Book Marketing: 8 Things to Do Post-Launch to Skyrocket Your Book Sales

Book marketing is a process, not an event. You don’t line everything up for a single day, watch the fireworks, and call it a day after. If you want to sky-rocket your book sales on launch and well beyond, you need a plan and consistent efforts to keep your books moving. If you’ve hit post-launch and wonder what you can do to keep those book sales coming in, this article is absolutely for you.

Our Book Marketing Magic course could also be for you! Work with us for six weeks to identify great audiences for your book, craft pitches to get attention, and then get your book featured in front of other people’s audiences over and over.

You’ve worked really hard to write a #noboringbook, but you don’t get to relax just yet. A strong book launch is important, but you need to continue promoting your book for the entire year and beyond to achieve big results after launching your book.

I’ve put together eight ideas for you to consider to keep that launch day love going on past day one.

1. Throw a Virtual or Live Launch Party

Now that your book is out, why not throw a party? You can throw a virtual or live launch party, a reviewer celebration, a one-month anniversary of your book launch, or any party for the heck of it.

Now is the time to celebrate. After all your hard work, you deserve to celebrate your book, readers, reviewers, supporters, and book buyers.

Your local library is an excellent venue for a party. They love supporting local authors. Even better, they probably won’t charge you for their event space, and they almost always will buy a copy or two of your book for their shelves.

Design and print some posters to hang up with any other permitted decor you might like. You can even print flyers to post in stores, restaurants, or other places throughout your community.

Library Event Post Example for an Author Event

Use your email newsletter or social media to invite your friends, family, and community to join you there. See if your venue allows food or drinks so you can let your guests enjoy treats while you treat them to a reading, talk, or workshop.

Bring along some copies of your book, too, so attendees can buy their copy and have you sign it. These days, you may feel it’s better or safer to do the virtual route, but that doesn’t mean your party has to be any less spectacular.

Book Launchers author, Michael Dominguez, threw a huge virtual book launch party for his book, “Armchair Real Estate Millionaire.” Not only did he share more about the book, answer questions with live Q&A, and give attendees a free party favor as a thank you, he even had magicians in the Zoom Room perform magic tricks!

Ultimately, do what works for you and what you find fun and enjoyable; it’s your party, after all.

2. Run a Contest or a Giveaway

Readers love giveaways.

Whether you offer a contest or a giveaway through a site like Goodreads or simply through your social media, it’s an opportunity for you to get your book into the hands of interested readers and increase your book’s exposure.

If you’re going to the social media route, give entrance rules such as liking and sharing your posts to enter a chance to win your book. Entrance into the Goodreads giveaway will mark your book as something they want to read, which then notifies their followers of the book. Doing this helps raise awareness of your book by boosting its search metrics.

Once you pick a winner, prompt them to review your book. For those who didn’t win, remind them that they can buy a copy of their own or even offer them a sample chapter as a thank you for entering.

3. Contact Two People a Day for 30 Days

If you want to skyrocket your book sales, you need social proof that your book is awesome. Once someone finds your book they need to know the book is going to be worth their time. This strategy is focused on getting reviews to support your book marketing efforts! Contact two people a day for 30 days to get book reviews. The most important thing you can do for your book success on launch day and beyond is getting Amazon reviews.

The more reviews you get, the higher the views on your book. More views mean more potential for sales.

By the way, have you posted your review for “Self‑Publish & Succeed” yet? The greatest gift you can give an author, aka me, is a book review on Amazon. So, go ahead and post it, even if it’s short. And then shoot me an email to let me know that you did it. I always say thanks and make sure you’re invited to my parties.

The best method to get reviews is simple, just do what I did; Ask. Book reviews are the best sales tool. So don’t stop asking for them post-launch.

4. Participate in an Author Newsletter Swap

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it twice. I’ll keep on saying it: the single most influential book marketing tool is an email newsletter list. If you know a fellow author in your genre with a newsletter similar to yours, you can double the power of the magical email subscriber list.

