Secret Collected Wisdom From Watching And Doing Dozens Of Book Launches

I see a lot of book launches. 

As an author of five books and founder of a publishing company that has launched six books in the past year from other authors (and will be launching at least ten more this year), I have become a student of book launches. 

Last month I launched the latest edition of my annual book on trends called Non-Obvious. Over the past year, I have also watched dozens of innovative book launches from other fellow business authors. This is a post to share a few lessons I've learned from all of these launches - along with an essential reading list of some of the best blog posts I've read over the past several years about launching a best-selling book. 

Lesson #1: Find Your Early Advocates

There are always going to be people who are most interested in a book, but a mistake I see authors often make is to wait until their book is launched in order to start sharing it. I have made that mistake myself in the past. Finding early readers who WANT to read your book is critical. In my case, I put out an ask to readers of my weekly email to find 100 people. I ended up with 263, and they were a great help in getting the book out there when it launched. 

Lesson #2: Create Short-Term Momentum

Every author I know would rather have a book sell consistently well than to have a big week and then have sales fizzle out. The problem is, the book industry and Amazon, in particular, are all set up to look at spikes in sales as indicators for popularity. Without some kind of spike, you may never make it on their radar (or into the right algorithms) to get the book featured. With the spike, you can generate this attention which ends up paying off in sales over the longer term. 

Lesson #3: Invest In Your Readers

Once I had my early reader list, I had to decide what I was going to do with them. The most costly thing I could do is send them each a packet by mail with books and other gifts. That's what I did. Every reader who asked to see the physical book got a pack with three editions of the book, a small gift and a personalized hand written note. Several commented back that this was above and beyond what they had expected, and helped to make them even more invested in supporting the book. 

Lesson #4: Experiment With Media

In addition to launching the book online, part of the strategy with the launch involved buying a regional full page ad in WIRED magazine and having an airport placement at all large Hudson booksellers across the US. I also have done more than a dozen podcasts for a range of topics, working to make the trend predictions applicable beyond the world of marketing people that I know. All of these were chances to bring the ideas of the book to a broader audience outside of who might already be searching for it. 

Lesson #5: Support Your Own Book (and Bookstores)

Yes, I buy copies of my own book. Some people frown upon that - and I understand why. But I'm not going out like Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and buying thousands of copies of my own book in an attempt to game the lists. Instead, I'm trying to help show some sell through of the books in retail outlets and supporting those stores that carry the book by getting copies from them that I would be giving as gifts anyway. It's not likely to make a huge impact in sales, but it does help me support the bookstores that are supporting me by carrying the book in the first place. 

Lesson #6: Focus On Print Quality and Packaging 

In a world where it is easy to get your book cheaply produced or printed on demand, you might assume readers don't really notice the difference. They do. I have gone to great lengths to find high-quality printers based in the US, and package books beautifully. The result is that people pick up my book (or another from Ideapress) and notice that the book feels like a "real book" and therefore has more credibility than a hastily published and printed pamphlet trying to pass for a book. 

In addition to my own lessons I've learned and compiled above, I have been collecting some of the most useful articles published over the past few years about launching a great book. My intent is to try and keep this list up to date so if there are any great articles I've missed, please share them in a comment and I'll add them!

A Reading List Of Articles On Book Launch Strategy:

• How to publish a bestseller 3.0 - James Altucher
• How to write a best-selling book this year – Definitive list and resource guide – Tim Ferriss
• How to sell lots of books and still miss the best seller lists - Deepak Chopra  (note – this also happened to me for Likeonomics!)
• How to write and launch a best-selling a book – The Making of Likeonomics - Rohit Bhargava
• Unmarketing podcast on the secrets of book publishing - Scott Stratten
• How to buy your way to the top of best-seller lists - Mitch Joel
• The right and wrong way to market a book - Ryan Holiday
• How to write a book – The Making Of Personality Not Included (including charts and positioning slides) – Rohit Bhargava
• The inside story of Kevin Small and gamifying the best seller lists - Wall Street Journal

Rohit Bhargava is the author of five books on marketing, trends and leadership. His latest book Non-Obvious is a Wall Street Journal best-seller. He is a global keynote speaker and the founder of three companies, including Ideapress Publishing - a publisher that selectively works with top tier business authors to develop, package, print and distribute brilliant business books.