Wattpad Block Party - Winter Edition III

MarilynVix Presents: Creating A Launch: How to Promote Your Self-Published...

So, I've been writing my first full length novel for three years now. With the help of beta readers, two editors, a formatter, a cover designer, and my sheer will, it released on Jan. 26, 2017. It's called Everything For Love: Time Rogues Book 1.

Needless to say, it's been a long road to get to the launch of my book. But how did I get to this point? Well, I've been talking about self-publishing a lot on my blog and on Wattpad in my Writing Romance: A Novelists Tips On Writing Romantic Fiction. You can find the book in my listing of works here on Wattpad. I thought I'd put together the steps to launch your book to as a special help out to fellow writers for the Wattpad Winter Block Party III.

When you release your book, it's called a launch. How you launch a book can also depend on the genre. Since I write romance books, I'm going to show you the steps to launch a romance book, but the steps can be applied to other genres too.

There are somethings you'll need in place before your launch. This can all be started now while your still writing your book.

Step 1: Have a email list of readers ready to get the info.

This is called your newsletter list. Often, this newsletter can be powered and run by a website as simple as mailchimp.com. You can start building your newsletter by simply telling people about yourself, doing Facebook promotions, or even giveaways with rafflecopter.com.

There could be just a whole written section on how to build your newsletter list. But the important thing is to start one and build from there. When you've got a list built, mine is about 350 subscribers right now, you can send out the info about your upcoming book to your subscribers. I'll have to do a separate post sometime on newsletters a bit later. For now, just know you need to start one. Sign-ups can also be through your website.

Step 2: Build a website.

I guess this step could be first, but the important thing is that you start this too. It will be your home base for giving out information about yourself. People will be able to find out information about you, and most importantly, any press members will be able to find you. Believe me, it does happen. Only twice for myself so far, but when it does, it is exciting.

Probably the most important thing about a website is that your readers and fans need a place to touch base with you. This is it. You need a page about you, books, current projects, interviews and reviews, review request/contact form, and upcoming events. This can all be done on website hosting sites such as wordpress.com. If you would like an example, here is my site to look at. I got the ideas for my website by looking at other authors' websites too.

marilynvix.com

Step 3: Set launch dates, including preorder dates

So, now that the manuscript is done and formatted, and you're ready to launch, you have to decide on the dates. You've got to give yourself enough time to list it with promoters and get it ready. I would give myself at least a month lead time. I tend to do things quickly, so even 2 months would be good to start.

Step 4: Start going out and signing up your support people (Promotions Team).

So, this is where you start finding promoters and promoting sites to help you. This is people like Facebook promoters and people that run blog tour sign up companies. I found lists of them by searching on Google and by looking in a book that had done a lot of the research for me.

Who do you need? I find that signing up with one blog tour promoter and one Facebook promoter is a good start. It's going to get the word out about your book. There are twitter announcement groups too, but I just tweet my own messages. I've never seen much traffic from twitter promotions, and I've tried a few. But they are available too.

Here is the book I used to get started in finding promoters to help me list my book on blogs and reach out to people on Facebook:

"Sell More Books: 75 eBook Promotion That Increase Amazon Sales"

www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FKR8G6S

Step 5: Set a Budget/Schedule Your Support

So, once you got who you are going to use, check out their packages and think about what would best fit your book, schedule and budget. The budget is key here. You can easily go over in your spending if you don't watch it. Think about what you can afford, and chose options that fit your fixed budget. Don't go over. Promotions will suck your budget pretty fast. So, stay firm with your limit.

Step 6: Follow Your Promoters Instructions and put together a MEDIA KIT

So, once you've set up promoters, they'll have a list of things to do. For blog tours, it may be requested interviews, sending in bios and pictures, and possible guest blog posts. What you need is a media kit to gather all the things most promoters are going to ask for.

1) Bio of author(you)

2) Photo of author(you)

3) Social Media links and Website Link (The big ones are Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon Author Page)

4) Book Cover

5) Blurb for Book

6) ASIN or ISBN number (These are the unique book numbers assigned by Amazon and by publishers internationally.)

7) Retailer sale links for book

8) Possible Book Trailer (You can hire people to make these for you, but you don't have to have one. They are nice though to up interest in your book. Here is my current one for Everything For Love by Apex Reviews.)

Everything For Love Book Trailer

That is the basics in a Media Kit. The promoter will ask for other things when needed. When doing a blog tour, they will often send you questions from the bloggers or ask for a guest post. Sometimes they even give you the topic. You just write up something for them and send it. They like exclusive content for blog tours to draw in the bloggers' fan base.

So, by this point, you've got the basics set up. You can always add onto to this depending on the type of book you've written and the reader base you wish to attract. That really depends on the book you have written. But hopefully, this will get your launch planning started. Even if you are writing your book on Wattpad now and eventually plan to self-publish, you can start doing some of these steps now to help yourself down the road for your eventual launch.

I've got a lot of this set up now. So, when I launch "Saving My Heart", one of my Wattpad stories that I am planning to self-publish, I will have everything in place.

Good luck, and happy writing!

-Marilyn

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P.S. Don't forget to enter the 130+ #WattpadBlockParty Giveaways! Clickable links are at the top of my Wattpad profile! :)

GIVEAWAY LINK ONE:

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GIVEAWAY LINK TWO (with Widgets):

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