Welcome back to the final stage of your self-publishing journey! You will have done a lot of work on your book, so it should be ready to release now. You have already:
- Finalised the title and subtitle
- Started some marketing, which should now be well underway
- Invited feedback on your manuscript, from a beta reader or otherwise
- Had your book copy-edited and reviewed this
- Written a creative brief for the front cover
- Hired a designer for the front cover or have done it yourself
- Have done or hired out the interior design and reviewed this
- Added acknowledgements, a dedication page and author bio, if you chose to
- Have done or hired out the design for the back cover and spine (if needed for a print version)
- Have an index for your book (if necessary)
- Created the EPUB files
- Have had your book proofread, or possibly done it yourself
- Prepared your metadata, such as book description and author page
- Decided what genre and category your book will be
- Set the opening price for your book and considered changing this further down the line
- Uploaded your ebook files
- Made any additional preparations for a print version
That’s a lot of things done already! All of this has been covered earlier in this series, so if you need to review any of this, take a look at these. The list above is in the order I discussed them, so they shouldn’t be too hard to find! The previous stages are:
- How to Self-Publish Your Book, Stage 1 – Preparation
- How to Self-Publish Your Book, Stage 2 – First Steps
- How to Self-Publish Your Book, Stage 3 – Resolving Issues and Interior Design
- How to Self-Publish Your Book, Stage 4 – Reviewing, Design and Indexing
- How to Self-Publish Your Book, Stage 5 – Preparing EPUB Files and Proofreading
- How to Self-Publish Your Book, Stage 6 – Preparing for Publication and Creating Metadata
- How to Self-Publish Your Book, Stage 7 – Uploading Your Ebook Files and Preparing for Print
All of these blog titles are links, so do click through as you need to. In this final stage, we will be looking at the actual release of your book and how to deal with some common launch day considerations such as marketing and promotions.
Pre-Launch Marketing
Before you launch your book, it is a good idea to now do some launch specific marketing. It is best if you are already well underway with your marketing from the beginning of these stages, but now you should be able to do some that focuses on the launch date.
There are many different things that you can do for this sort of marketing; for example, you may choose to have a countdown on social media, possibly giving sneak peeks at extracts from the book to build hype for the release.
If you have a mailing list of fans, you could send them an exclusive, longer extract from your book, such as a whole chapter (or however long makes sense for your book). Remember not to send too much in this sort of direct way, though; no-one wants to be bombarded with emails!
You could also send out free pre-release copies to well-known reviewers and they might choose to review your book, sending traffic and more readers your way. Just try to build excitement and anticipation for your book in a variety of ways to give it the best chance possible when it is released.
Launch!
Now that your book is all ready, it’s time to send it out into the world. This means activating ebook sales, as well as making sure any print versions you have are also ready for sale (unless you are having a staggered launch date). If you are doing a print-on-demand version, make sure that this is ready as well.
As soon as sales are open, make sure everyone knows! Use social media to announce it and hopefully your followers there will help to spread the word. You can also once again contact your mailing list to say that the whole book is now out. Remember to include a link for them to buy it.
If you have a website, make sure that you update that as well to reflect the launch, complete with a link to buy it as an ebook or where they could find or order a print copy, if you are having one. Your website is also a good place to include an extract to get people interested.
If your website has a blog, this is also a great place to carry out marketing both before and after the launch date, allowing you to post progress reports and additional extracts. You could also add some background as to why you wrote the book if you are happy to do this – what inspired you and what influenced the plot, if it is fiction.
If your book is a sequel, you could consider reducing the price of an earlier one in the series to encourage people to buy it and, hopefully, buy the new one as well. Also, if you are writing a fiction series, you can do lots of snippets in between books to keep your audience interested; for example, you might do some world building by writing more about a particular character’s backstory.
You could also do a giveaway after the book is released, which can be very effective to drive new sales your way on other books if they like your work. If you don’t want to do a giveaway on the new one, you could always do it with one of your older books to gain interest in your writing.
Wrapping Up
This post concludes my series on how to self-publish your book. I hope you have enjoyed reading it and found it helpful for your self-publishing journey. Good luck!
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