Self-Promote and Succeed Chapter 7: Pick Your Launch Strategy (Four to Choose From)

Chapter 7 your launch strategy Menu Launch day can be disappointing and humbling. That's not my wish for you, but I meet far more authors surprised by a lackluster book launch than authors excited at how a launch exceeded their expectations. There's so much hype and emphasis around a book launch that there's probably a part of you that thinks confetti balloons and champagne bottles are going to fly out of the sky. Admittedly, after all the time, money, and energy you put into your book, it seems as if life should be different somehow, once it's launched. The reality of book launch day for most authors more closely resembles this. You wake up and immediately check Amazon to see if your book is ranking. Then, after you've had your morning coffee, you beg everyone you know to write reviews of your book if they haven't already. You start your new job of smiling and dialing as you call in favors from connected friends to help you get attention for your book. And then you go back to refreshing your Amazon page a hundred times, wondering if you'll get an orange flag to signify that people are buying your book. Of course, you feel a sense of accomplishment, and you should. And it is an exciting day. But the reality is that most authors come to realize the real work is about to begin. Writing a great book wasn't enough. Now you have to find your readers. A book launch is is like birth. Many people equate their book to a baby. It makes sense because it can take about nine months to get from editing and design to launch. Many authors have carried their books around inside their heads for so long and then worked so hard to bring them into the world. That launch day has the excitement of a new birth. The difference is that most parents anticipate a lifetime of responsibility, but most authors think the work is done once their book is released out into the world. Launch day or the days after launch can lead to the harsh realization that even the greatest book is not going to sell unless you hustle to make it happen. It's the day you realize you are the parent of a book, and the minute you stop caring for this book baby, it stops growing. When you launch your book, it's time to activate marketing mode and let your readers know you're here to help. Even if you had a big launch, you still need to do this. By the way, a strong launch is useful for you as an author. It was much easier for me to land a bunch of television media appearances after More than Cash Flow was number one overall on Amazon because that gave me and my book a lot of Credibility Launch does build momentum and makes the post launch work a little lighter if it's a big launch. But there is still a lot of work to do to keep the momentum going no matter how your launch went. Having a giant bestseller launch isn't always an option though. It might be your wish, but your launch strategy is going to be more dependent on your resources than it is on your desires. Let's review what the high level options are for launches. Then we'll match you with the one that fits for your goals and resources. These are the four strategies as we define them at book Amazon bestseller 99 cent ebook launch maximum Momentum Launch Periodical Bestseller Launch Phased Momentum Launch To a point you can combine these launch strategies, but having a higher level picture of the primary launch strategy will help you focus your resources and tactics. Remember how we discussed matching your marketing strategy to your tactics so you get results that you want? That's what we want to do here. What exactly are these four different strategies? I'm glad you asked The Amazon best seller launch 99cent ebook sale who this is for you have a small to medium sized audience of engaged followers on social media or in the form of newsletter subscribers. This is usually 1,000 email subscribers or 10,000 social media subscribers. You can get away with less if the audience is hungry and active. You'll need more if they aren't that engaged. What you want is the ability to sell 100 to 200 copies of your book at 99 cents in less than a week. By engaged I mean you have open rates on your emails and link clicks and and your posts. Get comments. Your goal here is to get that orange Amazon Bestseller or new release flag. Ideally you want to get it for the highest level category possible, but the primary goal is to get a flag. How do you do that? Outsell the other books in your category over a period of time, ideally a week or more. To really get your audience to move, you price the book on sale, hence the $0.99 price tag and promote the heck out of it to that engaged audience. What this Ensuring you've conducted good category research. More on this later. To place your book in a high quality as in highly relevant but not super competitive category. Setting your ebook to be for sale for 99 cents on Amazon in the weeks before launch or during launch week. Promoting your book through email marketing and social media to your audience. If you're going this route, I recommend you do the 99 cent ebook sale the day after launch. If you change it too soon, any sales that happened at full price pre launch get dropped to $0.99 if you try to change it as soon as your book launches, there can be glitches or lags messing up any promotions you have. For instance, say you have a six week pre launch. You've been promoting the book and selling ebook copies for $7.99. But then you do your pre sale the final week before launch and