Novel Creation Process: Pre-Launch Phase
By Cody Leet
It's always a good idea to plan how to introduce your work.
▢ Pick a Date
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Pick a date about two months from the Final Draft date to provide time to get everything ready to go without extensive pressure. I gave myself one month and definitely felt under the gun.
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▢ 3 Weeks Prior
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Your goal is to have some reviews on day one on Amazon. The only way to do this is to give away a bunch of ebooks to everyone you know until you have about 75 to 100 people who say they will read it and give you a review. Why that many? You want about 25 reviews, and only about 1/3 of the people will actually do it.
Since this step is before the ebook is actually available anywhere, the best service to distribute it is with BookFunnel. They allow you to upload an .epub, .mobi, and .pdf and take care of tech support, for a reasonable fee. What you are giving away is an ARC or Advance Reader Copy. Here is a great article on how to write the "pitch" to get readers. How to launch your book with at least 25+ Amazon reviews So you don't have 100 friends? Here is where I posted by pitch to get this many volunteers:
GoodReads has some groups where authors can "swap" reviews. This article explains why this is not a good idea. Plus, this is a crazy busy time, you won't have time to read a 50 novels for reviews. Writing 101: Review Swapping |
▢ 1.5 Weeks Prior
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Around now will be the deadline to get your final .mobi file up to KDP (Amazon). Make sure the copy you have up there is the final, or upload it now.
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▢ 1 Week Prior
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Remind those ARC Readers that the deadline is quickly approaching. Of course, do this politically. The article I referenced above gives and example of how to word this.
Set up your author profile on BookBub and GoodReads and explicitly add your book to them. Since you book has been posted on Amazon as a pre-order for 2 weeks, it should be in their databases by now. |