Creating Your Launch Team: Tactics to Help You and Other Writers

Marketing your book can be as difficult as writing it, but equally as important. If you don’t write the book you won’t have readers, and if people don’t know about it, you won’t have readers. A book launch team is a great way to help get your book off the ground and also give back to the other writers helping you. Incorporating a few easy tactics can help your book succeed, while taking your launch team to a whole new level.

Invest in Social Media Ads

Create a short application process, target ads to those you want to help promote your book, and wait for the applications to come in. Side note, make joining your launch team free. You’re asking people to promote you, so it’s probably best not to ask them to pay to do so.

Offer Tiers of Investment

Tiers will help your members know what they’re signing up for as well as what they’ll get in return. For instance, if members join tier level one let’s say they commit to do seven activities to launch your book, and you give them the standard level of free content such as going live within the Facebook launch group, or sending them a free PDF of free book study questions.

Level two requires a bit more investment from members, but with their added investment, you provide additional free content: PDF’s that will help them on their own book, a workshop maybe you usually sell but provide for free, etc.

Tier three members get an all-access pass. Along with the benefits of tier one and two, tier three members could also benefit from special live Q&A sessions with you, exclusive content about your book, free gifts like t-shirts or bookmarks, and anything else you think would benefit them. But, to have this exclusive membership they also invest in you and your book with pre-orders, reviews, and social media promos. The more they help you, the more they get out of it.

Once your book is launched you can still use your launch group to give back to the writers within it:

• Change the group description and create a writing community for these writers to connect, network, and perhaps promote their own books. (You can make it private or public, depending on the goals you have for the group. If you do decide to keep the group going, don’t forget to have someone monitor the page.)
• Host monthly interviews with other writers through a giveaway that involves members following each other and posting about your book on their social media (you can track posts by asking them to use a specific hashtag).
• Run a poll asking members what would be most helpful to them, and go from there.

Launch teams can help with presales and influence the success of your book. But they’re also a great way to invest in those who invest in you—have fun with it!

Sarah Rexford is a Marketing Content Creator and writer. She helps authors build their platform through branding and copywriting. With a BA in Strategic Communications, Sarah equips writers to learn how to communicate their message through personal branding. She writes fiction and nonfiction and offers writers behind-the-scenes tips on the publishing industry through her blog itssarahrexford.com. She is represented by the C.Y.L.E Young Agency.

Instagram: @sarahjrexford
Twitter: @sarahjrexford
Web: itssarahrexford.com