Release Strategies Read online

  Writing words no one has ever seen is a huge risk. If the first book flops, you will have invested a significant part of your life continuing on a storyline that doesn’t work or a focus on readers who aren’t your readership. Maybe that readership doesn’t buy books.

  If you have never published a book and you have no insider team (I didn’t until I had already published thirteen books), then one of the only ways to get reader feedback is by publishing that first book. Another way is to join an author forum (like 20Booksto50k® where we share links to various MVP groups and craft groups). Authors generally are not your target audience and are generally far more critical than your average reader, but critical input is better than no input or input from people who don’t know the genre or don’t want to hurt your feelings.

  Put on your business hat and analyze the input. Yes. It sucks when someone tells you that your baby is ugly, but maybe it’s only an ugly dress that Uncle Bob bought. With a quick change and a bow, all of a sudden, your baby is a poster child. Rarely will you find a fatal flaw that can’t be remedied with a few choice words.

  You are an author, after all. Create, and then re-create. Make the story work.

  The readers will reward you for it by giving you their hard-earned money. All the awards and accolades in the world won’t put food on your table. Only customers willing to pay for your product can do that. Find them. Feed them the words and they will nourish you and your family, maybe even help you with the mortgage, or a vacation.

  I talk about success in my first book, Become a Successful Indie Author. You are now taking that next step. You have your book and want to make the most from it.

  Read on.

  Terms I’ll use in this book

  Release, launch, and publish—I use these as synonyms. They all mean the same thing—getting that book to market.

  Tail—this is a term that relates to book sales after the launch. Each publication almost always has a spike, those high sales within the first few days of publication or a major promotion where the most people buy, but after that, as sales drop, that is the tail. We want the biggest tail for the longest amount of time. A month of additional sales is a great tail. Some have a week or two. Some have three months. The longer the tail, the more ancillary factors are working in your favor (like word of mouth, read-through, snowballing, viral books, and so on).

  Read-through is specific to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited (KU) program. It is where a reader will check out the next book in your series. I use it interchangeably with buy-through. When an author is exclusive to Amazon, they can put their book in KU, where authors get paid by the number of pages Amazon’s KU reading subscribers read. The pricing is usually between $0.004 and $0.005 per page read. A book priced at $2.99 and 70% royalties will earn roughly $2.00 (that takes into account the download cost as well—you don’t really get a full 70%, but this is far better than traditional publishing contracts). To earn $2.00 through page reads, your book needs to be between four hundred and five hundred pages. I think it’s clear that if your book is that long, you won’t have it priced at $2.99. But KU readers aren’t the same as buyers. These are fairly separate demographics, so better getting $1 on a sale than no sale, while others draw $2. That is my business premise. There are wildly successful authors who don’t participate in KU, where all of their income is through sales. That simply requires a different marketing approach. I have books that are exclusive, and I have books that are not. But read-through is critical. You need the readers to read through to the next book in the series. This is most obvious when they are not and your page reads for a book hover around zero.

  Buy-through—this is when buyers go on to buy book two after picking up book one. A good buy-through rate from one to two is fifty percent, unless you had book one for free, then it’s closer to ten percent. Book two to three should be higher. I always look for at least eighty percent. If I don’t get that, there might be something wrong with book two. Generally, if I can get someone to book three in one of my series, my read-through rate goes north of ninety percent. The readers are always the final arbiter of whether a book is good or not. If they aren’t buying it and they were former fans, it’s either that they don’t know about it or they got turned off during the last book.

  Wide—any author who is not exclusive (digital books/ebooks only) to Amazon. Wide means the book can be published to Apple books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, BookFunnel, Smashwords, libraries, or any other place that carries digital content.

  Promotion—this is where you conduct a very specific campaign (getting a BookBub Featured Deal, for example, is a promotion), maybe surge a number of newsletter swaps over a short period where you have your book at ninety-nine cents or even free. I am now trying to run two promotions a month on the first in my different series. One book. One promotion. Then look for the read-through/buy-through.

  Ads—advertising. A promotion is a type of advertising, but when I talk ads, these are for your books, usually at full price, and they are ongoing campaigns where you run your ad for weeks or months at a time before changing up graphics or ad text or targeted audience. Amazon advertising, Facebook ads, Kobo ads (if wide), Google Adwords, and BookBub ads (not to be confused with a featured deal) are the primary advertising platforms. I also run ads on books that are on sale (as a separate track to get readers into my books just in case a promotion hasn’t reached them). Promotions and new releases are usually your big sales bumps, but your daily bread and butter will be ads. Keep your books in front of readers at all times, as often as reasonable.

  I use the term “books” as a synonym for stories. “Book” has no defined length. Novel, on the other hand, is defined by the Romance Writers of America (RWA) and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) because of the awards both organizations sponsor. According to their guidelines, here are those specific terms.