Amazon drops all the sales down to 99 cents. It's a small thing for most authors, but one to be aware of. The goal of this promotion is to get that orange flag while your ebook is 99 cents. This means that once you've set that timing, you now have to promote the heck out of it to your audience and even run ebook sales through a variety of channels. Bookbub, Bargain Booksy, or the Fussy Librarian are some we recommend for nonfiction books, but we're going to cover ebook sales more because it's an important post launch tactic to have in your toolbox. How to run a 99 cent ebook sale on Amazon Whether it's part of your launch strategy or something you're doing to invigorate Your sales, a 99 cent ebook sale can be an effective promotional tactic to invigorate your sales. Whether it's part of your launch strategy or something you're doing to invigorate Your sales, a 99 cent ebook sale can be an effective promotional tactic. The best part is that it almost always generates sales of other formats of your book too. If you're part of Amazon's Kindle select program, you're eligible to run a free ebook giveaway or a Kindle Countdown deal. But even if you're not in those programs, my books are never exclusive to Amazon. You can still make it happen with a couple extra steps. Authors enrolled in KDP Kindle Direct Publishing use caution with giveaways versus 99 cent sales. When you're giving away your book, you are not making any profit from it. Of greater concern though, is the fact that readers downloading books for free are not that likely to read your book and you've devalued all your expertise by giving it away. That's not to say you should never do free promotions. There can be times when it makes sense. For example, if you've struggled to get reviews, or if the book is the first in a series and you're trying to hook someone into your ecosystem. When we do giveaways for our authors, they're typically goodreads. Giveaways, which have different goals than a free download, offer solely on Amazon. More on Goodreads coming up soon. For now, let's focus on the 99 cent ebook promo or even a $2.99 promo on Amazon. A Kindle Countdown deal can work really well for a promo. If you're exclusive with Amazon for your ebook, your print book can be widely available. You set your sale price low and increase it slowly over a set number of days until it returns to its normal price. Your sale can last from five to seven days and you can set your pricing in whatever increments your little heart desires. On average, we see the best results with five day sales that start at 99 cents and increase a dollar each day. Five day sales also tend to have great traction. They're shorter, so you won't get that one day sales hit that Amazon doesn't actually like, but they're long enough that readers don't miss you. For books not in Kindle select, you can manually set the price down to 99 cents and run paid promos without increasing the price at all for the five day period. Not being in Kindle select means you don't have the timer, which can create a sense of urgency for a buyer, but the sale is still effective logistically. Whether you're using Amazon's Countdown feature or you're manually changing your price, you need to determine the timing of the promotion and then head to your favorite ebook promo sites and book your ads. If you run BookBub ads, then this is also a great time to increase your ad reach for that time period. We'll get to BookBub soon too and schedule out your promotions. Plan to post the sale on your social media, email your audience and generate some excitement. For this promotion. We consistently use Bargain Booksy and the Fussy Librarian, which have reasonable rates and sizable audiences. We also use sites like Buckbooks, Riffle Books and Goodkindles. There are always new sites popping up and some work better for certain types of books, so search around after you've read this to find the best one for your book. It's a good idea to plan your sales date well in advance, especially if you're trying to hit the holiday season. At Book Launchers, we purchase space three to four weeks in advance for our authors and longer when it's the holiday season. Sites have limited space available and some require an approval process to run an ad. When you've picked your dates, purchased your ads, and lined up promotions, you're ready to run your sale. Wait just a sec though. There's something to keep in mind before you rush over to Amazon Once you schedule your Kindle Countdown deal, you won't be able to edit or stop it within 24 hours of its starting time during the entire deal, ever. Amazon also requires that your book's regular price can't be changed for 30 days before and and 14 days after the promotion, so make sure you've set the timing for your ads and audience before you schedule your deal. The Maximum Momentum Launch who this is for any author with a medium sized audience and a strong network of folks with small to medium sized audiences that reflect your ideal reader. This is a good option if you personally have a strong newsletter list of 10,000 plus subscribers, 25,000 plus social media followers, and if you've got some industry friends with comparable audiences. Ideally, you also have other products or services people are already buying from you, so they are familiar with your brand. What this involves you're going to create an incentive package for anyone who buys one or three copies of your print book. If you think bulk sales are viable, you can also have a 10 option. To do this, you'll need an email