As the author of a just finished novel, you are excited and eager to introduce your “new baby” to the world – or at least to your readers. You will want to spread as much awareness as possible about your new book’s release. Chris McMullen wrote a helpful blog post a while ago about book launch strategies and book promotion before, during, and shortly after the book launch. Here is a short excerpt of his tips:
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Cover Reveal
An appealing cover that clearly shows the genre and content can be valuable not only as a marketing tool but even as a pre-marketing tool.
The cover also plays a strong role in branding. People often don’t buy a product the first time they see it. But after seeing the same image multiple times over a long period, the image becomes branded. Months later when they are shopping, if they see this image again, they recognize it. Series authors have the advantage that the buzz can snowball.
You certainly can reveal your cover offline, too. Print it out or order proofs or author copies to show in person. Ideally, you want to reach your specific target audience.
You don’t have to do just one cover reveal: Show your mock-up of the concept out there to seek feedback. Later, follow this up with a draft of your cover. Do a cover reveal for your final cover.
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Book Blurb Reveal
Write several Blurbs and ask your followers for valuable feedback to improve your blurb.
This presents the challenge of writing three good blurbs instead of just one, so it’s even more critical to seek helpful feedback.
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Author Interviews
Another way to gain exposure for your new book is to do author interviews on blogs for which the audience is a good fit for your book. It’s a chance to gain some exposure from people who don’t already know about your book.
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Contests
As opposed to just giving your book away free to everyone, people who win free books through contests often perceive that they’ve received something valuable. Make sure to research the rules, and also search for tips.
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Giveaways
Another option is giveaways by Goodreads, Amazon, or LibraryThing, for example. This has the added benefit of getting hundreds of customers to add your book to their to-read lists, which helps make your book appear somewhat more popular. With a wise choice of tags, you can get up to 1000 views for a month-long giveaway. Most of the views come on the first and last days, but all the days in the middle do add up. Browse through the list of tags at Goodreads to find the best matches for your book.
http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway
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Special Introductory Offer
A special, limited-time offer can help draw more interest in your book or encourage earlier support for your book. This could be an introductory sale price, for example.
Or it could be a coupon or discount code, such as the one you can generate through Smashwords or Apple iBooks. Often, when a book is launched, friends, family, and fans support the book with initial sales, and then sometime later the book goes on sale. Don’t let the most loyal readers miss out on the savings! With a special introductory offer, you value your loyal supporters.
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Pre-Orders
Once you have a loyal following, you can greatly benefit from preorders. Kindle Direct Publishing and Apple iBooks offer preorder options, as well as Kobo. Book Distributor Draft2Digital is also very helpful for authors to organize pre-orders.
One big advantage of preorders is, that not everyone realizes is that it gives you extra exposure: Get all the exposure for your book that you can (so long as you can draw enough support to generate preorder sales).
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A successful book launch can really make a difference: Early sales are helping a book start out with a good sales rank. Read the whole article here: http://bit.ly/2tlDNS3