  Novel = 40,000 words or longer

  Novella =17,500 words up to 40,000 words

  Novelette = 7500 words up to 17,500 words

  Short story = 2500 words up to 7500 words

  Flash fiction = under 2500 words

  Back matter—everything in your book after The End (or whatever term you use to finish the current book). The back matter will contain your calls to action—join your newsletter, visit your website, look at your other books, learn a bit about you in your Author Note.

  Front matter—the stuff up front in your book. A copyright page, a table of contents (I don’t put them in my books, but Amazon’s automation process adds it), maybe a dedication, maybe some terms used in the book, possibly a call to action—newsletter and social media. I put both front and back matter in my books. I don’t think I can remind my readers often enough that they can find me on the internet (my clearly-named website—craigmartelle.com, Facebook, and BookBub).

  Series vs. serials—the only difference, in my mind, is a serial is a shorter work. In TV parlance, a series has the same characters, but each show is a complete story. Star Trek is a series, General Hospital (daytime television soap operas) is a serial. In the book business, we use the term a little more loosely. I see serials as shorter installments within a greater arc. I use “season” to describe the first twelve episodes, serials as it may be, and that is a single complete story arc. A series like Doc Savage can be read in any order—same characters, new and complete story with each book. Arguably, Game of Thrones could be a serial, and that begs the question, does it matter what we call our stuff? For marketing, it's best to avoid terms that create reader confusion. The term “series” works for readers because it tells them there is more than one book. Serial implies shorter. Use them wisely to gather and keep the most readers on board.

  Categories & genres—I use these interchangeably since they are constructs within the publishing industry. On Amazon, a category depicts a genre or sub-genre.

  A/B Testing—Amazon Advertising as well as Facebook ads have this option. A/B testing (also known as split testing or bucket testing) is a me
thod of comparing two versions of an ad against each other to determine which one performs better. Then you use the better-performing one as you scale up your ad campaign.

  Establishing your pace—under-promise and over-deliver

  This book is about release strategies—things you can do to set your publication(s) up for success. When I talk about rapid release, I’m referring to books published at thirty-day intervals or less. Whether you write that fast or you stockpile, that’s your business, and part of how you can plan without overextending yourself and not being able to deliver.

  Your release strategy has to be based on your capabilities, and this is where managing your reader expectations is important. As you get ready to release your first book, your efforts will be around getting people to consider your book and give it a look. If it’s the first in the series, the promise of more will be a lure in and of itself.

  For a rapid release, you will probably have to stockpile one or two books before you can publish the first. Hitting the promised frequency is critical. Readers will wait around, but not for long. The best way to avoid finding out about their angst (and the vitriol that will get dropped on the author) is to hit your marks.

  If you are only capable of writing a book a year (or less—it is okay. Know your limitations and embrace them.), then stockpiling is a rather lengthy commitment. Maybe it’s easier to tell your readers that the next book will be out in a year than driving yourself to do what you can’t. Don’t add stress to your life. Writing is a calling. Don’t make it a daily grind at the word mill.

  I still recommend that you write every day, at least a few words. In the end, they add up. You can’t edit a blank page.

  Know your limitations. If you haven’t written a book before, it is a challenge. I will strongly discourage you from putting up a pre-order and planning to conduct a rapid release if you don’t have the first book finished. You’ll need to re-read it.

  After a lot of words, much self-reflection, and boatloads of outside help, your first draft might be pretty good. Before you know for sure, don’t dig yourself a deep hole by investing too much time or money, and that’s what I mean by ensuring your minimum viable product. Take that first book as it comes, and as a monumental learning journey. Humans are natural storytellers. It’s what we do. Putting those stories into writing isn’t so natural. It takes a little practice, but when you get it right, the rewards can be fantabulous.

  Where was I?

  Working within your limitations. Until you know what those limitations are or are not, use your first book for business research into yourself as an artist and the company’s talent.

  Don’t stress out the resident genius! If you don’t write it, who will?

  No. Not a ghostwriter. Until you know what you’re doing, it’s really hard to give another person direction. You’ve had those supervisors. Don’t be that person! Learn the ropes before you start tying yourself into knots.

  Now it’s back on you to write the book. Write it the best you can, and then go back through and write it better. Now it’s time to evaluate, honestly (no sense lying to yourself). Can you do it again?

  If that answer is a resounding yes, then keep reading, and we’ll talk about various release strategies. If the answer is no, then return this book and get your money back, because I can’t help you make good money off a single book. I don’t know how to do that. If the answer is maybe, then keep reading before you abandon hope.

  No obstacle is insurmountable. With information and desire, you are empowered to succeed.

  Preparing for publication (launch plan)

  If you haven’t published before, I shamelessly recommend my first book—Become a Successful Indie Author.

