Struggling Writers discussion

So what do indie authors do to prepare for a launch? Any good or clever ideas? What have you had the best results with?

After many failed, long and boring starts I have learned to do this: Your book revolves around a problem or goal, right? And you have all these important facts and dramas and tough decisions your character has to make to let the reader know why he's in the strugg-----

STOP, STOP! It's already done. You buried yourself and nailed the coffin shut. People won't put up with that to most extents. Neither will you when you read it a month from now.

Your character must be having the problem on page 1 and not at the bottom of the page either. Even thats too long for many. It might work better if the tragedy has already happened.

It may seem like you r cheating your readers this way but isn't it easier to fall in love with someone in trouble vs the swine gorging himself on excess from the fifty-third floor of a downtown building?

I think this will at least get you thinking in the right direction. Love and compassion first; details later.

There are so many things for an indie author to do in order to get optimum exposure for new release, and every author will tell you something different, because there is no one tried and true formula to success. If there were, well...there would be a lot more bestselling indies out there.
Based on my own experiences and those I've heard from both successful and less successful with book launches, there are a few things that seem to work for everybody:
1. set up a facebook page as an author and try to build up a following before the release
2. put together author pages for whatever platforms you are planning to sell through (Amazon, Smashwords, etc.)
3. approach some of your favorite bloggers in the book's genre and ask for reviews or features on their site
4. Provide some ARC copies to trusted readers so that you can get some reviews as soon as the book is available. Books with reviews are bought more frequently than those without.
5. MOST importantly, make sure that your book is the best version possible. Edit it, and then edit it again. Look for typos, get someone you trust to honestly proofread, and then edit it again. Readers have come to expect a lot more from indie authors now, with good reason, and to be competitive, a book needs to have as few errors as possible and have a strong plot and consistency in style and quality.

There are a lot of other things to do, like creating your own website, coming up with fun extras to include on the website or facebook page, giveaways, etc. Mainly, you figure out what you're able to do and what you feel most comfortable with, and then really focus on making a push for your book. Talk to other authors in your genre and see what worked for them. But the best thing you can do is have a great product and be patient.
Best of luck!

Ha! I am so sorry. This is what happens after too much multi tasking. My comment was meant for another thread. It went into this one by mistake.

I agree with Mattie, make sure your novel is the best it can be, then get your name out there. Beyond that, it depends on how you want to market your book. As well as FB & twitter, I went to a local coffee shop and arranged to have a book launch. I guaranteed the owner traffic on a Sunday afternoon and he allowed me to use his space for free. It resulted in over 40 sales of my novel (he had a constant line up at the till), and got the ball rolling. I also did readings at local libraries and participated in a street fair. I have had repeat customers and, within nine months had sold over 150 hard copies and 100 e-books. Not a record breaker but far outdid my expectations.

@Scott: I thought that's what it looked like! ^^;; Well, useful information is useful.

@Mattle, DL: I wish CreateSpace would offer preorders the way Smashwords and I think Kindle now do. Smashwords likes to talk about how beneficial preorders can be, but I'm not sure. I can see benefits, though, in a coordinated release.

Thanks for that. As for YOU'RE question I just did my first book launch on a short story collection. I began giving out advanced review copies about a month prior and also set up my advertising about 3 to 4 weeks prior. For advertising I first did all the freebies as I could possibly find, then I paid for 4 advertisements online. The only two that seemed worthwhile in terms of return on investment were digital book today, and Kindle daily nation. I did my book launch over a span of one week. Each of those seven days was a focus on a different type of marketing. It began with a Facebook announcement to all my friends and family, the next day was one of the online ads, day three was an email blast to all my email subscribers. The rest of the week was scattered with three more paid advertisements.

My strong suggestion is to plan a book launch almost 2 months in advance. The online ads fill up rather quickly. Oh yes, I forgot to mention the purpose of advanced review copies early on was to gain a number of reviews which I did I had about 8 to 10 reviews going into the launch week.

Overall it was fairly successful, I sold about 70 copies or so during launch week where I was priced at $.99. The day launch week was over the price went back up to 3.99. Since the launch I have maintained a Amazon sales rank between 20,000 and 40,000 and sit anywhere from 45 to 15 on one of the bestseller lists.

The best part for me was following launch week I continue to sell and lend almost 5 copies per day. I hope that volume continues and gets better in the future as I plan my next marketing day.

