This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
I was at my perfect book launch a few weeks ago, well almost perfect as it wasn’t for my book. It was exactly how I imagined a book launch should be. I was stood in a private members club, Prosecco in one hand, delicious canapé in the other and as I listened to the gushing speech by the publisher and for a minute I just pretended that it was my book launch.
Come on, I can’t be the only who has daydreamed of that moment? It’s like the writer’s equivalent of the shampoo bottle in the shower for actors collecting their fake Oscar. Although I’ve even done that myself (collecting the oscar for best adapted screenplay of course). But as I am launching my second eBook today I’ve been giving the perfect book launch a lot of thought.
I don’t really think I’m quite up to book launches at the Hospital Club just yet, so I’ll have to save my brilliant ‘thank you for coming’ speech. It isn’t quite as impressive having an actual launch event that people come to when you can’t give away physical copies of your book.
The main objective of a book launch is to make people buy your book. But with an eBook on Amazon the objective is to make sure that as many people buy the book as possible on that first day to propel you up into the Amazon rankings.
Since publishing my first book on Amazon earlier this year I’ve been watching different authors and their tactics when launching new books.I’ve seen everything from big prize giveaways, blog tours, prolific tweeting, price dropping previous books and simply putting it up and hoping for the best. The annoying thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason whether these tactics work or not. Amazon seems to be a bit of its own beast.
Which brings me no closer for the quest of the perfect book launch.
I thought it might be easier to launch a book second time around, but actually I’ve found it worse. I’m a lot more confident about my book – it has been professionally line and copy edited – but I’m still just as scared that people will hate the book. Or worse not want to buy a copy.
The quest for the perfect book launch has also not been helped with the real life getting in the way. The impending move to Switzerland and our house now being on the market means I’ve had little time to do all the news releases or to organise a blog tour.
Therefore the grand launch of my second novel, Universally Challenged, will consist of a nice bottle of Champagne with my husband to celebrate the finished product and a lot of tweeting from me (I’m sorry for all of my twitter followers – I promise normal tweeting will resume tomorrow).
Maybe I’ll get the launch right for my next book – third time lucky.
Does anyone know what the perfect launch would be? And am the only one to plan my fantasy fancy book launches? Tell us how your perfect launh would go!