By Gross Blunders to Avoid When Launching Your First Book
The market has always been hungry for page turners and there is never a better time than now to tell your story. However, writers who articulately pen down their thoughts, ideas and stories need some commendation. It takes a lot of effort and resources to craft a book and later sell it to the public. Launching a book is never a walk in the park !!
For most writers, the writing, re-writing and proofreadingovershadows the integrated marketing strategy they ought to craft to sell their book effectively. It is a very crucial element that determines whether their book will sell or not. The energy you had in coming up with the perfect book title should equal the energy in planning your marketing strategy.
That includes influencer marketing, digital marketing, book website and speaking engagements among others. Avoid some of these errors many authors make when launching a book.
Not Asking for Help
Sometimes it is not easy to ask for help from people but other times will call for you to do so. It is evident you cannot accomplish everything by yourself. You will need social media shares, good reviews, enthusiastic fans to spread the word and so on. Of course, without other people and asking them for help, there is no way you can achieve this.
Ask your friends and family for help where you think they can help you. Launch a team of hardcore friends and close relatives who will help you out with reviews and even spreading word about your newly published book.
Ignoring SEO
As an author you should never ignore SEO in your writings. There is a sea of information on the online platform and only the perfect use of SEO will make people find you easily. Ignoring SEO is setting up your book to fail. Ensure you use keywords and hashtags to find your audience.
Use the right hashtags on your social media posts and the blog. Also include the right wording on the book’s blurb found at the back. Look at similar books that cover the same topic and discover the words used on the blurb. Check to see what they write on their product descriptions too. Explore on what keywords people are looking for and use them for your marketing strategy.
Avoid Rushing
Most of the times writers will overlook blanks, typos and grammar mistakes as they have the story mentally. So, they will fill out the blanks mentally since the story is in their head overlooking what they have written. You will find some authors going through their work just once and they feel it is ready for publish.
They will start looking for literary agents and if it does not go through they will immediately move to self-publish on Google Books, Amazon, Kobo or iBooks and end up getting frustrated. No one shows any interest in that book and technically no sales are made, just because you hasted. Do not make the process a hasty one. Everything good thing takes time and precision. A masterpiece is never hurried.
Prepare everything meticulously and lay a perfect foundation before letting it out to the public. People will first want to know who you are before they can read your ideas and stories.
Selling on one platform
Book authors need to understand that there are several mediums for book selling. As a first timer, Amazon is not the only channel you can use to sell your book. Relying on one online distributor hides you from the vast chunk of book readers.
Display your book in several outlets such as Apple Books, iBooks among others to reach out to as many readers as possible. Do not ignore the other platforms as you could find loyal readers. Amazon is a big player but millions of books are sold in other platforms as well.
Waiting Until the Launching is Done
That is one error you should never make when launching your first book. Typically, marketing should commence way before the book is launched like say six months. During this time, network with people, interact with them, let them know you and your future ambitions as you plan on how to promote the book.
These efforts should be considered earlier on as you want to bring up a fuzz and anticipation for the book before it is launched. Creating a small buzz of readers will ultimately lead to a bigger buzz eagerly waiting for the book to launch. If you are already launched, get a promotion date and tie the marketing strategy with the promotion date.
Not taking part in most of the process
Understand that the most successful authors are those who take charge of their work. Do not make the mistake of letting the publicist and the publishers work alone. This is your book so you have to be involved. Collaborate with everyone and make the necessary adjustments where you see something wrong. Working with the entire team ensures what they produce is exactly what you wanted.
First time authors usually have to make mistakes both minor and some really gross mistakes. You do not have to go through all the mistakes your peers made. You can evade them by following this guide and researching more on the right trajectory to follow when launching your first book