If you're curious about the book that I launched here is the link below.

http://www.amazon.com/Alone-Midnight-...

Good info Scott! I would agree with the info on giving out ARCs and getting as many reviews early on as possible.
Pre-order is important IF you are prepared enough in advance to build up expectation for the release. I have a book on preorder now and since i am working on several projects, I'm not devoting enough time to promotion; but i have still seen a surprising number of preorders for it. I think the main thing is to make sure that your book is listed in the best genre with a competitive book cover if possible, and people will run across it, even without outside influence. Obviously, it's much more effective with the promotion, but if you put it out there, it will get noticed eventually.

Mattie, good point on the right genre. After it has some ranking I will go in and try to find out what acceptable category I can be in where it will be on the first few pages of that best seller list. It's tedious; you have to go thru each category and select a book on page one or two and find out what their sales rank is. Bestsellers is all about rank and nothing else.

For ARC's i used Tomoson.com to get people to review it but Its only good for one book unless you want to pay for a membership. Now that I have a tiny email subscriber list I may approach them in the future for reviews.

That brings up a good question. What do you all do with your subcribers? It can be months and even years between book releases. Do you send them other things?

I'm a little lost on preorders as a marketing tool. I can see benefits in a coordinated release, I'm just not sure how or why a preorder would generate more sales when skipping that means buyers can start reading it immediately.

My current plan is to open a Q&A group and enter it into some R2R groups in the appropriate genre.

Heather, that sounds like a good plan. I am currently trying my first experiment with preorders, so i will let you know how that turns out and if it's worthwhile. So far i'm kind of ambivalent about it.
Scott, that's great; i've never heard of Tomoson before, but I will definitely be checking it out. I think with the subscribers...the best thing to do is send them extras...samples of upcoming work, or asking what they would be interested in reading. Keep a conversation going so they don't forget about you! That's something i'm trying to do now, without being annoying about it.

The best time to plan for your release is a year ago. The second best time is now.

I say that because I see a lot of authors just slap out their book the moment it's complete, without any thought or strategy to it. Here's my advice:

Advice #1: Make abso-toot-ly sure your book is the best book you can possibly make it. When you think it's done, go through it once more. When you start second guessing your edits, that's when it's complete. Get other sets of eyes on it, as well.

Advice #2: Pre-orders are a must - and we're not talking a week either. You will need 2-3 months of pre-order time to really get the most impact out of your book.

To Mattie, above: Pre-orders allow you to capture money and interest at the point of contact, but have 2-3 months worth of that all take effect on the same day. So instead of having 2 sales on release day, you have 30 or 40. This bumps up your numbers, thus giving you more exposure on the rankings chart.

Word of advice: If you aren't getting any pre-orders, don't change your date. Just stick with it and keep working.

Advice #3: If you don't already have an author platform via a blog and social media, you are already behind. That needs to be your top priority. Build relationships with other authors who can host you on their blog and do the same for them. Read other people's books and review them. Make your book release as much about other people as your book, and you'll gain the followers.

Owww..this is an interesting topic. I did the pre-order but I'm not seeing any pre-orders ..lol..

If I wanted to release advance review copies, what's the simplest way to do that? Does anyone know if Smashwords can do that for ARCs, like hand out codes for immediate download of a normally preorder book?

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Darryl

Okay, I've read in this tread that some authors send out ARCs a month or two early in order to get reviews before going live.

Now, this may be a silly question but how do you get reviews (ie: on Amazon) when you book isn't even on Amazon yet?

I'd really love to tap into this strategy, but I'm not sure I get it. Any guidance you can offer would be great.

Sorry if this isn't the right thread for this.
Kara

I plan on publishing my book next year, I wanna do ARCs and get the book reviewed and do pre-order but my number one thing I want to plan out is getting a booth at dragon con or any con next year to have people pre order Order the book, it depends when the con is. I have a whole set up in my head but it might be a pipe dream, I want to be able to give them a promo discount for buying it at the booth

One thing I did was email local radio stations about my story (not my book, but about my personal story and how I'm part of a growing trend of independently published authors). I managed to get 2 radio interviews when I started.

It seems it all comes down to getting book reviews, so I start peddling for them. Plus, frequent social media posts, and some blogs talking about the inspiration or problems addressed in the book.