#333: Marketing Minute: When Should You Launch Your Book?

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelli Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

Hey Kingdom Writers. Welcome back. My name is Shelly Hitz, and in today's episode we're going to be talking about when should you launch your book? This was a question asked by one of my Christian Book Academy members, Joanna and I thought it would be a great topic for the podcast. But before we dive in, I wanted to let you know of a free PDF that we have called 27 Book Marketing Ideas. Many times that is the question I get asked most often is, Shelly, how do I market my book? How do I get it out there? I've published it. Now what do I do? Well, this is a great first step for you to take. You can get instant access to the PDF with these 27 book marketing ideas and you can download it now@trainingauthors.com for forward/ ideas. Now, Joanna asked this question about setting up a timeline for launching a book. When should you launch your book? And so I'm going to share three different things to consider. But I just want to tell you, first of all, this is going to be different for every single one of you. It's going to depend on your book and your audience. Sometimes there's certain times of the year that work better for certain audiences, and it's also going to depend on the time that you have available. So just take a big deep breath, take any pressure off that there is one right way to launch your book. There isn't. There is not. So I will give you three suggestions, but really it will look different for every single one of you. And so the first thing I want you to to know about setting up a timeline for your book launch is to give yourself time to prepare for it and also to make sure your book is ready, especially if you're independently publishing it or self publishing it. And typically we recommend planning at least 90 days. Give yourself a few months to really plan it out and see see you know what book launch events you want to include. We have a whole module in Christian Book Academy just on book launches and so we walk you through all the different book launch events that are possible and then you can really decide what you want to include with yours. It's kind of like a choose your own adventure type thing. And so it's going to Be like I said, different for every single one of you. But you want to give yourself time to prepare and yet also stay open to what God leads you to do. There have actually been book launches that I got the idea and just ran with it and actually finished within seven days. Like it was crazy. That happened with my gratitude journal book and it was a God idea and it was successful and it was amazing. But that usually doesn't happen. But then stay open. Stay open to what God has for you. And inside Christian Book Academy in the book launch module, we have different book launch timeline examples just to kind of give you some samples to look at and to see what might work best for you depending on what kind of book launch you're doing. And so definitely check those out. If you're a Christian Book Academy member or if you're not, make sure you're on our waiting list@christianbookacademy.com but we have sample timelines for all types of book launches. Whether you decide to have a book launch team, whether you're doing it over the holidays, whether it's a local book signing, maybe you're having special bonuses or doing a virtual book tour, or Maybe it's a 99 cent ebook launch with pre orders. I mean there's so many different opportunities that. And then we also have a couple case studies of book launches that have been done. So those resources are there for you in Christian Book Academy just to give you some ideas. It's just meant to be a starting place. And then you can massage all of those timelines and maybe even combine some of them into what's going to work best for you. So number one is to give yourself time to prepare and make sure your book will be ready. We Recommend at least 90 days, but it could take even longer or it could be a lot shorter. So it really just depends on your book, your experience, your target audience. And then number two, look at your schedule, look at it closely and see what you personally have going on. What do you have going on in your life? What's going on in your family? Is it going to be a busy time? Like maybe, maybe your child is graduating this year, or maybe you have a special family reunion in June. Or you know, look at your schedule and just really make sure that you're gonna be available. You don't wanna feel stressed out during that time. And then number three, look at the upcoming holidays and really see when it's going to make sense. Sometimes launching a book around a holiday would make a lot of sense. If your book is for mothers and you're launching your book around Mother'. That could make a lot of sense. But you would want to launch it early enough before Mother's Day so that people have a chance to buy the book for their mothers as a gift. And you know, that gives them time where it can get shipped to them. You know, all of those things. And so you know you want to be thinking about that or if it is a really big holiday and people just may not be interested in buying a book at that time or being online at that time. Those are things to consider as well. So to recap, when should you launch your book? Well, it all depends. But number one, give yourself time to prepare for it and make sure your book will be ready. Typically, we recommend giving at least 90 days to prepare for the book launch, and that's not including all of the details with actually publishing your book. Number two, look at your schedule and see what you have going on. Make sure you have margin and energy and time to invest in in your book launch. Number three, look at upcoming holidays and when it makes the most sense for your book, for your audience. But finally, remember, your book launch is just the beginning, it's not the end. And a lot of times it's easy to get disappointed in the results of a book launch and think, oh man, it just didn't do what I hoped it would do. And to be honest, I felt that way with my book Broken Crayons Still Color. I thought this book was just going to sell like gangbusters and out of the gate, and it didn't. It was so disappointing. I mean, I sold books, but not nearly as many as I thought, and I just felt deflated. Little did I know that I would be setting up Amazon ads right around the book launch and that those Amazon ads would take off, that God would bless it, and then it would go on to impact thousands of people's lives and really provide some stable income for CJ and I as well. So that is something to think about. Like, even if you might be disappointed at your book launch, keep going, Pray, ask the Lord. Maybe it's time to pause and give a break on that book, but maybe it's time to keep planting your marketing seeds, seeing what God will do and trusting him with the outcome. As we close, let me pray for you. So Lord, we just thank you for every person listening right now and their books that will be launching into the world. I pray that you would give them wisdom. And James 1:5 says, if we lack wisdom, let us ask God, and he will Give to us generously and I just pray that you would give us wisdom. Every single person it's going to look different and how they will set up their book launch and what it will look like. I pray God that you would just give each Kingdom writer listening right now your favor. Give them God ideas, show them the way to go and may their book impact their lives. It is to impact, you know it might be a small number and they may feel discouraged but Lord just remind them that every life reached matters and so we just give the results, the outcome to you and we thank you for this. In Jesus name Amen. Amen. Friends, thank you for being here. As we close, I just wanted to remind you of some book marketing resources we have available for you. You can use these resources for for a book launch or even for a book that has been launched years ago and it's called Mini Marketing Messages. It's a workshop that I take you through how to reach your target audience, like the the type of language to use without being pushy or salesy. But then you also get 30 days of social media templates. So you get templates and there's tons of really great content and templates and things for you to use. One of the templates I give you in the workshop helps you to get more reviews and people were like posting this on social media and getting reviews within like a day or two. It was amazing. So if you want to check this out, go to many marketing messages.com you you'll get the workshop, you'll get all the templates. Even if you don't watch the workshop, you can just dive into the templates, use the resources there and you don't have to start from scratch. I personally love using templates. It really helps me to be more productive but also just to get started and then I can put it in my own voice, I can edit it and so go check it out@minimarketingmessages.com and I will see you in the next episode. Bye bye.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you as a Christian writer have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers.

Like you to not only tell your.

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