Months before your book launch, before you even secure your book launch team, you’ll need to start prepping your brand for the big day. Below is your guide to making sure all your ducks are in a row and that your brand reflects that.
Prepping Your Brand for Your Book Launch Starts With Your Online Presence
These days when we market books, we’re first and foremost selling the author and their brand. In other words, you’re the brand, your book is a product that you offer. Though a book is your glorified business card, it’s mostly part of, and reflective of, your existing brand. So prepping your brand before your book launch is super important.
If You Want to Be Seen Online You Need to Be Visible
To increase your online visibility you need to be active online and create content. You want to increase your online footprint as much as possible in the months before your book launch. Doing this will be a big part of finding those Tier 2 and 3 supporters I wrote about in my last post, and will also help begin to build your own influence. This means doing things such as:
Blogging and Building Your Subscriber List
A good goal to set for your content creation is to blog once a week. You can schedule them in advance, or sit down one day a week and write your post. Write blogs that reflect your brand mission and support topics in your area of expertise.
For example, let’s say you’ve written a memoir about growing up during WWII. Chances are good that in addition to your experiences, you’ve also done a lot of research on WWII. This makes you an expert. What about fiction you say? Well, I once worked with an author whose thriller novels all involved a fire fighter hero, and guess what? He did a ton of research on fighting fires in Southern California and became an expert on the topic. So, when fire season picked up, he was often invited onto local L.A. news outlets to talk about fires (remember, he was a fiction author who did a lot of research).
Think outside the box. What do you have in your arsenal that would interest your readers? Producing quality content that your audience wants to read will help you build your subscriber list. As will actively incentivizing your audience to sign up with tools like reader magnets.
Being Active on Social Media
When planning your book launch, engaging with your audience and influencers in the months before your big date will help you stay fresh in their minds, make connections and hold their interest. Those you spend time engaging with on social media are the people who become subscribers, and loyal fans. This is how you build your subscriber list, as mentioned above.
Other Ways to Increase Your Visibility When Prepping Your Brand
Besides creating your own content on your own platforms when prepping your brand for your book launch, you’ll want to try to get as many opportunities to increase your visibility on other platforms as well. This means seeking out opportunities that will expand your reach and boost your exposure like:
Guest Blogging
Getting the opportunity to reach a new audience through guest blogging can really increase your reach and influence. Ideally, the bloggers you’ll reach out to will be those who share a crossover audience with yours. These are the influencers you can offer to promote in return, and build a relationship with, they will become potential book launch team members.
Podcasts
While you’re busy making yourself more visible online and engaging with your peers and influencers in your sphere you may find that you discover some podcasts you would love to appear on. Or, you may just have to seek out podcasts and pitch them too. But being prepared in advance by having a media page on your website and things like your author or speaker one-sheet prepared and ready to go will make it that much easier. You can read more about one-sheets below.
Get Published
The more of your work there is out there for potential readers to find, the better. Submit short stories, opinion pieces, personal narrative essays, poetry, creative nonfiction, or even recipes to online and print publications. Not sure where to start? Subscribe to Authors Publish and invest in a current copy of Writers Market.
Enter Writing Competitions
Take part in local writing competitions at your public library or local writers associations. For all you memoir writers, here’s a good one: The International Memoir Writers Association supports memoirists and offers an annual writing competition where winners are celebrated and published into an annual anthology.
Join Local Writers Groups / Associations
In fact, if you’re not already a member of your local writers groups, I highly recommend that you join one today. Networking is key for authors. We love to share ideas with each other and support one another. Chances are good that you’ll meet the future members of your book launch team while you’re at it.
Make Sure Your Brand is Consistent, Polished and Professional Online
Before you go out there engaging and blogging and putting in all the work of making yourself more visible while prepping your brand for your book launch, you’ll want to make sure your brand is up to par. This means spending some time, and maybe some money, to polish your online brand. You’ll want to check in on all of the following.
Headshots
If it’s been awhile since your last headshot, or perhaps you don’t have a professional headshot, now is the time to get one! I recently wrote about the importance of professional headshots and how to get the best ones possible, so if you need any help in that area, you can read it here.
Update all the Versions of Your Professional Biography
Another item you’ll need to check in on and update is your online bio (and you should have several versions). Check in on your bio and see if it’s still as good as you originally thought. Is it consistent with your current brand? Does it reflect your future branding goals? Have you won any awards, accomplished anything new, are there new career highlights to focus on? If so, rework your bios and update them on all of your platforms, including your website. This will be a big part of prepping your brand for your book launch.
I highly recommend that you track all the places on the internet where your bio appears so you don’t leave any stones unturned when you make the updates.
Polish Your Author Website
All this increased visibility will mean more visitors to your website and more fans to grow your subscriber list. Your author website is the foundation of your author brand story—your home base, where you control the story and the outcome. So, now is the time to check in on your website and make sure it still fits your brand and conveys your current message and mission. You’ll also want to check in on your website’s functionality. Little things like broken links, outdated plugins, or spelling and grammatical errors can cause problems and make your website seem less professional.
Fine Tuning Your Social Platforms
As with your website, and besides updating your bios, you may want to think about which of your social platforms are serving you the best. When it comes to your available time and emotional budget, you may find that picking one or two platforms to focus on will be a better use of your precious energy. So, update those and stay active on them. You don’t literally have to be everywhere all at once.
Goodreads and Author Central
If you’re a new author, or soon to be published, you may not have a Goodreads or Author Central profile yet. I always recommend creating a reader profile on Goodreads and then claiming your author pages on both platforms once your book is published. It only takes a little time to optimize these online profiles with your updated headshot and bio, which makes it even easier for potential fans to find and engage with you.
Part of Prepping Your Brand Means Creating Marketing Materials
Prepping your brand for your book launch and all that comes with that big event means planning your marketing strategy. A big part of marketing strategy is to have all your marketing materials ready to go. Set yourself up for success by doing the following:
Create Your Author One-Sheet
Having an author one-sheet ready in advance of any upcoming interview opportunities will save you stress and hassle when the moment comes. An author one-sheet is a pretty essential marketing material to have on hand. You’ll be sending these out with your ARCs to reviewers but you also need to have a downloadable version available on your author website.
Develop Print Marketing Materials for Your Book
Print marketing materials such as pre-printed event posters with a blank space for the event address, date, and time are a great way to promote local events. Also consider other signage for the day of your event and things to spice up your author signing table like stickers, pens, bookmarks, or a free-standing roll-up 8-foot-poster with your latest book cover and tagline. These should contain details to find you online (like your website URL and social handles). If you’re a speaker, consider printing up a few thousand leave-behind postcards that encourage people to visit your website for a free gift—you can also ask for an endorsement with this method or simply encourage people to sign up for your mailing list.
Other things to consider are your business card. Like a postcard, they’re easy to hand out and leave behind. Creating QR codes to add to your print marketing materials allows you to easily promote giveaways, etc.
This may seem like a lot, but you don’t have to do it all at once. Prepping your brand in advance will ensure a successful book launch and serve you in all the continued marketing that will follow. This is where your marketing budget comes in.