address, incentives, a network, social media, graphics, and a website. You'll also need someone to manage the incoming receipts or proof of purchases and distribute the incentives. This is a more complex promotion than the 99 cent sale, so you'll need to prepare this at least 12 weeks before your launch. The first piece is figuring out what your incentives should be. My personal recommendation is to offer items that are a natural fit for your book. They may supplement the lessons in your book or address problems that might arise for your reader later. I know that sounds funny because you've likely written a book to solve a problem, but whenever a problem is solved, a new problem is created. It's why my goal is to always create new problems. I don't like old problems. For example, if you read Self publish and succeed, you gained the tools to write a book optimized for marketing. We offered resources to help you. You can see a sample of what we offer for that book@selfpublishandsucceed.com and now here's this book. Here's another example of what I mean. If your book is about getting fit and changing how you eat, your reader may need to find friends who have healthier habits or they may need support reworking their wardrobe now that their body has changed. Each of these problems creates the opportunity for you to offer access to a support, community, course, book, video resource checklist, or something else of value to help them with the next steps. When setting up incentives, consider creating ones that help your reader solve whatever issues they may encounter on their way to the solution. It all comes back to understanding the outcome of the outcome your reader desires most and continuing to support them to get there. Remember, the key is that the incentive has to be something so valuable a reader would actually pay for it. It has to fulfill an important need for the reader in order to drive sales and expand your audience. Besides the fact that you'll need time to create or secure incentives, there are logistics to contend with. In some cases, you need a final version of your book to circulate to your network so they have a copy to preview or use for their promotions. You also need a mechanism to distribute the incentives. Let's break down the steps. Here's what you'll need to 1. Secure and or create your incentives. 2. Begin outreach to your network if you aren't already doing outreach to ask for the incentives. Get on calendars early to make sure people can promote your offer the week of launch. Many folks will want you to schedule a timely interview for their podcast or livestream to promote your launch and incentives, so the sooner you get this booked the better. 3. Create beautiful and compelling imagery for your incentives. 4. Set up a webpage that showcases the incentives and their value. A simple example of this is available@selfpublishandsucceed.com have purchase instructions and how to verify proof of sale in order to receive the incentives. If, for example, you're trying to drive people to buy from Amazon, you would make this valid only for Amazon. But if you're trying to get widespread distribution and sales, then you would accept receipts from any purchase within a certain time frame. 6. Create email and social media copy and imagery for yourself and for your network to use in sharing the promotion. Set up the delivery system for your incentives. This can be a templated email with directions to access incentives, a folder in Dropbox with links for your readers to access incentives, or a third party system like BookFunnel. 8. If you plan on verifying receipts, you'll likely want to hire a virtual assistant or have someone on your team do this so you can focus on higher priorities during launch week. If you're using the ONRR system, you you can set up an email address with an autoresponder that provides instructions for how to get the incentives. I've done this for single book purchase incentives, but the higher value book purchases like buy 3 books or 10 books and get bigger incentives are verified before being sent. 9. As launch week approaches, continue to secure reviews and make sure your network has what it needs to promote your book to their audiences. You can prerecord interviews, podcasts and videos and scheduled times for live broadcasts to promote the launch and incentives. This is going to be the last one I do today. I am losing my voice. The periodical bestseller launch lists like the Wall Street Journal, USA Today or the Washington Post, who this is for. This is the dream of many authors and although it's achievable, it's not without some significant effort or cost. Deciding whether it's worth the pursuit is the first thing to think about. I excluded the New York Times from this list because my focus is on independent publishing. The Times curates its list and almost entirely excludes books not published by a major publisher. It doesn't matter if you sell the most copies in a week. It's unlikely you'll qualify for this list without a major publisher behind you. The other lists have criteria with their own nuances, but they don't exclude self published books. In the next chapter, we'll go into more detail on bestseller lists. For now, let's look at this as a launch strategy. This is for the author who feels confident they can sell a minimum of 5,000 print books or ebooks through retail outlets in a week. It could require more than 8,000 book sales in a week, depending on your competitors. Notice that I said retail outlets and not Amazon. Amazon counts but periodical