The Wild Ride of Launching my second novel, "The Double" (or How I Nearly Forgot Basic Hygiene)

Hey folks,

So, your favorite (I hope?) indie author here 😉 and it’s been two weeks since my second novel, “The Double” published on Amazon Kindle. With the paperback publishing top of next week (apologies for the delay; the proof copies took a week longer to get to me than they were supposed to; they arrive tomorrow!), I thought it might be a good time to review how the book launch went. This was only second book launch and while what I know now compared with my first book launch is significantly greater, I’m still a rookie at this. In televisions after every season of a show we have what’s called a post-mortem (grim, I know). The point is to review what happened in a season and learn from it. Makes sense to do the same for as important an event in an author’s career as their book launches.

One might think writing the actual book was the hard part, with all its ups and downs and self-doubt, and the uncertainty as to if anyone will even read it, and if they do, whether they will like it, well, all that is nothing compared to the book launch itself.

Many in the in the Author community refer to themselves, and one another, as Authorpreneurs.

The reason being everything is up to us. The good side of that is we are in responsible for every aspect of creating our books — from writing them, to marketing them, to selling them. The tricky part is this means that we are responsible for every aspect of our book.

One of the most pressure-filled weeks and days in the life of an author is the launch of your book. Some can’t stand it. It is their least favorite part.  For others, like Mark Dawson, Shayne Silvers, Ryan Schow and Kyla Stone, they live for that pressure and they find the launch of a book to be a thrilling experience.

That’s a lot of pressure

I find myself in the group that loves the process — even if I’m basically figuring it out as I go.

So, let me give you a front-row seat to the chaos that is a book launch. Spoiler alert: it's like being on a merry-go-round, blindfolded, while someone keeps changing the speed.

First, the beta readers. Oh, the beta readers! Bless their souls. They’re the first ones who get a sneak peek, and they’ll very politely point out that your plot has more holes than your favorite pair of socks. Which you’ve been wearing three days straight because who has time for laundry during launch week?

Blurbs. Oh man.  It’s the literary equivalent of trying to put your entire life story into a tweet. Can we acknowledge how difficult it is to summarize months of work into a few catchy sentences?

After the beat is in the blurbs, you read your book one more time to make sure you didn’t miss anything (you always do.) And then you submit it to Amazon for publishing. The deadline to submit Amazon is three days before your listed publication date.

With my first book, “The Strange Crimes of Beatrice Clover” I didn’t read carefully enough (how ironic), and I  realize that the time zone for the submission deadline was GMT mountain time and I missed the deadline. This means you lose the opportunity to do pre-orders for a year. Fortunately, Amazon understood that I was a novice dunce and gave me a break and allowed me to continue doing pre-orders which I did for my second book “The Double,” which as it turns out wasn’t published until a year later anyway. This time around my edited manuscript was in on time.  Still, hitting “publish” was a exhilarating moment. I think is true even if you’re an author who finds launch week stressful. What do you think?

Once the book launches its all about the promotion. Let’s talk promo sites. With this book I had a marketing plan devised with the help of my friend Ryan Schow. It involved using third-party promo sites like Bargain Booksie, Book Runes, and OHFB (one hundred free books). The basic parameters for using the sites are that your book needs to be new, and it needs to be on sale which in my case meant lowering my price from $4.99 to $0.99. I’ll admit that it is something of a nail-biting decision to drop the price of your work to less than a cup of coffee. Writing a book takes different people different amounts of time but it is rarely a fast process. But hey, if it gets more eyes on the novel, I’m in.  The idea is to bring new readers into a new series.

Then, those first reviews trickle in. And it’s a bit like back in huh school waiting to find out if your crush likes you, You hold your breath and click… and most of the time, it’s a sweet relief, perhaps even moment of joy if the reviewers sing your book’s praises. Other times, well, let’s just say being an author requires thick skin.

And of course last but not least, there is the marketing. Between AMS ads and Facebook ads, I swear, I've become more acquainted with algorithms and keywords than I have with my own family this week.

Speaking of which, remember when I mentioned basic hygiene? Yeah, showers become a luxury. When you’re in the thick of it, checking whether you uploaded the right manuscript version or because  you accidentally have a typo in one of your ads that needs to be fixed.… time slips away.

And then of course come the sales? At least that’s the idea. Here’s a free tip for any budding authors: DON’T, and I repeat, DON’T keep refreshing the sales page. It’s like watching water boil. Except the water is your sanity.

Yet, in the midst of all this madness, there’s a glimmer of magic. Because here’s the deal: You’ve birthed this creation – over weeks, months, heck, maybe years. And it’s no longer just yours. It's out there for the world. People are reading. Engaging. They’re living in the world you created, and that…is exhilarating.

I might not have the art of the perfect launch down yet. Might forget to feed the dog (or the kids 😉) and perhaps wear the same clothes a few days in a row, but I'm learning. I’m growing. And I couldn't do it without all of you.

Thanks for being with me on this exciting ride. Here’s to many more (and maybe, just maybe, mastering the next launch a tiny bit better).

Until next time, keep reading and living the adventures.