It is release day! You made it to the finish line! Your book is out in the world! Now what do you do on this day!
Wait! Crap! Welp—
Alright, I hope it’s not release day for you, because you have stuff and things you need to do and schedule before release, so like… let’s do those things, but you know, if this is release day for you, congrats! There’s lots for you to do.
So, pull up a chair, grab your coffee, take a deep breath, and get ready with your calendar and some post it notes. We’ve got a lot to do leading up to the release day, and a whole scrabble of insanity to tackle the day it’s live, but with a little bit of organization and pre-planning…
Who am I kidding? It’s chaos over here. But, organized chaos!
Let’s get ready for Release Day.
PRE-ORDER STUFF
Now, I am going to start this post with the assumption that you have done a pre-order phase, and that you have already read my posts other posts, including…
Pre-Orders Part 2 (Promoting Phase)
“Other Stuff”
IF YOU HAVEN’T – now would be a great time to go and do that, but, let’s have a quick rundown about why having a pre-order is great for release day and release day prep, BEYOND the ability to have people buy your book before it’s out.
Umm… it’s so you can knock out all of this crap! Like… there’s a lot to do. So, here’s a quick checklist of things that you can do BEFORE your book actually releases if you do a pre-order, or you need to do ASAP if you are going forward without a Pre-Order
- Add your book to Book Sites
- Goodreads
- Storygraph
- Bookbub
- Grab your universal link on books2read
- And your vanity link!!!
- Add your book to more categories, including in different countries
- Add A-Plus Content (the pretty stuff on the bottom of the amazon page
- ADD LINKS TO YOUR LINK HUBS
Now, I will go ahead and warn you that, since you cannot do a pre-order for paperbacks, you will have to go back in on the day of release and add your paperback to books2read, update your paperback categories, and submit a-plus content for your paperback, but at least the legwork is done!
But, knock this all out! This way, people can add your book to their tbr, they have a universal link to access your book via, and readers can start marking down that they’re reading it! Also, categories, because rankings! Get on this fast!
SET UP LIVES
This is another thing that you need to promote and talk about BEFORE release, but, you can still toss it together the day of… and that’s a live! I like going live on tiktok and instagram on release day, but it’s entirely up to you based on where your readers are! Have them scheduled, so people can set a notification. Tell your newsletter subscribers, and post on social media letting people know that you’ll be going live.
And, what should you do on live?
Well…
- Tell people all about your book!
- Read the blurb and show off the cover!
- Read Chapter 1!
- Give little teasers!
- If this isn’t your first book in the series, give a refresher of the previous books.
Honestly, the world is your oyster on this one, but the point of it is to remind people, day of, that you have a new book, get them to interact with you, and then give them the urge to go grab it immediately! And by setting it up a week or two in advance, they’ll have the heads up to come hang out with you, the author, live!
You can alsooooooooo get your friends to join! If you have a narrator already booked, get them to join! Get some fellow authors who also write in your genre! Get some booktokers who were on your ARC team! Throw a party!
Speaking of parties…
Yeah, yeah, I know. A lot of people don’t like facebook. Trust me, I am still very uncertain of myself on facebook. I never know where to post or when or how, but, facebook is seriously an untapped resource if you’ve never really tackled it before! There are so many readers and reader groups and author groups, so…
Throw a facebook party! You can host it in your reader group, or in a reader group (with permission), and invite other authors to come and join you. You talk about your books, give away free copies of your book, and in general drum up attention. The authors who join for your party will also tell their readers that you’ll be there, and in turn, you’ll share and swap readers, giving everyone a boost!
Take a look around at some of the reader groups. Search the worlds release party, and see what you find. There are great examples, and hopping in on them is always a good idea.
There’s also author takeovers, which can be done in a number of places, whether it be reader groups or another author’s group. This is where networking comes in! Make author friends! This way, you have a foot in the door to help you as you fumble your way through! I bet someone you know is already on facebook doing this stuff and can hold your hand!
And finally, with facebook, you can post in other author’s groups in general, and also some reader groups, depending, Again, this is why networking is important! Make author friends! Make reader friends! Because come release day, they’ll be happy to have you pop in and share about your new release with your pretty social media graphics!