lists, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post lists, among others. Use Nielsen Bookscan NPD to get their data. According to its website, NPD is the gold standard in POS tracking for the publishing market. It covers approximately 85% of trade print books sold in the US through direct reporting from all major retailers including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Target, independent bookstores and many others. Amazon is just one piece of the data. NPD looks at all sales and is going to report where the sale takes place, the retailer, frequency of sales and more. All of that data informs who makes these periodical bestseller lists. That's why you want more than just Amazon selling your book. You're looking for lots of retailers in different markets. Of course, if you're selling direct to companies or buyers, they that sale won't count toward your NPD tracking. There's also a lot of debate about multiple book buys, especially on Amazon, and most people believe it will count as one copy sold, not multiple copies. Bulk sales won't count, which means you need 5,000 different buyers or need to engage a service like BookPal or Porchlight. Because they offer strong discounts for bulk buys, they may offer anywhere from 20 to 40% off retail depending on wholesale discounts, and then report the number of book sales to npd. The Porchlight website says their sales are counted accurately toward Bestseller List Rankings if you have a large and engaged audience and a few groups interested in a bulk purchase, you can succeed with a little coordination in hitting these lists. If you don't have a massive following of readers anxious for your content, at least 100,000 people on social media, a newsletter list of at least 50,000, a strong network with similar size audiences, or strong list of corporate buyers. This strategy is probably not going to work unless you're ready to spend a lot of money on ads to drive book sales or buy a bunch of ebooks yourself. Or you can spend money and pay a company to get your ebook to the top of the list, but I'll talk about that in the next chapter. This is why it really needs to be something that is important to you and ideally helps you achieve your bigger picture strategic Goals what goals might align with this strategy? Well, if you're a consultant, a speaker, or a newcomer who needs to truly establish your credibility in your industry, then hitting a periodical bestseller can help. Justin Goodbred, who wrote youe Baby's Ugly drove his ebook to the Wall Street Journal bestseller list and reported that it was a big boost to his business to have that title. Other authors claim that the title of being a Wall Street Journal bestseller allows them to charge more their fellow consultants or speakers. It's a credibility boost for sure, but you must be able to capitalize on it to make it worth it. What this Involves the best approach is to follow the maximum momentum launch steps and drive a lot of pre sale activity on your book. When we work with clients on this strategy, we usually look for at least 120 days in pre sale, so there's a ton of time to drive sales that will count during launch week. That gives the author four months to collect sales. The exception to this is if you have a killer incentive to offer and a large list of previous consumers. We had a client who considered offering their $24 product free in exchange for a book purchase. The book didn't end up happening because of a change in their business direction, but given their large list of previous buyers and the high value offer, I would have expected it to be very strong no matter when they made the offer. You may see a four month presale and think that sounds like forever. But consider how many Wall Street Journal or Washington Post bestsellers have you seen that don't have strong enough media coverage or top tier reviews? First editorial Reviews are a keystone to getting in front of publishing industry professionals like booksellers, librarians, and top media. Editorial reviews include publishing industry outlets like Publisher Weekly, Forward, Library Journal, or Book List, and print and online media. Those outlets have a minimum lead time of three to five months, meaning they have to have your review, manuscript or final book in hand well before your actual publication date. Television and radio lead times may be shorter, but top podcasts with the widest reach also have long leads. Ensuring that media cover your book is a long game strategy, so giving yourself plenty of time in pre sale is vital. Last Trying to get on a periodical bestseller list means having a book on a topic likely to make the list. A 2018 study by EPJ Data Science showed that of the 2025 nonfiction titles that made the bestseller list between 2008 and 2016, more than half were in the biography, memoir category. They consisted of books written by or about famous individuals, from politicians to artists and business personalities. Next most popular were history and general nonfiction. Now, this study only looked at the New York Times Bestseller List, which we've already said is a curated list. It's fair to assume other periodical bestseller lists will have a wider range but will still reflect these results as well. If your book is in a niche category, covers certain controversial topics, or doesn't have mass appeal, consider if the periodical bestseller launch strategy is the right one for you. The Phased Momentum Launch who this is for this is the most effective strategy for most authors, especially if you are