What to Consider When Planning a Book Launch Timeline

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.

Today I'm going to share with you what to consider when planning a book launch outline and timeline. Hi, my name is Shelly Hitz and I am excited to share with you this training. I'm an author coach, I'm the owner of Author Audience Academy and I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message. It's time to let your light shine. I've done a lot of book launching lately, but my husband and I have a publishing company. We've published over 50 books, so we have done a ton of book launches. And I want to just share with you a really key tip and a strategy to use when you're planning your book launch timeline. Now, I'm not able to tell you exactly what to do and exactly what time is going to work best for you because there's a lot of things that go into this. But I do want you to sit down, I want you to do a brain dump and I want you to write down these three categories. It's very simple. But so many authors don't do this. I want you to write down pre launch. So that means everything that you're gonna do before your book launch, that's phase number one. Phase number two is your launch. So everything you're going to actually do during your launch event and then phase number three is post launch. So whatever book launch event you're going to do, and however long you're going to choose your event, you're going to then write out those three categories pre launch launch and post launch. And you're going to do a brain dump of everything that's going to fit in those three categories. Now if you're watching live, I have a webinar replay that's available until tomorrow, November 17th. It's all about seven different types of book launch events. So you can get access to this webinar for free until tomorrow@shellyhits.com booklaunch webinar. The link is also in the description of this video. It is also this training is also available inside of Author Audience Academy if you're not able to catch the replay in time. But you can watch that webinar and decide what type of event you're going to choose for your book launch and then start planning out your timeline. So your timeline is going to involve things like this. Now everyone is different and so this isn't A comprehensive book launch list because it depends on what type of book launch event you're going to do and your timing, how long your launch is going to be, how you're publishing your book. There's so many variables. If you're an Author Audience Academy member, we can brainstorm this inside our private Facebook group. Also, this Thursday, I'm going to have a book launch, a brainstorm session with you. If you're an Author Audience Academy member, we're going to be going through this and I can coach you through some of these things. So pre launch, what are some things that you could do pre launch? Well, the first is to go through my post publication checklist. So there is a checklist I have that I recommend you go through every time that you publish a new book. Again, that's available inside Author Audience Academy. But I also recommend you can also create your own post publication checklist. What are the things that you need to do right after you publish a book? Make sure everything's ready. For example, you want to make sure your book description is customized. So I usually go into Author Central. I add my book to Author Central. I customize.

