Sell Your Book While You’re Still Writing It

You’ve made it! You’ve finally written your book and you’re ready to launch! Planning a book release can be intimidating, whether you’re an established author or a first-timer.

The first thing you need to know is that it’s never too early to plan how you are going to launch your book. You might think writing the book is where all your effort goes, but that’s nothing compared to marketing it. 

Don’t worry though, the good news is that you can start selling and marketing your book while you’re still writing it. In today’s video, I am going to show you how you can get the word out about your book before it’s even published, so people are lining up to buy it when it eventually hits the stands!

So, this is the third video in a short series that’s focused on helping you write, publish and market your book into the world. So far we’ve covered how to figure out what your book topic should be, as well as how you can start the writing process itself. 

Now, even though we might still be writing the book itself, perhaps you’re in the editing stage already, for example, that doesn’t mean that you can’t start marketing and pretty much selling it already!

It’s never too early to start marketing your book

The fact is, you can start telling people about your book as soon as you have a basic outline of who it’s for and what it’s about. One tactic I suggest to all my coaching clients that are at this point in the process is to create a special ‘VIP Waitlist’ page on their website. This is where you can collect the name and email address of everyone that’s interested in getting their hands on the book when it becomes available. This is invaluable for your launch week, as you’ll have – with a bit of luck – at least a few hundred people that will jump onto Amazon, or run to their favourite bookstore to grab a copy of the book the moment it’s launched!

By talking about what you’re writing you’ll start to get the word out and get people interested. Give people regular updates on social media about the writing process. Be open and transparent about how you are getting on with your writing and what you’re struggling with. You can talk about WHERE you are writing too – show photos, or even shoot a quick video. People love that stuff!

The fact is that there’s probably people in your audience that are thinking of writing a book themselves and they’ll be interested in the process. The more discussion you can generate on your social media platforms, the more people will see something about your book.

Another idea is to give your community sneak peeks and early order incentives so you hit the ground running with your sales when the book is published. 

Start building relationships

The next thing you need to be doing is building relationships with journalists and leaders in your niche. As an entrepreneur and author, you want to be doing this anyway. But if you haven’t got these connections yet, now is the time to start building them. 

Attend virtual events and get talking to people online. Get to know people on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Be an active member of your favorite podcasters’ communities. Remember, though, to make every interaction about THEM and THEIR audience. This is about serving others, not promoting yourself or your book. You’re developing lasting relationships.

At this point in the pre-sale process I thoroughly suggest that you start reaching out to industry friends and peers, asking for endorsements for your book. You can send them a simple summary of the book, and perhaps a chapter or two – I’d strongly advise against sending them the entire manuscript, as the chances are they won’t have enough time to read it all, and they might get overwhelmed by it, and not endorse the book at all. 

In closing, the added bonus of all this pre-sale marketing activity is that not only will there be an eager audience waiting for your book, when it’s eventually released, but more importantly, all those early sales will mean you climb up the rankings on places like Amazon very, very quickly upon your book being launched, and that leads to more exposure on these online platforms – all leading to more organic sales and further ranking boosts!

To make it easier for you to write and market a bestselling book, I’ve put together a FREE guide that’ll help you navigate the in’s and out’s of successfully writing and marketing a book to bestseller status. 

A great way to build up excitement around your book is to create a ‘VIP Waitlist’ page on your website where you can collect emails of people who are interested in buying your book when it’s available. It’s invaluable for when you launch! #Youpreneur Click To Tweet

Wrap Up

If today’s video has helped you in some way, perhaps answered a few questions you’ve been having, or helped you develop a new idea or two, let me know what your biggest takeaway was. I’d love to hear from you, tweet me @chrisducker!