Category: Book News from Carol (CJ) Verburg

Why (and How) to Launch a Book

Posted on by LNH

Here at Boom-Books we’re excited to be preparing for the Spring 2017 launch of ANOTHER NUMBER FOR THE ROAD by C J Verburg. While the manuscript undergoes some final tweaks, we’re asking: How do we connect this unique story with readers who’ll love it?

Book 2 in C J Verburg’s Cory Goodwin Mystery series couldn’t be more different from Book 1, SILENT NIGHT VIOLENT NIGHT. With great ambivalence, Cordelia Goodwin Thorne has quit journalism in the hope of saving her marriage. But on a nostalgia trip from Boston to Paris, where her first overseas job ended with a wedding ring, a reunited 60s rock-protest band sweeps Cory into a deeper, deadlier search for lost time.

Like the Cory Goodwin mystery series, the publishing industry has changed radically these past few years. Even if we were sure what worked for the previous book, which centered on rivalries among New England scientists, would it work for this one? In our algorithm-dominated era, how do you define the target audience for a mystery that jumps from a posh Boston hotel to the Eiffel Tower, a Seine cruise, and a small-town Strawberry Festival? How do you classify a narrator who’s the daughter of a New York private detective, the wife of a cosmetics executive, a stringer for a popular-culture magazine, and the media consultant for an upscale international exchange program?

As a micropublisher, what’s Boom-Books’s best course to introduce this distinctive new mystery to a welcoming audience?

Exploring that question required our own recherche du temps perdu. We started with some good advice posted by blogger J B Simmons in A Successful Book Launch: Fuel To Reach The Stars back in October 2014. Simmons recommends four steps before launch and four more on the big day:

1. Send out advance copies and requests so you have reviews ready to go with the book.

2. Prepare the book’s (& author’s) Amazon page, and use the preorder page to make sure everything looks right.

3. Go on tour: offer ARCs, interviews, and guest posts to relevant bloggers.

4. Set up a Goodreads giveaway.

5. When you publish, buy your own first copy and check it carefully.

6. Announce the launch to your mailing list — your most important step.

7. Use social media to notify the world: only a couple times per platform, staggered over a few days.

8. Ignore the rankings. Start writing your next book.

More insights came from author and marketing expert Beth Bacon in a November 2014 DBW post entitled “Ignore the Expensive Launch.” As Bacon sees it, the bells-whistles-&-fireworks launch we all remember (& covet) from the heyday of traditional publishing is beside the point in the digital age. Now that shelf space is virtually unlimited, authors (and publishers) have time to build their audience rather than try to win it in a single shot.

Bacon describes the yo-yo experience of one author she worked with, whose launch was followed by “two months of sales that barely moved the meter.” The author tried a free promotion on Amazon, which moved books and also — briefly — made her #1 in her category. When sales fell again, she sought Bacon’s help, and they adopted a longer-term promotion strategy.

“Every month, she does a single email promotion, she regularly monitors her customer reviews and author profile and she enters awards contests whenever possible. This steady, consistent plan has grown her sales and keeps them high.

“. . . Low early sales do not indicate a lack of customer interest. All they indicate is a lack of awareness among readers. On the Internet, generating awareness takes time. And luckily, authors have the luxury of time on the Internet because they’re not competing for shelf space there. So . . . instead of worrying about your launch, create a strategy that includes regular, consistent price promotions, positive reviews by influential bloggers and a long list of customer reviews.”

In the 21st century, publishers have finally recognized that readers buy a book because of its author, not its publisher. That revelation has been a mixed blessing for authors. Yet even as publishers happily share their traditional marketing responsibilities, it’s crucial for everyone involved — in a book as in a band — to listen, advise, inspire, and work together.

Book Notes from All Over

Posted on by CJ Verburg

From Digital Book World: A summary of a Jan. 2017 agents’ panel at DBW’s recent New York conference confirms several points made by a Dec. 2016 indie authors’ panel at San Francisco’s Mechanics’ Institute Library:

  1. We don’t call them “literary” agents anymore. That went out with the 20th century. The 21st century is about business > literature.
  2. The role of agents has changed along with the publishing industry. Agencies are merging, reorganizing, seeking new strategies, and generally battling (like and with their authors) for discoverability, the sine qua non of success.
  3. While debate continues as to what (if any) value an agent can add to an author’s career, plenty of authors still desperately want one. “The issue for agents is finding the authors who have potential for big careers. One agent offered an interesting analogy. If you go out to sing karaoke, she said, you may hear a lot of beautiful voices. But it’s not enough to have a beautiful voice. Agents are looking for big, professional voices who can sing at the Met.”

From Boom-Books romance author Charisse Howard: The publishing python chokes another indie. From the now-defunct website of ARe in Safety Harbor, Florida:

It is with a great sadness that we announce the closing of All Romance eBooks, LLC. For the first year since opening in 2006, we will be posting a loss. Despite efforts to maintain and grow our market share, sales and profits have declined. The financial forecast for 2017 isn’t hopeful. We’ve accepted that there is not a viable path forward.

All Romance has always been a labor of love. Over the years we’ve developed wonderful relationships with the vendors we’ve worked with, the publishers whose content it’s been our pleasure to sell, the authors who supported us, and the customers who it’s been our honor to serve. On midnight, December 31 [2016] our sites will go dark.

From Boom-Books mystery, biography, & international literature author CJ Verburg: 

I’ve been trolled!

A Goodreads member who disagreed with me about one of the company’s policies searched my books that are listed on Goodreads, including two out-of-print textbooks, and gave each one the lowest possible rating (one star) as payback.

Although it’s also Goodreads policy that reviewers aren’t supposed to torpedo any book’s ranking and reputation over a perceived grievance — especially a book they haven’t read — the company takes no responsibility for enforcing this. My complaint to Goodreads drew the response that they had “reached out” to the troll, but it’s up to her if she wants to make any changes.

This is another reason to spend the 30 seconds it takes to rate and/or review books you love. An author’s viability depends heavily on what readers post on Amazon, Goodreads, et al. A book is much, much easier to kill than it is to write!