  Back to this book. When I say preparing for publication, I don’t mean formatting, cover check, title verification, blurb, keywords, categories, or any other “mundane” publication tasks, but the launch plan.

  This is where you need to allocate your resources (cool business-speak for money and time).

  Soft launch means less time and money. A soft launch is simply putting the book out there and then starting ads, sending a note to your newsletter, and building the sales post-launch. A hard launch is building sales before the book is published, even if you don’t do a pre-order. A hard launch contains a great deal of intentionality—a purpose-driven effort to tell the world about your book upon launch.

  Hard launch means more time and increased costs. You may have made these decisions when you first started writing the book, which would be the best time to consider how you want to launch it.

  Don’t get wrapped up in hard or soft, focus your attention on the intentionality behind your launch. You know what doesn’t work? Publishing it and not telling anyone. As a self-published author, YOU NEED to let people know that your book is out there. You don’t have to walk up and down the street wearing a sandwich board or telling all your friends and family that you’ve published a book and would they buy it. That’s what I did when I published my first book. It doesn’t work and makes you feel dirty. There are other ways, good ways, to promote your book, and some really smart people have written books on the topic (I have a bibliography at the end).

  In the interim, how can you scale Mount Everest? By having a good plan that works for you. That’s all. There are a lot of moving parts, but you can tackle them one at a time. That’s what this book is about.

  Chapter Review

  Here’s what you need to think about.

  What is your production capability (how many words)?

  What can you reasonably manage in regards to maintaining high-quality releases (production plus quality control, i.e., editing, proofreaders, beta readers)?

  Will you put your book up for pre-order?

  Write the ad copy

  Create ad images

  Schedule promotions (paid & free)

  Build excitement with your fan base (maybe it is simply building a fan base)

  Arrange for newsletter swaps, blog posts, and launch announcements with/through friends

  Countdown to launch

  We’ll talk about each of these throughout the rest of the book.

  2

  Starting from ground zero

  Starting without a readership

  Understanding your genre

  Building a readership

  Starting without a readership

  What if you have no readership and you are getting ready to release your first book? Then you have your work cut out for you.

  The examples throughout the book are based on my numerous releases. I’ve published when I didn’t have an established readership, and I publish now that I do. It makes a difference, but a good ad and marketing strategy will make even a first-timer shine.

  My genre is science fiction. I have about a hundred stories that are science fiction. Then I tried a new genre where I was a babe in the woods.

  I had just published a new series in an entirely different genre and had to start from ground zero. What did I do?

  I joined a couple of different cozy mystery/ paranormal mystery groups. I wrote a reader magnet, a story nearly identical in style and structure to the way the rest of the series would be but shorter and I put it on BookFunnel for free but with a mandatory email opt-in. BookFunnel is a promotional site where readers can get your book regardless of what device they use to read. BookFunnel takes care of collecting email addresses for people who download your book. They take care of everything. All you have to do is upload your files and click the right buttons to get it set up. They have an option where you can use their site for free, but the paid version is what will get you email addresses. I have found that the paid version has always been good value.

  Back to trying to establish myself in a new genre.

  I bought the interior artwork and put a cover on it, in the same brand-style as the rest of the series. I also published it as book zero on Amazon for 99 cents.

  I conducted a few newsletter swaps with folks, and whe
n my first book launched, I had a solid 650 people on my new email list. I hadn’t spent a whole lot of money on that magnet.

  But I had established myself in that new genre. The full truth is that I missed the genre. I labeled the series Young Adult Cozy Mystery. Although my series had seventeen-year-old twins as the protagonists, the appeal of the books is to a more mature crowd, and it doesn’t fall in the traditional cozy mystery setting of a British village. Far from it. That series didn’t find the traction I wanted on the first go, but they are high-quality stories. I’m going to rebrand them with new covers and a new genre listing, and then ratchet up a full marketing campaign. That’s the value of a good-quality backlist. But in this case, it also highlights the need to get the genre aligned with the desired readership.

  Genre alignment could be a book of its own since it is important for your marketing and advertising. If you get it wrong, you spend money and time to get minimal sales. When you get it right, that’s when you get the readers sharing your book and telling their friends. Imagine someone starts to read a book they think will be like Scooby Doo, but in the first chapter, the antagonist goes on a graphically depicted murder spree. You can see how it might not connect. That is an extreme example, but don’t try to sell space opera that is dark fantasy. The readerships are mostly different.

  I had not aligned my genre, and in the mystery and cozy mystery realms, they are different. I’m surprised there isn’t more crossover, but I learned the hard way that there is not. I needed to spend more time with that first book in regards to finding out who liked the story and why, and then floating it through a number of different genre readerships to see where it resonated the strongest. Only then would the rapid release have paid the dividends—eight books published two weeks apart for a four-month engagement.