7 Different Types of Book Launch Events

This is episode 8 of Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message. Create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Welcome to Author Audience where I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. I believe it's your time to shine. Today I'm rolling out the red carpet and inviting you to join me as I share seven different book launch events. I really think you're going to enjoy this one. And if you're in a place to take notes, you'll want to have a note taking device. My name is Shelly Hitz. I just returned home from vacation. I went to Florida to visit my sister and her family and my mom met us there and it was an amazing time. Was able to go to the beach a couple days, but I'm happy to be home and in my routine again and able to record this podcast for you. This month in Author Audience Academy we focused on book launches. I helped my members set up and plan their book launch and so I wanted to really talk about book launches in more detail on the podcast as well. This is going to be the next next in the series on book launches and all about the different events you can plan. I believe you have a God given message to share with the world. One of the best ways to share that is in a book. But if nobody knows about your book, if nobody has your book, it's not going to have an impact. And so that's what this month's podcast is about. It's about getting your message to the world, getting your book to the world through a book launch. It's time for this week's Center Stage Spotlight training. I just want to be able to jump right in to this episode if you're listening to this at the gym or while you're doing something else at home. Sometimes I like to listen to podcasts while I clean. I recommend that you go and later get all the show notes because it will have all the different book launch events, the links I mention in this episode and you can keep it as a reference when you do book launches time and time again. So you can get those show notes at my website authoraudience.com 8 that's the number 8 authoraudience.com 8 I'm going to share with you 7 types of book launch events. So let's dig right in. Here are the seven different types of book launch events that I'm going to cover. A discounted price, a best seller launch, virtual book tours, giveaways and contests, group promotions, online conferences, and a combination of one or more of the above. So here are some things to consider when you're planning your book launch event. You want to consider event timing. So when to be do you want it to be just during the launch, do you want it to be leading up to your launch and so forth. You want to think about the length, how long do you want it to last, and then finally the type of event. And that's primarily what we're covering. So the first type is the discounted price launch event and this will be where you discount the price of your book for a certain number of days throughout your launch. So I usually recommend two to three days and many authors will launch their book, including myself, at 99 cents for a few days or the first week to generate interest and sales. However, a discounted price event can be done anytime to help boost sales. It can be a special event you run during the summer, Maybe it's a July 4th sale or you have a back to school sale or something like that. Or maybe it's a special event for your birthday. But for book launches it can be very effective. Now you know you do need to note that for print books you will have to keep a higher price. So $0.99 is for an ebook and on Kindle platform, $0.99 only gives you 35% royalties so you won't be earning as much money. So you know if you want to earn more royalties you'll need to keep it at $2.99 and above. However, it does get people to buy because that 99 cents is the impulse spot. So that can be a very effective way to launch your book. You can also do a best seller launch. This is a focused effort to launch a book on a specific day to drive sales to Amazon and have all those sales happen at the same time. This tends to allow your book to get higher and the best seller ranking on Amazon faster because they decide their bestseller ranking hour by hour depending on how many books have sold. So the more books that sell during that time period, the higher your bestseller ranking will go. And you know this. Usually this type of launch event usually will include some kind of bonus for those who buy your book during your launch. A lot of times for our author books when we're launching a book, we'll offer an additional training free for those who buy during our launch. So that could be something valued at $27, $97 or even more. For fiction authors you may have to get a little more Creative. So it may be a special webinar with you that they get to ask any question or maybe it's another book in the series that they get when they buy that current book during your launch. So there are some different things you can do. However, just know that these bestseller launches are not as effective as they used to be. But it's still an option to consider as you're thinking about what kind of launch events you want. Because if you are creative and if you really come up with an amazing offer, you're going to be able to sell books during that time. Now, another option, this is one I really highly recommend. It's virtual book tours. You know, it used to be that you would go and travel around the country and do an in store book tour and you would meet your readers, sell books, do events, that sort of thing. Now you can do everything online and do it virtually. And this is a powerful way to connect with another person's established network. So they will invite you to be a guest on their blog or invite you to be interviewed on their podcast and they will introduce you to their network, to their followers. And if you're finding blogs that are similar in genre to yours or similar in topic, then.

