Planning A Book Launch: Get a Behind-the-Scenes Glimpse at my Launch Week Plan

This week, my first book The Glimmer Princess 🧜‍♀️ releases on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sites like Scribd.

And just like any author newbie would, I felt unsure of how to release a book. I mean, I’ve never done it before. 🤷‍♀️ We aren’t born with this knowledge, I suppose.

And although I’ve launched products and courses in the past—through my other creative business—releasing a book is foreign to me and a little nerve-wracking.

But the best way for me to settle my nerves with anything is to…create a plan!

Whether you’ve created a launch plan before or not, I wanted to share what I’m doing and how this week. Consider this your behind-the-scenes guide to how I’m sharing my book with the world during release week.

First, I’ll share the steps I took to create this launch-week plan.

• 1️⃣ Step One – Brainstorm
• 2️⃣ Step Two – Create My To-Do List
• 3️⃣ Step Three- Execute the Plan

Easy enough. But let’s look at each step more in depth…

STEP ONE – BRAINSTORM IDEAS FOR LAUNCH WEEK

Before I searched the Internet for ideas, I took stock of what I have going for me already:

• ✨ A growing Instagram account,
• ✨ A small (but growing) YouTube channel,
• ✨ And a lovely group of family and friends who support me and my creative efforts.

While I don’t have the largest following on my social media channels, I have some followers. And that counts…for a lot!

Every follower is a potential reader. And even if they don’t read books in your genre, they might know someone who does.

My goal during launch week is to reach out to the people who already know, like, and trust me. This is the best place for me to start and will probably be the best place for you too.

After I thought about where I could share, I went to good ol’ Google to find some new ideas.

I found a few things that I hadn’t considered, like changing my headers on Facebook and Twitter to share my book with new audience members who visit those profiles. This is something that I forgot I could do, so if you look around on Google and Pinterest, I’m sure you’ll find great ideas to implement during launch week.

You’ll want to write the ideas that excite you—even if they seem scary or overwhelming. You might not use them during your first launch, but you can always refer to your ideas during later launches.

STEP TWO – PUT THOSE IDEAS INTO A TO-DO LIST THAT WORKS WELL WITH YOUR TIME AND ENERGY

Once I had that list of ideas, it was time to plug the best ones I wanted to try into my weekly calendar.

Typically, I have one to two main tasks for each workday. I leave buffer time or margin in my day for other life stuff that might come up. I also stack most of my tasks at the beginning of the week and leave the later part of the week open for me to catch up.

As with everything, I keep in mind my energy levels.

As an author who struggles with chronic illness, I have to be aware of the fact that I have good days and bad days.

STEP THREE – EXECUTE THE PLAN

During launch week, you’ll want to do the best you can with whatever you have on your list. If you can do things ahead of time, you’ll have a smoother launch week.

But if you’re anything like me, you might leave everything for the last minute. 😂

That’s why I have to say (from my past experience with launches of courses and other products) that things don’t always go to plan. And that’s okay.

Plans are there to guide you.

Unless you publish your plan to the Internet, like I’m doing with this post, no one else will know what you do during your launch. So there’s no need to stress if you don’t get to it all.

Of course, I haven’t executed my plan yet, but I plan to vlog the week. So stay tuned for that!

Now, I’m sure you want to see the actual plan, right?

As you can see, my launch isn’t overly complicated.

HERE’S A DAY BY DAY BREAKDOWN:

Monday – I’m taking photos and batching captions for Instagram. My plan is to get this done for the entire week, so all I have to do is share the posts to my Instagram Stories on the day of.

I post a lot of random Stories each and every day (minus the weekends), but I rarely schedule those out ahead of time. So planning my feed is all I need to do on Monday.

Tuesday – I’m going to submit my book to a blog tour (which probably won’t take place until June), then the rest of the day I’ll focus on creating graphics in Canva.

I always list out the individual tasks (as you can see in the photo above) so I can cross more stuff off my list. It just feels more fulfilling, right?

Wednesday – My plan is to swap out the headers on Facebook and Twitter, as well as optimize each page on my site for my book release. This means adding links wherever I might have forgotten.

What I aim to do is go through each page and look for opportunities to mention my book or add a link.

Thursday – When I scoured the Internet for ideas of what to do during my launch week, one big idea kept leaping out at me…to run a giveaway. I’ve run giveaways plenty in the past, and I usually host them on Instagram. I plan to do the same for this launch.

I already know what everything will entail, but I might need to take some other photos for the post. So I’ll take those and get ready for the giveaway on Thursday.

Friday – RELEASE DAY! I plan to share the giveaway and do lots of Stories about my book. Other than that, all I have planned is a celebratory date with my hubby.

There you have it.

I don’t have an extensive plan that includes ARCs or a street team, yet. And I’m not doing anything fancy or over the top. There are many things that you can add to your launch week if you have the time and capacity to do it all.

For my first launch, I wanted to keep it simple.

What about you? What do you do to prepare for your book launches? Are there any marketing strategies I didn’t mention here that you think are an absolute must? Let us know in the comment section!

Other helpful posts and resources:

• 📌 The Book Launch Planner & Stickers, by Mandi Lynn*
• 📌 Blog Post – Your Writing Routine: How Habits Impact Your Writing

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