How to Self-Publish an eBook: Pre-Launch Marketing

Gathering Momentum

Promotion and publicity in the weeks, months even years before actual publication is critical to the success of your ebook. A common criticism of traditional print publishers is that they take so long to put the book out (somewhere between 12 and 24 months). Some of this is to do with the structure of the industry and the demands of wholesalers such as Ingrams, B&T and Gardners, but, in fact, it also gives a focal point for the essential pre-launch marketing, the momentum for successful publication.

This blog is about self-publishing ebooks, but the the lessons are the same. As I’ve mentioned before, there are some basic assumptions that you’ve done or are doing the following:

• researched your market, studied the authors and publishers you admire
• joined as many social networks as you feel comfortable posting in regularly.
• included your Twitter, blog and/or Facebook links in all your contacts
• sent your ms to an editor and proof reader
• created, or briefed the best cover you can
• you intend to published through a widely-distributed route, such as Smashwords, BookBaby or Amazon Kindle.

There’s a big difference between writing and publishing (or successful self-publishing), and you can write it as an equation:

Publishing – Writing = Marketing

Or to put it more positively:

Writing + Marketing = Publishing

The pre-launch phase of self-publishing your book can take many, many months, but every second of this is worthwhile to achieve the momentum necessary to create a successful self-publication:

1. Use your market research to create key words and themes based on your book
2. Release a planned stream of content based on the key-words and themes. This should include blogposts, recommends of others blogs, interesting news items and websites on your themes.
3. Create a blog which is the focus of this stream of content. Make it snappy, consciously offering items of interest to others, not just promoting your own work.
4. Invent ways of adding video to your blog. You can open a YouTube account, upload files to your YouTube channel, then embed them in your blog. The video content could be as simple as you describing where you write and why, with shots of view from your window.
5. Make sure your blog includes links to other sites and blogs on your subject area, so that your potential reader begins to trust your blog as source of genuine interest.
6. Create a Facebook page for your book and ask people to Like it. Interact with them as you write the book, giving them insights into the characters and landscape, and the process of writing itself.
7. Consider guest posting. Google for blogs which cover your area of interest, comment frequently and productively, then offer yourself as a guest post. This is a good way of building a reviewer list, so that you can request their help. When you’re ready, consider sending them privileged access to a pre-publication offer. Be open with them and ask for a review, either on their blog or, preferably on Amazon.
8. Use your email contact list. If you have someone’s email address, this is much more powerful than any of the social network techniques, although needs to be used with great care. Over a period of months, send just three or four emails, without a hard sell, to keep people you know, in touch with what yu are doing. Again, when you’re ready, consider sending them priviledged access to a pre-publication offer.
9. Offer potential book covers for comment on your blog and use this as a genuine way of engaging with your audience. People will be more committed to your book if they feel they’ve been involved in some way or other.
10. Just before publication offer a limited time, limited edition offer, and give yourself a whole month to promote it.

These are just a few ideas for pre-launch Marketing. There are plenty of other good resources and case studies out there to help you with this, such as Victorine Writes, and Scott Rauber's marketing Your Own Ebook.

Coming Soon: Help with Facebook and How to Write a Review