writing a book to build your platform. But it does require you to set aside your ego and focus on the long game of being an author. You're using your book as a tool to grow your business and establish your name in your industry. You want to sell books, but your launch may only sell a couple of hundred copies and you have to build on that. This is the right approach for the author, starting from scratch with a small audience or none at all. Perhaps you've built a business and sold it, or you have a network that you can lean on, but your own personal platform is not that robust. This could be your perfect strategy. Possibly this book is more of a side hustle with your day job, or it's something you want to write to catapult you into something new. Whatever the case, you haven't put much time and energy into building an audience, so the book is the tool you'll use to do that. What this first and foremost, you need to manage your expectations around your book release. Of course, we all want to see momentum on launch, and if you Follow the approach below and keep going with the rest of the actions in this book. You'll build momentum, but launch day isn't going to break records and that is okay. You need a great lead magnet and an author website inside your book. You invite people to get this fabulous reader magnet and join your community. Then you focus on Amazon ads to consistently grow your reader base and continually have sales converting on Amazon so you're feeding its algorithm. Monster Book Reviews Initially aim for 25 reviews but keep going because more really is better when it comes to reviews. Media coverage including local media, newsletters, podcasts, newspapers, radio and any other platforms that appeal to your readers. Partnerships which may occur through bulk deals, your network, cold outreach or mix of all of the above, as well as speaking engagements and conferences, promotions and discounts by running quarterly 99 cent ebook sales and promoting them to your audience, as well as paying for features on book promo sites. This strategy starts six weeks before launch and continues for a year post launch and beyond until your next book. Amazon isn't the only place to launch and promote books. Apple Books is cool too. The launch strategies above largely focus on Amazon, but there are some tremendous options to incorporate Apple Books and Kobo in your distribution and launch strategy plans. In fact, both Apple and Kobo have some powerful incentives for authors to use their platform in pre launch to drive pre sales. Let's take a bite out of Apple first, shall we? Apple might actually be your ticket to making more money per book sold. Part of that comes from its readership. If you use Apple Books, it's probably because you own an Apple product and Apple products come with a bit of a price tag that suggests Apple users may be a bit more inclined to spend a bit more for books. Apple is one of the few retailers out there that does not price match, likely because their consumers are less price sensitive. You don't have to worry about that higher price tag getting slashed just because you're priced lower somewhere else. This can pay off for you big time when you consider what Apple pays in royalties. You can earn 70% of royalties through Apple regardless of whether you're priced at 10, 99, 99.99 or $5.99. Apple doesn't sell your book for you, but Apple Books has a secret weapon that gives it a one up over Amazon. How pre Orders weigh In your rankings, one pre order sale does double the work. It counts as a sale during the pre order period and it counts as a sale again on launch day. If you plan a stellar presale period and drive people to buy your book on Apple, you increase the chances that your book ranks highly. One of the appealing parts of Apple Books is that they have a human curating their lists. When you see their hot new releases and coming soon lists on Apple, it's the result of a person's work, not a robot or an algorithm. Gaining a spot on one of their curated lists can open up opportunities and lead to even more sales. Signing up with the iTunes affiliate program also helps you make more money with your sales. You use your affiliate code when you share your book and make extra money 7% more from each sale. This also helps you track your analytics and conversions to adjust your marketing strategy. You can try running bookbub ads and targeting readers based on the fact they read via Apple Kobo is Kinda Cool Too Every Canadian knows about Kobo, but in case Kobo is new to you, here's a quick rundown. Kobo is originally a Toronto based retailer of ebooks, e readers and audiobooks that launched in 2009 and is available in more than 200 countries. It's the second largest ebook retailer in the world and the biggest global competitor to Amazon in the E book market. And what's really cool is they seem to be a genuinely great company. They're often praised for stellar customer service and have helped provide more than 20 million free books to readers stuck at home during the pandemic. Their mission isn't just reader focused. Kobo offers some awesome opportunities for authors through their free self publishing platform. Kobo Writing Life Kobo makes it easy to set up your book for pre order. You simply create a Kobo Writing Life KWL account, log in and click Ebooks. From there you create a new ebook and input your metadata, add your description and upload your cover. Kobo's pricing tool helps you set your perfect price in more than 16 currencies. You can choose where you'd like your book to