My book description. If I have endorsements, I add that. I customize all that. That's one of the things on my post publication checklist. So there's a ton of stuff that I have on that checklist. But it's too much to really go through in this specific training. But I recommend having your own post publication checklist if you're an Author Audience Academy member that's available for you in the publish module in your member area. Another thing you can do pre launch is just building buzz. I like to say bubble and you're just talking about what's going on, how your book is going. I have a previous training on this that is on my blog if you're interested. Just search on my blog for Buzz or for Bubble and you'll find the seven ways to do this that I recommend. You can also pre launch start gathering a book launch team. So if you're doing a bigger launch, like for my book, Broken Crayons Still Color is definitely a bigger launch and I definitely wanted to have a book launch team. And so that's something that you can gather and you can start gathering people who want to be part of your book launch team. You can start gathering different things for them so that they can be sharing once the book is ready. So you can start preparing promo materials, bonuses, prizes and all of those things. You can be preparing those before the launch. And I did A whole Google document for my book launch team for this specific launch. And I share that link inside my private Facebook group for Author Audience Academy of how I did, how I set mine up. And it was really, it worked really well so that my book launch team could then just go in there, get images, get whatever they need for their blog post to share. You can also do that by creating a page on your website, however you want to do that. You know, it's really helpful to have all that promo material created. You don't have to create a ton of stuff, but whatever you do create, guess what, a lot of it can be then used ongoing. So I had my VA go through my book and she pulled out a bunch of quotes. So you could have a volunteer do this, you could have someone else do this. And then I had her take those quotes and create quote graphics on Canva. I had a little background created with my 3D images of my book and she went through and I think we had over 40 different quote graphics. Now you don't have to do 40, but just imagine now all of those quote graphics plus the quotes themselves, I can use those on an ongoing basis to promote my book because they're quotes from me that I wrote inside my book. So I'm going to be scheduling these like maybe once a week and be able to have them repeat every year. So every year, once a week, you know, one of these quotes is being posted and it's continually promoting my book. And it's just a great thing to do. So when you're preparing your book launch promotional material, think about those things too. Now I had a few graphics and a few things that were just specifically for the book launch that talked about what kind of book launch bonuses you could get. Some other things you can do pre launch is start gathering reviews, endorsements, those sorts of things. So you can send out an advanced review copy of your book and have people start reading it and then have them be ready to post their reviews the day your book goes live. So that's one way that you can do it. So those are just a few things that you can start doing pre launch. That's phase one. Now that really probably is going to be a bulk of your work because there's this ton of stuff depending on what type of book launch event you're going to choose that you need to get ready now during the launch. That's phase two. And those are things like how are you going to deliver your book launch bonuses and prizes? You know, what are you going to do? I recommend Trying as much as possible to automate as many things as you can. So for my basic digital book launch bonus, that's all automated through an email autoresponder system. For my current book launch, now, if they buy multiple copies, like 10, 20, 30 copies, they get other prizes, like physical gifts. And so for that, they're going to email me their receipt. I have a canned response. So a canned response just means it's a template, an email template. And then I can just copy paste that, send it out, you know, take care of that. But figure out, like, how are you going to deliver those things? What's going to be involved if you're going to have bonuses, if you're going to have prizes, how that going to work? Are you going to have somebody helping you? Something else is being able to post your promotional material. So you can do that by scheduling different posts. You can schedule blog posts, you can schedule YouTube videos, you can schedule social media posts, you can schedule emails to your subscriber list. You can schedule all of those things, and you can do it in batches of time. I love batching my time. So when I'm working on my podcast, if I can just for, you know, a batch of time, just focus on my podcast, it really helps me to get a ton of work done in that specific thing. You get in the flow, you get in the mood, and you're able to get a ton done. So instead of scheduling something every single day of your launch, why not schedule a chunk of time and do all your scheduling, get all that stuff done. You know, if that works for you, if it works better for you to do a little bit every day, that's fine too. I also recommend that you track your results. So you want to get screenshots. My book got became number one on Kindle for Christian counseling. So I want to get some screenshots of that, some social proof it's number one hot new release in its categories. So get some screenshots. You know, be able to track your sales, track your results, those types of things. Be careful to not be obsessed with tracking your rankings and your sales, because that can cause your emotions to go up and down. But it is good to see what's working, what's not, that sort of thing. All right, so phase number one is pre launch. Phase number two is your launch. And phase number three is post launch. And once I realized I was actually praying one day and I was feeling overwhelmed about my book launch, and I just felt like the Lord was like, Shelly. And there's pre launch, there's launch and there's post launch. You don't have to do everything during your launch. Sure, that's going to be the biggest boost of sales. But this particular book, Broken Crayons Still Color, is a book that I will continue to promote on an ongoing basis. And there was a lot of things that I wanted to get done by the launch that just, it just wasn't feasible. It just wasn't practical for me to try to get that done. And so it took a lot of pressure off to think, okay, I can work on some of these things later. Like there are going to be things that you're going to continue to want to do to promote your book. And part of this for me personally was setting up the whole system that I teach in Author Audience Academy. It's called the Author Automation System. We're going to be starting this in January where we're going to be doing a 90 day accountability group. It looks that way. I have my members voting on what they want. So far everyone's voted on that. But we're going to have an Author Automation blueprint webinar where I'm going to walk you through exactly how to set it up. And it's a system to help you market your books on autopilot, Set it and forget it. So there's certain things in that system that I wanted to have done for my book launch but it was just gonna be too much. And so I was like, okay, I can wait on this particular part of it. I'll get these things done and then I will do these things post launch for ongoing promotion, ongoing sales. So don't feel like you have to do everything right now. I think sometimes we stress ourselves out. Can I get an amen? And so that was something that was really freeing for me to be able to see. And so post launch you want to follow up, you want to make sure you follow up with everyone that you need to. You've delivered all of the bonuses that you've promised. You want to definitely deliver on your promises, definitely deliver on everything you said you were going to do and then send out some thank yous. Who was it that helped you? You know, did somebody donate a prize? Was there some, someone that really helped you in your launch? Send out some thank you notes and you want to change your launch page. So what I typically will do for a launch is I'll actually use the same page that I will want to use ongoing to promote the book. So for my broken crayons still color launch right now it's@brokencransbook.com go. But if you end up on that page after my launch ends, which it's ending November 18th, what you'll see is you'll just see a sales page for my book. So I'll remove the special bonuses that were just for the launch and any links that are out there still from my launch, from the buzz from my launch, any links that my book launch team shared, guess what? After the launch, they will still go to my book. It won't go to a dead page or an old page or expired promotion. Because what I'll do is November 19th, I will go in and I'll change that page and I will change it back to just more of a sales page. Pretty cool, right? And then it's, you know, it keeps all of the shares and so that's a page I can continue to promote ongoing for my book. So we've done that with our author books and other books in the past and it's just a great strategy. So that's something post launch is you have to remember to change that page and then like I said, just, you know, decide what you're going to continue to do for ongoing marketing. So for me personally, I'm a speaker, that really comes easy for me. So I'm really working on the interview blitz. So I'm reaching out to a ton of people and I've had four interviews this week, you know, and it's just going to be an ongoing thing, even past my book launch of working on getting that system in place. So that's what I want you to do. I want you to sit down and I want you to decide pre launch launch and post launch, do a little brain dump and decide what needs to be in each of those phases. Now the timing is going to be different for each of you. Your book launch events are going to be different. Again, if you're watching this live or pretty close to whenever I initially create this, just check out my webinar. It's@shellyhits.com booklaunchwebinar so you can choose your book launch event. That training will also be in Author Audience Academy on an ongoing basis. If you miss it, you can just join us@authoraudienceacademy.com get all that training. It's there for you. So excited just to be doing more trainings for you again. Now that my Broken Crayons book is out, my podcast, my new podcast is done. You know, you haven't checked out my new podcast. It's at Broken Crayons still color you can just check it out on itunes. Search for it. Also, you can check out my new book at brokencransbook.com forward/go. I appreciate all of you that have purchased copies. Thank you so much. I'm gonna head off and I hope you have a good rest of your evening and I'll see you next time. Bye Bye.

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