It'S going to be pretty effective because those people that are already interested in that topic are going to be introduced to you and to your book. So we've put together a list of over 650 potential blog tour hosts. So if you're interested in doing that, we definitely recommend you check that out. It's trainingauthors.com blog hosts. Here are two examples of the tours I've done in the past. My husband and I wrote a book called Forgiveness Formula and we had, we did a two week tour Monday through Friday. And so we had 10 different hosts. And you can see how we lined it up on our blog. It's theforgivenessformula.com virtual-book tour. And then I also did one year, a video tour. I have a book, 21 Days of Gratitude Challenge. And then it was 21 Stories of Gratitude and 21 Prayers of Gratitude. So I was actually doing the video tour, but the video book tour to promote 21 stories of gratitude. And I'm thinking that's the one it was. But I was pretty much, you know, promoting the entire series and it was around Thanksgiving, so people kind of had gratitude on their mind. And because I have the 21 theme in my books, I decided to find 21 different hosts and I decided to record 21 different short videos on Ways you can celebrate gratitude at Thanksgiving. So I kind of, you know, I really bit a lot off. But what I did is I batch recorded. So I sat down and recorded all the videos at once. They're all short. And then I had a specific format I used for each blog and I would just insert the different things for each blog into that. So I had a system and it worked. Another book launch event you can do is a giveaway and or contest. Now with these, I really encourage you to be creative and think outside the box. Think about something different that you really haven't seen before, or think about how you can do this in a little bit of a different way. And you want to pull your readers in instead of pushing them away. And so instead of just saying, buy my book, buy my book, buy my book, you can say, hey, I have this amazing prize you can enter to win here and then introduce them to your book. And so you want to be the fun one. You want to be the person that they want to come and visit on your Facebook page or your Twitter or your blog, and you want to be drawing them in. And giveaways and contests is a great way to do that. So there's different types of giveaways. You can do a KDP Select Free Day, where you give your book away for free on Kindle. You can do Rafflecopter giveaways, which they can enter to win in different ways. And then another giveaway is a Goodreads paperback book giveaway, if you have a paperback book. So just to briefly cover KDP Select Free days, just so you know, this strategy is not for everyone. Not everyone will be interested in this, but it can be powerful for certain books when used correctly. And I have definitely seen this to be true even recently. This is something to not put out of your mind. Some authors say, oh, but I don't want to give my book away for free. However, this is great for books that are in a series. So if you have a series of four books and they're fiction books or nonfiction books, you can give the first book away free to encourage downloads and purchases of the other books in your series. If that person likes you and likes your writing style, it's very likely that they will go on to buy your other books in your series. And so it's great for books that are in a series, but it's also good for new authors just to get some exposure and also get introduced to readers. However, you must give exclusive ebook rights to Amazon for 90 days at least in order to do this and then they give you five free days to use. We have on our blog a list of 76 plus places that you can post your free book. So if you do decide to use the strategy strategy definitely check it out. It's@trainingauthors.com kdpfreedays.

Another option is a Rafflecopter giveaway. Rafflecopter is a free tool you can use. You decide what you will give away and make it something related to your target audience and what they would like. So here are a few ideas for prizes. You could give away an autographed copy of your book. Let them know it will be an autographed copy as readers love this and you're able to give that personal touch. You could give away digital copies of your book, but I really like personally if you can give something other than your book to draw them in. So it could be a gift certificate, it could be something electronic like giving away a Kindle or something that I have done in the past is gotten donations from other companies. So I would approach people that have products similar to mine or that are in my similar niche and ask them for donations. So if you're a fiction book author, you could introduce them to other fiction authors by having a book bundle that those fiction authors donate. Or if you're a nonfiction author, you can find other people in your niche that have products that might be willing to donate for giveaways. You might even find companies willing to donate physical products for the exposure in the advertising during your launch. And I wanted to just mention a Goodreads giveaway. It's just an additional way to get exposure on a social media platform for readers. Goodreads is a platform for readers and so that's where readers hang out a lot. However, to do the giveaway on Goodreads, you must have a print book. A good option. This is just a good option to do in addition to any other book launch activities you schedule. Because it's just another layer of exposure, another way to reach other readers. And you only have to give one print book away and you can specify which countries you know if you're concerned about shipping costs and stuff. One of my books, unshackled and free, I had 800 people request it and 123 mark it as to read. And when that happens, what it does is it also posts that on their wall on Goodreads so their friends see it as well. So it's just a great way to get additional exposure for your book. And another thing to consider as you're preparing for a book launch event. The fifth option that I'm going to talk about today is group promotions. Through group promotions, you can harness the power of a group. There's so much power when you work together and then when you come together, all the authors involved agree to promote the group event. So you have the promotional power of 10 people instead of one person or 20 people instead of one person, depending how many people are in the event. And it's usually created around a theme. So a couple of the group promotions I've done, I did a Christian book, 100% off sale. And it's all of the authors involved agreed to give their book away free on KDP select or on Smashwords with a coupon for that sale and then cross reads. I helped promote a group promotion. It was March Madness. It was during basketball season and a lot of authors and readers may not always just be into basketball. So we were giving them an alternative and giving them all these books to read. In that specific promotion, I think we had both