Before I launched my first self-published book, This is How I Know: a book of poetry, I spent hours poring over launch strategy and trying to figure out the best way to go about launching a book of entertainment, because even though writing comes naturally to me, marketing does not. Not even a little bit.
Much of the information out there has to do with launching a product like a course or a book that has a specific takeaway with it, and it isn’t really geared toward entertainment things like fiction or songwriting or something that is more a “want” than a “need” for people (even though, arguably, people need entertainment in their lives or they’re not really lives worth living). So, in a way, I felt like I was crossing into uncharted territory.
That’s what made me want to write down every single strategy we came up with for our book launch—because I knew that I’d be doing it again, and I needed to learn from my mistakes and tweak my process so that every subsequent book release would do better than the last. No one else would do that for me. No one else could tell me exactly what would work, because I was selling entertainment, which has a completely different value proposition than something like a self-help book. People aren’t learning something from my project. They are feeling something. That means I had to invoke emotion.
So I wrote the copy for a landing page and three videos that we used to promote the project, and I made sure that emotion was in every bit of it. And I think it was a pretty good effort—but as I shared in the last post, there were certain things we could have done better.
It’s important that every time we’re doing a product launch, we are analyzing and assessing our efforts and keeping track of what works and what doesn’t, because if we want to build a business out of this writing, we’re going to have to come out with more products. Which means we’re going to have to launch them. Which means we’re going to have to have a solid strategy.
I came into that first launch knowing that it would not be done perfectly. Maybe none of the launches will ever be done perfectly, but the one thing I can guarantee is that every one of them will be better than the last. Because I have come up with an evaluation plan.
It’s funny how we implement things like evaluations into other parts of life. What’s working in this parenting? What’s not working in the way our family eats dinner together? What can we do better.
And yet, when it comes to writing and running a business, we excuse ourselves from it, because it’s “just not for us.” We just want to be writing. We just want to be creating. We just want to use our time wisely.
But the thing is, we’re using our time wisely in evaluation. Not only in evaluation of our stories in the rewriting and editing processes, but also in the evaluation of our strategies behind things like book launches. This is what will monetize our business—and even if we’re doing writing just because we love it (which I hope we’re all doing), if we ever want to succeed as an author, we’re going to have to monetize it. It’s what agents will tell you when you pitch a book. It’s what publishers will tell you before they’ll buy your book. It’s what you have to tell yourself if you’re self publishing.
And the only way to get better at monetizing our art and launching our products is to evaluate and learn from what we have done before and from what others have done.
After my book launch was all over and done, Husband, who is a branding consultant and content marketer, and I sat down to analyze what we’d done and what we could do better. I shared a little about that in the last post. And as soon as we finished that, we began to plan the next release, which would happen six weeks later.
Because even though my poetry book only sold about 11 copies, because my audience is still relatively small, and an even smaller percentage of people will actually buy a book, I knew that the best way to keep growing my audience was to keep producing products. Keep writing books. Keep launching them out into the world.
But not without a plan.
Here are some ways you can be learning and refining your launch strategy.
Step 1: Research
Research is necessary for effective launches. There are always things we can improve on, and unless we have a background in marketing and product launches, we’re probably not going to be able to know everything there is to know about how to effectively launch a book into the marketplace. We can learn from people who know much more than we do.
One of the best resources on product launches, in my opinion, is Jeff Walker. He runs the Product Launch Formula, and he’s fantastically generous with his content and offers a paid course for those interested. I have not take the paid course, but as soon as there’s budget for it, I plan to.
Step 2: Assess.
Look with a critical eye on what went well and what didn’t. Unless we’re constantly assessing these things, they’re not just going to jump out at us. It wasn’t until Husband and I sat down and looked at stats and numbers of views for videos that we could figure out what might have gone wrong or exactly right in our strategy. And of course there will be some variables, because sometimes it’s just a bad time of year or a bad day of the week, and there’s not really a way to analyze why, but if we’re experimenting and keeping track of things like stats and response and sales, we can better know where to go from here.
Assess not only stats but also the quality of content you put out about your book. Sometimes there are tiny little things that could be tweaked to have a better result. It’s best to analyze these aspects with someone who isn’t quite as connected to it, because we can often be blind to our own work.
Step 3: Implement/tweak.
Once you’ve assessed what worked and what didn’t work, make a plan for the next launch that will implement and tweak the problem areas. If we’re not constantly improving, we’re either remaining in a static place or moving backward. Analyzing has not purpose if we’re not willing to tweak the places that need improvement.
Step 4: Experiment with the launch.
I try to keep in mind that every launch I do is an experiment. I’m probably never going to have this whole thing figured out. But I do expect to get better and better at it, and, eventually, I’ll develop my own solid strategy that works for me. I don’t know that there can be any formulas, per se, because each book will be individual for its own market, but I can constantly experiment with what works and then assess and tweak and continue doing research that will put me on better footing for the next time.
Step 5: Repeat.
These steps will be repeated again and again and again, as many times as we are laughing projects. And before we know it, we’ll get really, really good at them, so they’ll become more second nature. Before we even start a project, we’ll be thinking about how we might launch it.
These steps will guarantee we get better at every successive book launch.
(Next week I’ll give you my checklist for my upcoming release.)
