Hi, Hola, Salutations, yadda yadda yadda:
I’ve got the launch of Story Studios presents the Changing of the Guard scheduled out. This is new and exciting for me, because I’ve never embarked on this level of promotion. When all this come to a close, I’m sure I’ll have some interesting observations about the launch process.
In time, the launch is broken into pre-launch last minute preparations that should take up the rest of November; then the soft launch, which should cover all of December; then the hard launch, which takes up all of January; then the post-launch followups. I have made myself crazy with all the books and articles I’ve read about book launching, and the sheer number of options is mind-blowing. After much study, and much advice from my writing mentors, I have come up with a few guidelines.
The first guideline is that I am going to spend as little on author-based services as I can. This decision was brought to bear after my poor decision to purchase Kindle Samurai, a type of search engine that helps you develop the phrases that readers will organically search for on Amazon when they are looking for new reading material. So, I invested in this application, because I have four different books I’m working on, and this program would have been very helpful.
There is no need to go into the details, but Kindle Samurai was non-functional, and it appears to be abandon-ware. Help tickets and numerous emails were answered, and then they ghosted out on me. I am contesting the purchase on Paypal, but whatever happens I’ve learned my lesson. I cannot throw money at the problem and make it disappear. That guideline worked well enough through the editing, proofreading, and formatting stages of the novel, so I should have done the same DIY thing here. Lesson learned.
My second and other guideline I have adopted is this: only do those promotional activities I feel comfortable with. If something wounds my little introvert heart, then it’s probably not right for me. Besides, with each book I launch, I can add more and get more sophisticated on my approach. This time, in my book launch virginity, I just want to get through it.
I’ve set up an account on Goodreads. Not sure what I’m going to do with it, but it comes highly recommended. There’s a lot I still don’t understand on there, like how to add friends or join groups. I just submitted to be a Goodreads Author, so we’ll see how that develops.
Well, that should be sufficient for today. Remember, if you are a ninja, don’t wear corduroy. 🙂