free and 99 cent books. And then another one that I've participated in is March to a Best Seller. The link on your notes is to the current event that's going on in 2014. But we were also involved in an event earlier that was organized by Brian Cohen as well. And our book did really well. They were all books that were 99 cents and they were all books for authors. It was very successful and Brian did a great job. And so we decided to be involved in it again and. But again it was just an example of the power of a group promotion. Something else I've seen people doing lately that's very successful when done correctly is box sets. Authors will come together and will put maybe I've even seen a dozen. So I saw one box set was called the Deadly Dozen and there were 12 different fiction novels included in that box set. And they ran a promotion to for all those books for 99 cents. But what it did was it introduced all the people to those authors and then got them interested to read their other books. So there's so many different ways you can do group promotions that I just encourage you to really get creative in your brainstorming. Another option is to do an online conference. This is something I don't see a ton of authors doing that I think you really could capitalize on more often. You can host an online conference via teleseminars and there are free tools ilovefreeconferencing.com and you can do it through webinars or even Google Hangouts. What you do is you invite guest speakers that you interview or that they share something, a presentation during your conference. This gives you exposure to each speaker's audience. It also helps you build your list. And you can also then do this leading up to your book launch so that you build a list of interested buyers or interested prospects, I guess I should say interested customers that then you share your product with them. And so I have a ton of information on how to host these and the technology and even a video tutorial. You can see it at trainingauthors.com Teleseminar services for authors One of my conferences that I did with my husband was the unshackled and free four day online conference. You can see what we did at theforgivenessformula.com conference. We held it and we did a teleseminar where we interviewed different people on the topic of forgiveness. And we did this leading up to our book launch for forgiveness formula. And it worked really well. Plus we were able then to use the recordings as a bonus during our launch. So if someone wasn't able to listen live but they wanted the recordings, they could get those when they bought our book. And my favorite is actually doing a combination. So you can choose to do a combination of the options I covered. The more creative you get, the better the offer is, the more likely you're going to get sales. And so this will require more time and effort, but generally does yield better results. So for example, you can combine a KDP free promotion with a virtual book tour. So you can set up a blog tour for the days that you're going to be on, that your book's going to be free. And that way it's promoting your book to that person's audience and getting those downloads, getting them into your funnel and potentially getting new readers and fans. You can do an online conference followed by a best seller launch, which I was just mentioning, with our forgiveness formula, that's what we did. You could do a group promotion in and in that group promotion also have a rafflecopter giveaway, which we've often done. And the rafflecopter giveaway will give away an Amazon gift certificate. And you can combine that even with a virtual book tour so where a bunch of people are hosting you on their blogs about the event. And so there's so many different opportunities, so many different options. I just encourage you to take some action. And you know, even if you've already published and launched a book, you can relaunch it with something fun around an event around, you know, a holiday, something like that. You can decide when and how long you can choose what kind of event you want to do or combination and then it's time to do the work to get it done. That's really what happens for successful authors is they not only have ideas for marketing as they actually put them to action. Lights, camera, action. Are you ready for this week's take action tip? What I want you to do is I want you to go through again those seven different book launch events and decide which one or which combination of events would work best for you and for your book. It could be either a brand new book or you could be relaunching a book you've already published. If you need to review those seven book launch events, make sure to get the show notes and download my PDF that has all 7 events and all the links that I talk about in this episode. You can get it at authoraudience.com 8 that's the number 8 authoraudience.com 8 Before we end, I want to give you a backstage pass in this week's Godly Gains segment which is all about keeping Christ at the center of all we do. When place planning a book launch, it can get very overwhelming and that's where you really need to stay focused. Stay focused on the time that you have, the resources you have financially and what is practical for you right now. If you're working another job, it could mean that you're not able to do as much as someone else that's doing this full time. But when you get overwhelmed, I encourage you to look to God for help. Psalm 121:1 2 says, I look up to the mountains. Does my help come from there? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. This is a great reminder for those of us who are Christ followers. God created the heaven and the earth. He's more than capable of helping you work through the details of a book launch. You will face obstacles. You will face technical issues. You will have things to overcome. But you're not alone. Your help comes from the Lord. And if you would like a community of support and accountability and ongoing coaching, I recommend that you join us at Author Audience Account.

Where we can help you even one step further. The Take Action Workshop for this month is in the members area and will be there ongoing for you to take advantage of. It takes this planning of a book launch one step further. So consider joining us if you really feel like you need that extra help, support and encourage encouragement. But most importantly, I encourage you to lift your eyes up not to the mountains, but to the Lord. That's where ultimately our help comes from. Don't miss the next episode. This is a special episode in my Expert Interview series. I'll be interviewing experts that will be sharing their success strategies. The next episode will be an interview with Diane Cunningham and she's going to talk all about publishing and marketing a multi author book. I think you'll really enjoy it, so make sure you tune in to the next episode and I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book book using her six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.