In a swap, you pair up with another author and agree to include the link to each other’s book in your next newsletter. It’s also a good idea to include the book’s cover images along with blurbs and a mini author bio as well so that readers can learn more about you and the book.

I’ve done this with Dale Roberts of Self-Publishing with Dale. He promoted my book; I promoted his. Author swaps are a simple type of mutual marketing that can really pay off.

You’ll strengthen your author network while reaching more readers for free.

Now, I know you’ll want to dive more into this great book marketing strategy. I’ve made sure to set you up with this video right here that shows you everything you need to know about doing a successful author swap.

5. Land a Podcast Interview

Podcasts are one of the best ways to expose new audiences to you and your work. They spread awareness and let you show off where you’re an expert in your industry. Appearing on a podcast doesn’t typically sell a lot of book. It does allow you to build connections and grow your own platform though.

When you’re on those podcasts, focus on getting listeners to sign up for your lead magnet more than buy your book. Why? Because when listeners do that, you’ll get email subscribers that you can connect directly and build a relationship with.

And, of course, that relationship can lead to book sales, but it can also lead to new clients for your business, more opportunities for speaking engagements, or just great connections for the future.

Keep in mind, hosts often have a backlog of interviews saved and could be months away from getting you scheduled and posted. So if you want to be featured on podcasts post-launch, start pitching them pre-launch.

6. Publish an Article or Book Excerpt on Someone Else’s Platform

Kind of like a newsletter swap or a podcast interview, publishing a guest article is a potentially profitable approach for linking back to your own site and promoting your book to a broader audience.

Are there some big blogs or platforms within your industry that you visit? Next time you’re there, head to the bottom of the page and see if they have a link for guest bloggers or guest articles or submissions.

Some sites have a query process; others will ask for a proposal, while some might make it easy and allow you to send them an article or an excerpt right away.

Before you do, make sure you read the fine print because some sites set terms that they will be the copyright owner of any submitted content that they post.

They also sometimes want you to avoid duplicate content posted anywhere else. If you do include an excerpt from your book, you’ll want to discuss and research republishing rights first, so you’ll head into this crystal clear.

7. Post a Blog for Three Consecutive Weeks

If you already have a blog up and running on your website, now is a great time to get consistent with your content posting.

When your book launches and you start getting coverage and exposure, people who want to learn about you and your book will go searching to see what material you’ve got out there in the world and what you can offer.

Since we’re in post-launch, these searchers will probably be event organizers, podcast hosts, potential media interviews, and book buyers checking you out to see if they want to have a further relationship with you.

Now, if you’re not sure where to start with the content for your blog posts, guess what? You’ve got a whole book to choose from. There’s nothing wrong with recycling content from your book into blog posts and then recycling the blog post into social media content and more.

8. Run Amazon Ads

Amazon ads help promote your book through keyword-based targeting. When someone searches for a particular keyword related to your book, ideally, your Amazon ad will appear in the search results. This is called an impression, which means your book ad was placed in front of a potential buyer.

If someone clicks on your book, this is known as a click. If someone buys the book once they’ve clicked on it from the ad, that’s a sale.

Amazon ads run on a pay-per-click model, so you pay when someone clicks on your ad. Amazon has this set up as an auction approach. As you set up the keywords connected with your book, you also set up bid prices for how much you’re willing to pay for someone to click on your ad.

You can approve a maximum daily budget of how much you’re willing to spend on bids per day. You can go even as low as $5 a day.

Amazon ads can take days or even weeks, sometimes a month, to get into the groove of getting your book in front of the right audiences. Getting started a few months in post-launch can really be a profitable advantage for your book sales.

Book sales success takes more than eight things. So post your best ideas below, or even your worst because commenting makes us friends, and I like to spend time with my friends.

So if you’re looking for more ways to power into your post-launch, check out this video right here on how to create great sound bites for interviews and podcasts.