Borrow my non-fiction book launch blueprint

Want some DIY self-promotion hand-holding to help launch your next book? Here is my checklist.

iPhone on selfie-mode book promotion shot of author Lucy Werner

Hiya 🌊! I’m Lucy from Hype Yourself. I chat about self-promotion and creative living to earn income from your expertise or passion. If you are new to this page, pop your email below to ensure you receive my posts. Articles are sent out every Sunday, including prompts and personal essays. Today’s article is a seasonal bonus 🎁, as several of my paid subscribers requested the topic.

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I’ve had two “successful” non-fiction books, Hype Yourself & Brand Yourself, supported the launch of countless other authors and a back catalogue of twenty years in PR and creative agencies.

I love non-fiction writers.

This is not a ‘How to become an overnight Sunday Times Business Bestseller post’ - although I do have a ‘How I failed to do that’ if you are interested.

Here are some of the things I think about when launching a book.

Note: Some of my opinions go against typical publisher & agent advice but have worked for me and my clients.

With any advice, one-size-fits-no-one.

Take the bits that work for you and put your signature on it.

Pre-orders

• Grab the attention of retailers. Bookstores and retailers will receive information about your book from your publisher. What can help them decide to order your book or feature you? Large pre-orders. Tell people and again, again and again why the pre-orders are important. Lots of your readers won’t know.

• Local bookstores: Reach out to them. Can you do an event and offer to sign some copies?

• Incentivise individuals to pre-order: Can they win a 1-hour session with you? A goody bag? A feature on your Substack?

• Incentivise corporates: Will you offer a free talk, workshop or consultation to a company that places a certain number of orders? Can you be part of a larger company reward scheme?

• Sell-in person in advance? I spoke at Courier Live before I had physical copies. I made mock-ups from cardboard, took pre-orders and payments using an iZettle, and sent out advanced preview copies once received.

Selling book mock-ups 2-months before launch

Advance-copies

• Book endorsements: Publishers push for you to have big names endorsing your books. We tend to see the same author cliques supporting each other’s writing. Against popular opinion, I think it is more interesting to have the exact target reader endorse your book rather than showing off the most well-known name you can find in your six steps of Kevin Bacon.

• Careful who you let endorse you: Do you know them? Do their values align? Don’t get stuck with someone who turns out to be a phoney on your book cover later.

• Media copies: Your publisher should handle advance copies to national media, TV & radio. Ensure you see a list of publications and the exact person. Connect with those people on your social media and engage with them to help you be in the front of your mind.

• Micro-influencers: The social media posts that sell your books are talking stories. Big influencers might share one post or restack a story, which will likely do feck all compared to a bunch of micro-influencers who are genuinely engaged with your writing and so grateful to have a copy of your book and share it.

• Merch: I created a small gift pack with postcards and stickers and included a handwritten note for my early endorsers and micro-influencers. I’ve seen personalised notebooks, mugs and stationery. Want a brilliant idea? Try personalised pencils from Pencil Me In.

  

  Merch Hadrien Chatelet & I created to go with Brand Yourself preview copies.

Audience engagement

• Announce the deal. Tell your audience you have the book deal. Share with them your writing process. The highs and the lows. How did you get the deal? How long did it take? What writing lessons did you learn on the way? Where did you struggle? It doesn’t have to be showing off. Send that elevator back down for others to learn.

  Example: I won my book deal after doing this 10-day book proposal challenge

• Ask the audience. I recommend testing out learning content on social media, workshops and talks in the process of book writing.

  • What are the questions that repeatedly come up?

  • What are the myths you want to dispel?

  • What are the things you wish your audience asked but they are not?
    
    Make a note of these key points as you write the book.

  • Example: I recycled these top points as my 52 PR Tips cards, which I’ve now recycled again to be my fortnightly(ish) prompts on Substack

    📣 #001: PILOT Prompt challenge - Regional Media 🗺

• Book cover - Share cover designs. People love to share an opinion, which brings them on a journey.

Marathon

• Contrary to popular belief, the success of your book is not based just on the first six months. There is heaps of pressure from everyone to go big and hard in the run-up to your book launch.

  Why do we push heavily for the first three months for the marketing department to call that box ticked and move on to the next one?

  I find this way of promotion incredibly archaic and stress-inducing.

  Pace yourself and go long. I still sell books today, years later, because I’m not burnt out from heavy launches.

