I want people to read my books. Some of my friends have totally mastered what we’re trying out and are getting huge sales that they never saw before. That’s where I’m intending to end up — after this learning curve!
Step by step! Wish me luck!
9. M.M. Perry
“Casey has spent nearly twenty years tracking down the creatures that have been murdering their way across the upper Midwest. As summer begins to wind down, he’s running out of time to find them before winter takes hold and the things that hunt in the dark sleep out the cold.”
My book launches never really catch on. I’ve read a lot of books and guides on how best to go about launching books. I have a mailing list of nearly five thousand. I’ve taken out ads and paid for a pricey course detailing the best way to target readers. It never quite goes how I’d like. At the end of the day, I’m an author, not a promoter. I don’t have the instincts or know-how to optimally do this part of the job and I strongly suspect that’s why it never works out for me since I’ve done all the other things required of indie authors – hiring an editor, having covers done professionally, etc.
I get emails from fans who love my work and my reviews are solid. I’ve been reviewed by professional review bloggers and they enjoy my work. If it was the content, that is something I could improve. Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to be a Jack of all trades, I’m not. I simply am not talented at promoting my own work. Despite the setbacks, I continue to write because that’s what I love doing. I don’t make much at it, but I’m determined not to give up. My content is worth paying for. I just need to find the people who want to buy it.
Voro launched with around 30 sales in the first week. I put it exclusively on Amazon, even though I do as well on Barnes & Noble as Amazon in terms of sales because I’m trying something new. I ran a free promotion through Amazon for one day and gave away just over 3,600 copies with a minimal ad buy – using Robin Reads, Freebooksy, Fussy Librarian and Kindle Nation Daily. I made back the $125 the next day with KDP page reads and sales, and I’m hoping my investment lands me some more reviews and new readers. With some luck, I may be able to garner enough attention to nab a Bookbub ad. Small steps.
Conclusion
As you can see, every experience post-book launch differs from what tactics you use, your network, and how much time and more you are willing to put into the marketing of your book.
We hope that your book launches are successful and bring you the abundance you desire!
Thanks for sharing, this is a fantastic post. Want more. Dosi Anderson Harrietta