The Indie Writer Book Launch Guide

In the fall of 2018, I received the final version of my novel To Squeeze a Prairie Dog from my proofreader. The novel had gone through countless revisions, then spent long stints with two editors, so receiving the final version was very gratifying. After a few weeks of creating various eBook files, the paperback PDF, and the hardcover PDF, I was ready to release my lovingly crafted novel to the world. But wait, excited indie writer! I said to myself. You need to launch this new novel correctly. I saw my reflection in the computer monitor and remembered all the mistakes I made when launching my previous two books. It was a painful memory filled with regrets and poor decisions. I wanted to give this new novel — one that I had painstakingly written, revised, edited, proofed, and created — the proper send off. I wanted to release this book the way the big publishers release theirs.

How do you do that? you may be asking. That’s easy, my indie writer friend: careful planning.

In an effort to share what I have learned about properly launching an indie book with my fellow indie writers, here are all the things I did to properly launch my new novel. This is a long, comprehensive guide. It’s not for the cavalier writers, the ones who are too impatient to even read this guide in its entirety. Prepping a proper book launch is in many ways more difficult than actually writing the book you will be launching. But I promise you, there is some excellent information here. When possible, I will link to or at least refer to the sources of this information. I didn’t learn these things in a vacuum; I used Google, of course, to find this information. Each of these sections of information are out there on the internet for you to find, but I will collate the information in a concise, chronological guide the best I can.

Warning: some of this advice involves spending your own money and just like starting a small business, you will need to wisely dip into your bank account. This guide is not a pie-in-the-sky fantasy for a delusional writer who believes they can simply publish their book then land on a bestseller list; it’s a practical guide. I had to spend some money to launch my new book, but I tried to be smart and frugal about which services to pay for (then I eventually did land on a bestseller list). I will try to explain when and where it was worth spending money for me.

One more thing: I mostly write and publish humorous, literary fiction. You may publish romance or thrillers. There may be some promotional avenues I didn’t pursue because of the type of books I publish. I will acknowledge and elaborate on this when possible.

Ready? Let’s do this.

Read the full article on Medium.com

This blog post originally appeared on Medium.com, April 15, 2019. Written by Scott Semegran.