• Get a 12-month calendar - Mark out your holidays and breaks first that are non-negotiable. Then, and only then, start planning your book publicity moments.

  Do not just cram it out for the first fortnight.

  For many of us who have real-life jobs next to writing, ensure you have space for your client work, too.

• Plot your key moments - Book anniversaries, national news hooks, cultural moments, and work dates where you can sell copies.

Launch events

• Physical & online. Yup, that isn’t a typo. I said eventS. People will want to come and support you. Think of it as your Renaissance tour followed by a cinema screening. What can you offer them online if people can’t make the real thing?

• Regional Tour. You don’t need to launch in one place. Are you doing a talk or visiting a client in another country or city? How can you bolt on something to do with your book here? Can you create a regional tour map/list/guide to have another reason to remind your audience about the book?

• Do it your way. Listen, if a bowl of nuts and some questionable red wine in your local bookshop is how you want to go, you knock yourself out. BUT, maybe there is a way that you can do it that is more in keeping with you and your personality. Here are 4 Creative Ways to Launch Your book ideas. I have written about creative ways to launch historically

• Social media tours: Your book could tour Instagram, TikTok, or Substack. What is your platform of choice? Tour it.

• Papworth moments: Get a photographer and consider what you can create as shareable moments from the launch. I had a selfie booth with props made from an iPad and a ring light. I also had a drag Queen perform, singing about the joys of freelance life.

  

  Hype Yourself book launch performance by VirginX.

Media Kit

• Biography - have one 150-word max. Bonus points for being able to download from your website

• Headshots. Get a selection of both portrait and landscape. Don’t reuse the same one. I used selfie mode on my iPhone and skill-swapped with a photographer to get my imagery.

• Book imagery. Have a range of book imagery from cut-outs for product placement pages to landscape shots.

• Headlines: What key articles or talking points from your book could make a good podcast interview or newspaper feature? I bucket these into three thought topics: Business Expertise, Human Interest and Passion Points

• Press Release: Never rely on this to pitch your story. Write a tailored and bespoke pitch to every person you pitch to. The press release is for background information only.

• Illustrations / Design / Resources: Can you commission a designer/illustrator to help you create assets in your book that you can use for launch? If you have prompts in your book, get designed into a worksheet for your website to continue the reader journey.

Sharability

• Do things differently. For me, that was to make it fun, creative image mock-ups from impersonating the Royal Family to screening onto the Houses of Parliament.

  lucywernerpr

  

  A post shared by @lucywernerpr

• Remember the basics: Ensure you have all the essential book information on your social media posts.

  Here are some Adobe Express templates you can remix with your branding and book cover to get you started.

• Remind people till you feel awkward, and keep reminding them. People are busy and will forget to share the copy they received or your launch post. Ask, ask and ask again.

• Reviews. Remind your audience to leave one, and send them personalised DMs or voicemails. Incentivise your email list with a competition. Put a date in your calendar to ask at least monthly for reviews and to share the best ones.

Get creative

• Hide it in relevant places. If I visit an area that I think other creative solopreneurs frequent, I bring extra copies. I’ve stashed a copy in hotel lobbies, bedrooms, coffee shops and co-working spaces. Talking about doing this even led to me being featured on the Alice Benham podcast.

  lucywernerpr

  

  A post shared by @lucywernerpr

• Always have a copy on you. Sitting next to one of the biggest creative influencers in LA, Chris Do, led to me gifting a copy of my book and being on his podcast. I now teach for his US creative accelerator.

• Put yourself where you don’t belong. The most significant press article on my business featuring both books was an 800-word interview in the Property Section of The Times four years after launch.

You are always launching.

Stop putting pressure on yourself to have a ‘break the internet’ launch moment. We won’t all get a private breakfast with every literary editor from the national press or an automatic seat on the couch of a TV show.

PR is more than getting into newspapers and magazines, known as publicity or media relations. It is everything you do to build your relationship with the public. I will go on a limb and say that you most likely need sales.

Alternative and often better ways to do this are speaking gigs, lives on social media, video, and podcasts, which are brilliant ways to connect with future readers.

Reading this long post might be daunting, but you have probably written at least 40,000 words to reach this point. You can do this! And I’m here to handhold you the whole way.

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Questions are usually reserved for paid subscribers, but I shall open them for all on this post as a seasonal treat.

P.S. Already launched your book and struggling with how to maintain momentum? I’ve got some ideas coming on that in 2024.