3 Mistakes Authors Make When Launching a Book

Launching a book is quite the undertaking. It requires months of preparation and many hours obsessing over minute details.

While I’ve had the honor of launching a small handful of excellent books, I’ve also spent time analyzing book launches of other authors. I could list several dozen mistakes below, such as forgoing professional editing and cover design, but I’m going to focus on three easily preventable mistakes.

Here are three mistakes authors make when book launching:

1. They build a launch team and then disappear from the group after the release.

When I teach authors how to launch a book (or when I organize the entire launch), I always recommend a book launch team. These are your book ambassadors — the loyal readers who will fangirl over your book.

The book launch team is usually created in a Facebook group for easy, convenient management. The author invites people from his or her community/platform/tribe. Those people join and they get to help launch your book.

They stay quite involved for about three months, but then something weird happens: authors leave and never return to the awesome community of people who bought the book.

I always recommend my authors change the name of the Facebook group launch team after release week. For example, when Aurora Gregory and David Pitlik launched their book, Get Picked, their book launch group was Get Picked Book Launch Team. But after launch, they retitled it to Get Picked Speaker Resource Group. Rather than saying goodbye to all those people who invested into the authors and the book, they continued to build and grow their community. Now it’s a go-to spot to learn about public speaking.

If you’re using a launch team, do not ignore them after launch and watch the group fade out. Build a community around your book.

2. They don’t do preorders.

While doing preorders for paperback is a whole other beast, setting them up for e-books via Amazon Kindle is a breeze.

(Here’s a how-to video for Amazon Kindle setup.)

Yet so many authors forgo preorders. Here’s why you want those preorders set up:

• All preorders count toward first-week sales, which count toward the Amazon rank on the day the preorder takes place.
• Preorders get people excited about the book, especially if incentives are offered when buying ahead of time.
• They’re a convenient option, because once the book releases, it’s automatically added to the buyer’s Kindle.

3. They price their book too high.

I realize there is a science to pricing one’s book, so I’m not going to get into that. However, I see too many authors price their books way too high during launch — even during preorders! I’ve seen it as high as $9.99 for e-book preorders. That’s not a good incentive to purchase a book.

If possible, your book should be priced low during launch because you want as many sold as possible during this time frame.

Launch time isn’t the time to price your book sky high. Think strategically.

An expert editor, seasoned writer, and author-centric marketer, Shayla Raquel works one-on-one with authors and business owners every day. Her blog posts have been featured on popular websites like The Book Designer and Positive Writer. She is the author of the Pre-Publishing Checklist and her novel-in-progress, The Suicide Tree. She lives in Oklahoma with her two dogs, Chanel and Wednesday.