What to Do 60 Days, 30 Days and 7 Days Before Your Launch

After all the writing, editing, writing and writing your book is finally finished! Now what? Today, I’m answering the question what you do 60 days, 30 days and seven days before the launch.

60 Days Before Your Launch

Decide if you’re going to do a presales approach. In the past, with Amazon, all presales before the on-sale date counted toward first-week sales, which would increase the chances of a book hitting the NY Times bestseller list. Now with Amazon’s priority on new books, encouraging presales could adversely affect the algorithm that can make your book an Amazon bestseller.

At this point, you should compile an Advanced Reader Team (ART) or, as we call it, a Launch Squad, and write and schedule a series of emails to them. This podcast episode and this Launch Squad Swipe Copy can help you with this.  

Other things to do at this point: decide if you’re going to do readings and events and reach out to make arrangements; make a promo video using an application like Apple’s Clips; and research, read and reach out to book blogs, podcast bookers and influencers for advance press. You can also decide if you want to pay to have reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. (It may not sell books, but it lends legitimacy.)

30 Days Before Your Launch

At this point, you should create your media kit on your site. (Here's an example of my current one for the upcoming re-release of Party Girl.). Include your photo, book cover image and book description. Once it's on your website, you can direct reviewers, bloggers and other media people to it.

Other activities:

Upload your book to BookFunnel and give the link to your ART.

Start sending out the emails to your entire ART list where you include updates of advance reviews, your appearances on podcast—anything that happened since the previous newsletter.

Make quote cards of your book’s best lines to post during release week. Canva is a great resource for this. 

Use Canva to create branded images for your Facebook cover, Twitter cover, LinkedIn cover and wherever else you want that feature your book cover. 

Amp up the blogging for guest posts on other sites. Pitch them to feature you and your book.

Update your website homepage with an image that features your book and shows your book cover. Include a link to buy your book.

Reach out to people who can help promote your book when it’s released.

Come up with a release week or day contest.

Create your Amazon Author account and optimize your keywords.

Create or update your Goodreads account. 

Research the best Amazon categories for your book. (I highly recommend using Publishers Rocket; my Launch Your Book course breaks this process down in detail.)

Continue to bug and delight your ART.

7 Days Before Your Launch

A few days before your release, make sure that the price of your ebook is 99 cents and get your ART to buy and review it before release day. Stay on top of them and don’t cave to the temptation to reach out to family and your inner circle when your ART inevitably gets flaky. Your family and inner circle probably don't have a history of buying books like yours on Amazon so their purchases may screw up the Amazon algorithm and the site won't then start recommending your book to other shoppers interested in the topic.

On release day, change the price of your book from 99 cents to whatever you’re selling it for.

Make sure the cover of your book is shown on the homepage of your site.

Swap out all your social media images for graphics that include your book cover. When you can, make the images click-able so they lead to your book’s Amazon page.

Post/promote the quote cards of your best lines on social media.

Post/promote your video.

Post/promote your contest.

Continue to bug and delight your ART.

Encourage your friends to help promote your book using a specific hashtag.

Take screengrabs of any Top 10 lists your book hits on Amazon and circulate them.

Do Facebook Lives, YouTube Lives and Instagram Lives giving people a behind-the-scenes look at your release process.

Do Instagram stories encouraging people to pop over to your Facebook page.

Update your newsletter sequence to include any news about the book’s success, specific reviews, your contest or anything else newsworthy.

For a million other launch ideas, check out my extensive launch guide.

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HERE'S HOW I CAN HELP YOU WHEN YOU'RE READY:

→ You can get my 5 steps to creating a life-changing book

→ You can apply for an Authority Experience to have us create the concept and promotion plan for your authority-building book

→ You can apply for a call to work with Legacy Launch Pad (our publishing packages range from $7k-150k)

RELATED EPISODES

What Are the Exact Steps to Publishing a Book?

10 Free Ways to Promote a Book

Do People Look Down on Self-Publishing?

CLICK ON ANY OF THE LINKS BELOW TO HEAR THIS EPISODE OR
 CLICK HERE TO GET THE POD ON ANY PLATFORM

QUOTE OF THE EPISODE:

"Encouraging presales could adversely affect the algorithm that can make your book an Amazon bestseller."