be available for sale and optimize pricing for each individual territory. And if you want to reach readers in more than 30,000 libraries, KWL gives you the power to distribute directly to them with overdrive, a library marketplace On Kobo, every pre order sale has twice the effect on ranking as a post launch sale. You don't get paid twice, but you do get double the rankings. More sales means a higher ranking for your book, and a higher ranking means more customers browsing for the next read will be shown your books listing. Every pre order on Kobo essentially doubles your increase in visibility and discoverability. That's an invaluable extra boost for your pre sale strategy that Amazon doesn't offer, and it's a perk that keeps on giving once launch day rolls around. The longer you have your book available for presale and pair it with some strong promotion, the more sales you can accumulate and the higher your book can climb within its category come launch day. This matters even more with Kobo because Kobo, like Apple, uses humans, not an algorithm, to curate some of their lists. Kobo's curators often highlight the highest pre orders on their featured promotional lists and they craft those anywhere from 6 to 12 weeks before publication. If you want to snag a spot, plan ahead when it comes to your presale. The perks don't stop there either. After launch day, you can keep those sales going with Kobo's promotional opportunities available through your KWL dashboard. Using the Promotions tab on your dashboard, check out the current on site sales and email promotions such as daily deals, discounts, price drops, category features, and free ebook promotions. We when you spot an opportunity, just click on the books you want featured, input your price for the sale, and submit. It's that easy to apply. Kobo's merchandising team checks out your application and lets you know if they've approved the promotion that you've selected. Now I know you're excited about being a bestseller, whether you're on Amazon, Apple, Kobo or anywhere else, which is why the next chapter is a must read. It's all about bestseller dreams and realities, Incentives and Freebies to Get Book Sales when you're only making a few dollars per book sold, you don't want to spend more on incentives to get people to buy books. But incentives are sometimes exactly what people need to act. Human nature is such that we tend to need incentives. Scarcity is a powerful motivator, as is the fear of missing out. Many authors rely on incentives to move books during launch week, and that can work well. I've told you how More Than Cash Flow topped the charts in its launch week, partly because of the real estate investment course. I was able to give everyone who purchased three copies of the book. This was incredibly powerful because the course sold for $299 and targeted buyers of the book. It solved a problem almost every real estate investor faces when they start buying the property, they need access to capital to do more deals. It was free for me and didn't cost Greg, the person who had created the course, anything except a bit of time from a person on his team who managed course registrations. If you can find an incentive that meets those criteria, you're in great shape Criteria for a Great Incentive Book giveaway does not have a per unit cost to give away. Digital giveaways work great for this provides something your ideal reader would actually pay money for. Solves a problem that your book creates and or supplements book content. So what might work for your giveaways? Engage your creativity, but here are some books you've written Audio or digital version E Course Free access to a private group, Slack channel or other paid membership group Live Webinar access where you teach something of value to support the book tool or resource that people can download like a spreadsheet, checklist or cheat sheet Virtual access Live stream or recording of an event you're hosting. These resources don't have to be yours, and sometimes it's more valuable if they aren't. The incentive also doesn't have to be ready to go for your launch, you just need to be 100% committed to creating it in a set time frame. For example, a live training can happen 30 days after your book launch. If you create a short E course, the first lesson can be released 10 days after launch and each lesson after that can be dripped out week by week. Just so long as you tell people when it's coming and you do it, it's fine. Managing the giveaways is another task, but there are services like Book Funnel that will manage the digital side of things. You can also hire a low cost virtual assistant through Fiverr, Upwork Guru or another site to check receipts and then email incentives to book buyers. Because those incentives are only available for a fixed period of time, it might be worth it to have some short term help. If your launch is relatively small, you can set up a link for people to register their purchase. They enter their name and email address and an autoresponder sends them their freebie. Of course, this means nobody checks the receipts and somebody could receive a freebie without buying the book. That said, buyers have to get the book to receive the link, so it's a low risk and low cost way to deliver incentives. With all three options, you get a buyer's email address and can now connect with them via autoresponder and email newsletter to build a long term relationship. Chapter Summary is a table of the Bestseller menu. To download it, visit self promoteandsucceed. Com. Phew. I'm tired.