You published your book, now what?

I wish I could tell you that once you hit publish on Amazon and IngramSpark (if you self-publish) your audience would build itself and the offers to work with you would come rolling in.

But, alas, your book is not Kevin Costner’s Field of Dreams (1989). James Earl Jones isn’t calling your readers to you.

After you publish, you use your book to market both yourself and your book.

You likely wrote your book to establish your expertise and build your credibility. That starts with writing and publishing the book. It doesn’t end there.

Lay the foundation

Before publication day:

• Create a sales page for your book on your website. Do this well before publication day and use it to build your waitlist. Launch to that audience first.
• In the leadup to publication day, talk about your book – a lot. Talk about it everywhere – on your socials, in your newsletter, at networking events. If you don’t feel like a broken record, you’re not talking about it enough. Trust me, most of your audience won’t see/hear every mention of your book.

Have these things prepped and ready to go on publication day:

• Shift your sales page from one that collects email addresses for the waitlist to one that sells copies of the book.
• You know the social media profiles you mean to keep up-to-date, but haven’t updated in months (or longer)? Update those. Add ‘author of [insert your title]’ to all the bylines. Link to your book’s sales page.
• Update the about page on your website, mention your book near the top, and link to your book’s sales page.
• Update your email signature to include a link to your book’s sales page.
• Update your speaker sheet (if you have one) to mention and link to your book. Use sample chapters to get booked on a few podcasts (or other stages) during publication week. 
• Rewrite your elevator pitch to mention your book or at least the fact that you’re an author – at networking this gives people an easy follow up question: ‘Can you tell me more about your book?’

The big announcement

On publication day, go big:

• Have a party – if your audience is mostly digital, host it there. If you have the budget, you can even send your attendees gift bags including treats, cocktails, a signed copy of your book and more!
• Make a splash across all the social channels you’re active on – include photos of you with your book. If you’re comfortable on camera, go live to talk about your book (and make sure you hold it where it’s visible on screen).
• Announce publication day to your email list – sure, you’ll have mentioned it before, but not everyone will have read those posts. Besides, people will enjoy celebrating the day with you.

After publication day

Use your book in your marketing.

Doing that helps you stay on message and, if you self-published, it saves you time. There’s no need to write new copy for your LinkedIn posts every morning. Instead, reformat a paragraph or two from your book and use that text.

Why did I specify self-publishing? Because if you self-publish, you own all the rights to what you wrote in your book. That means you can reproduce that content and reuse it in any way you wish.

If you publish traditionally (through a publisher like Penguin), there will be restrictions on what you can reuse and how you can reuse it. If you use a hybrid publisher, you may be similarly restricted. In either case, read your contract and check with your agent and/or solicitor before you reuse content from your book.

For those who self-publish, how does reusing what you wrote in your book work? Follow these steps:

• Identify a paragraph (or a couple of small paragraphs) that can stand on its own.
• Copy that text into a new document.
• Break up the text – readers who will happily read chunky paragraphs in your book won’t be happy if you transfer them to your socials. Break up long paragraphs and sentences.
• Add a call to action (CTA) – if could be ‘read more about this in my book’ or it could be related to another product or service.
• Create an image that’s related to your CTA.

Here’s an example:

These paragraphs from chapter 7 of There’s a Book in Every Expert (that’s you!) can stand alone (meaning they don’t rely on what comes before or after to make sense to the reader):

If you’re going to run a business, take care of yourself (family, house, pets, health …), and have a life, you need a sustainable writing practice.

Unsurprisingly, step one in creating a sustainable writing practice is committing to writing little and often. When you plan your week, where possible block out an hour or two for concentrated work. On your busier days, block out a few minutes to check in with your project.

Here’s how I’d present the text on LinkedIn:

Don’t upend your business and life to write your book.

Create a sustainable writing practice.

How?

Commit to writing little and often.

Each week block out an hour or two for concentrated work.

On busy days block out a few minutes to check in with your book.

Let me help you fit writing your book into your schedule. Join me for ‘First Steps to Your First Book’ (£75): https://ewc.coach/first-steps-to-becoming-an-author/

What I changed and why:

The first paragraph became three short sentences. This required some rewriting, but it wasn’t difficult rewriting, and it makes the lines work better for the platform.

The main point of the first sentence of the second paragraph is ‘Commit to writing little and often’, so I just cut the rest of it.

I slightly shortened each of the last two sentences and separated them in the post.

I changed the word project (at the end of the last sentence) to book. I did that because the word project relates to the next paragraph in the book, which I’m not discussing in this social media post.

Finally, I added a CTA. This is a longer paragraph (two sentences!), but by that point, they’ve committed to reading the post.

Be generous with your book

If your budget allows, buy a box of author copies (these are cheaper than list price) and keep a couple of copies of your book with you when you attend in-person events (don't drag a box with you; one or two in your bag will do). Give these people you really connect with and feel you can help. It will be more effective than any business card.

But don’t give it to everyone. Doing that would be really expensive, and there’s no point in giving it to people who don’t want to read it.

If you self-published, consider giving away either a few sample chapters or the whole book in PDF form – these make more useful and more valuable lead magnets than any checklist. If you do this, make sure the PDF is set up so that people can’t rip the text out of it. You’re giving it to people to read, not to steal.

Continue talking about it everywhere

Not everyone knows you’re an author just because you’ve mentioned your book everywhere and you had a big launch party. So keep talking about it.

Keep mentioning your book in your elevator pitch.

Regularly invite people to buy/download it.

Consider having a relaunch for major publication anniversaries. There’s no limit on how many ‘book birthday’ parties you’re allowed to host.

If you write your book and then never mention it again, people will forget. Don’t let them.

The authors I work with get 12 months of support on audience and visibility building. The first six months are for finding their initial readers. The next six are for solidifying the habits that will keep their book in front of the people who need to read it.

If you want to have a chat about how I work with my clients, click this link: https://tidycal.com/jennifer5/work-together

Please note that on this call, you won’t be able to buy anything. It’s just space for you to ask questions.