10 Quick Steps to Take Before Your Book is Available
- Decide on your cover about six months before launch. Make it spectacular.
- Get permissions for any artwork or photography you are going to use and promise to put them in the opening pages of the book.
- Make a list of places or groups who would be interested in hearing about this new book. Begin contacting them for speaking gigs.
- Plan creative launch parties. Have more than one in different cities and honing in on different groups.
- Write blog posts about the new book; its subject; its new cover; characters, real or fictional; why the topic interests you and anything else that excites readers about the book coming.
- Set up a website with the book’s title as the url. This will help with people finding you through Google and other ratings. Mine is www.themanbehindthemarathon.com.
- Add a page to your author website dedicated to your new book. Link to your book website from there and make sure you set it to open a new page so that your visitors will now have both your websites to flip between in the http line at the top of your webpage.
- Talk to everyone you can about what you are doing. Send out your newsletter to your list (I do mine through MailChimp) and share your excitement.
- Do video bits to put on your sites, on Facebook or other social media. I interviewed my subject, Dr. Ron Calhoun, and will be posting short clips with him.
- All of these things and more will tell the world what you’re doing. I had a call from someone on my list who wanted to help get the word out. We are doing a bus trip across Newfoundland, that fabulous province, and I’ll be talking every day about the four people in my book who went across Canada. I’ll also be talking about Dr. Ron Calhoun, The Man Behind the Marathon[s] bringing to life those 4 journeys. Remember Terry Fox?
If you’d like details of this 12-day bus tour across Newfoundland with fabulous stops, a professional tour guide to tell you all about what you’re seeing, and me to tie in the exciting journeys of Terry Fox, Steve Fonyo, Ken McColm, and John and Jesse Davidson, PLEASE email me. You could join us!