What’s that? Social Media Graphics? Oh, right…
SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS
Another thing that you can easily do BEFORE release day, but if you haven’t… get on it!
And that is, make your posts for announcing your release!
Me personally? I like to have a variety. Some include tropes, some include facts, some are sizzling… the world is your oyster! Have multiple tiktok videos and instagram reels. Have a general instagram post that others can share to their stories. Have an instagram story ready to go. Have a post ready for tumblr and twitter and hive. Have multiple posts ready for pinterest. Have a few different layouts for different facebook groups.
HAVE THE POSTS READY AHEAD OF TIME!
And have your little blurb ready too! I love having it in my Google Keep notes, ready to copy and paste. Have your hashtags ready, your blurb, your facts, where it’s available, the universal link, all of it.
Have a list of what in all social media platforms you have, create the posts for each of these platforms, and schedule or draft them if at all possible. Make it as easy as possible on yourself as you can! You don’t want to be overwhelmed the day of, trying to figure out what to say! Have it planned out ahead of time, copy and paste, schedule it, post it, and relax.
Here’s two of my release day graphics, if you’re looking for ideas… Seriously, keep it simple.
Newsletter!
Go ahead and write up your release day newsletter as well! Schedule it! Include the blurb and the universal links! Thank everyone who subscribes to you! Maybe tease a special something headed their way in the near future as thanks for them being here!
And tell them about your lives! Tell them about your facebook parties! Tell them about where you’ll be!
Include links to the review sites, so they can have quick access! You want to pull people in who are already on board. This one is easy. Just write it and schedule it!
And with all of that said…
RELEASE DAY RUSH
Good morning, sunshine, and congratulations on your new book release.
Let’s take a deep breath. And another one. And another one.
Okay. You ready?
Step 1 – Post your announcement posts. Go one at a time, down the list. Post everything you have drafted, then post the ones you couldn’t draft. You should also have posts that were already scheduled to go up. You made the graphics ahead of time, so it’s a simple copy and paste and click to publish!
Step 2 – Say good bye to book reviewer sites… but first! Submit your content warnings to storygraph! They accept content warnings from the author to add to their sidebar. As for goodreads, go make a post as the author with a pretty graphic and the content warnings. It will appear in the reviews, but show that it’s posted by the author. Go do it! No one will be mad! AND THEN CLOSE THE SITES! YOU DO NOT GO BACK THERE, DO YOU HEAR ME?!
Step 3 – Be active on your announcement posts! Like and comment and reply and thank people! Seriously! Don’t just post then disappear!
Step 4 – Be Live. Go do your live thing.
Step 5 – Grab your audiobook title on ACX. Seriously. Go do it before someone else does. You… don’t want to know. Just, create an ACX account and claim your book title.
Step 6 – More deep breaths!
Paperback Notes:
If you are submitting a paperback… here’s what you need to do.
Step 1 – Submit your paperback. Or maybe submit it the night before. Idk. That’s up to you. World is your oyster or something. Amazon takes a strange amount of time to approve paperbacks, so, good luck. But, submit it.
Step 2 – Watch for the paperback approval, so that…
- update your goodreads editions with the ASIN for your paperback as well
- add the paperback to your universal link
- submit paperback categories
- submit a-plus content
Step 3 – ANNOUNCE WHEN THAT IS LIVE AS WELL!
AND NOW…
You’re done! You did it! You survived release day!
Now, is all of these steps going to hit all of the things you need to do today? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on what in all you are taking on, but for me, this is a pretty thorough list.
Get done what you need to get ahead of time to save you stress on release day, and on release day, breathe through it.
If you want to know whether or not it gets easier with time…
Yes, it actually does. Or at least, for me it does! Every time I release, it’s much easier. I know what to do. I know how to do things. It’s not stressful to send the emails or set up the posts or deal with Amazon’s hassles. I’m used to sharing things on various sites. I can in two clicks do multiple things. I already have templates done for posts. I have this stuff figured out!
And because of that, because the back end work is already easily taken care of, the actual day itself is ten times less stressful, because what I can control, I have easy control over.
Again, I promise, it gets easier!
Take another deep breath. You did it friend. You’re a published author.
NOW GO WRITE ANOTHER BOOK.