How to Launch Your Book: Romance and Nonfiction

In October, I had two clients release their books to outstanding success—relatively speaking. Often, we as authors can have our expectations too high because we read about how well traditionally published authors do with their debut novels or, worse, we compare ourselves to experienced authors with a huge backlist.

Release time can be scary, especially if you don’t write to market. So let’s look at two very different books and see how their releases went.

Fiction

N.R. Emerald, a first-time author but prolific blogger, launched Zane Ambrose into the Top 150 of African American Christian Romance. Contemporary Christian Romance is a niche genre in and of itself. Zane Ambrose also had several other niche categories (such as age-gap romance and interracial romance) that served it well in terms of keywords and categories.

• The book ranked #25 on the day of its launch and stayed in the top 100 for 2 days (in the genre, not Kindle store as a whole)
• Zane Ambrose was enrolled in Kindle Unlimited (KU), and the initial sales rank was calculated from both page reads in KU and ebook purchases.
• KU page reads made up the majority of income
• Only one paperback sold

Nonfiction

You’ve probably noticed we have an election cycle approaching soon, which is why Antony Ghee released People over Politics in October. He also wrote his book in a non-partisan fashion, ensuring it appealed to as wide an audience as possible.

• The book ranked # 1 in Civics (Kindle store) the day after release, making Ghee an Amazon bestseller
• He did not enroll People over Politics in KU
• The book ranked #60 in Comparative Politics (Book store); this is a much more competitive category than Kindle Civics, making it a more brag-worthy achievement
• The majority of sales were paperback and hardback, with the lower-priced ebook coming in a distant third.

How did they do it?

Both Antony Ghee and N.R. Emerald were new authors and both had existing communities. Ghee works on Wall Street, has previously run for state-level office, and has the kinds of connections I could only dream of (over 500 on LinkedIn, all movers and shakers). N.R. Emerald has an active online community of authors and readers who are professing Christians and were interested in her debut novel. Both of these communities helped their launch.

HOWEVER, existing communities can generally only be relied upon to help you in your initial sales, not in the long term. And it’s important to understand the needs of your audience in terms of how you price and promote your book.

• Antony Ghee priced his Kindle at $7.99, much higher than most self-published ebooks. It did not hurt his sales.
• He offered a hardback, knowing his audience would be primarily interested in a “display-worthy” book.
• N.R. Emerald had built a mailing list of readers based on free reader magnets. It did not convert to ANY sales. She made up for it with her blogging community and church network.
• She priced her e-book at $2.99, which is average for self-published fiction ebooks

Both books ranked well in their debut, but both authors WILL need to get the word out, including with paid advertising. Both have evergreen potential. Ghee in particular was careful to have a tone of education rather than advocacy; thus his book will still be valid in the coming election cycles.

Paid advertising is particularly important for first-time authors because having only one book means that a release does not translate into renewed sales of your back list.

Not all mailing lists are equal

Of the two, Ghee had fewer surprises about his sales numbers (though he was delighted and surprised to hit bestseller status). Emerald had two revelations based on sales and on reader feedback.

The first, as mentioned above, is that using free reader magnets to build an email list will not convert into sales. Her mailing list is huge, exponentially bigger than mine. But from what she could see in her analytics, she didn’t get a single sale out of that massive list.

Additionally, Emerald (who is based in Barbados), said if she had to do it over again, she would have chosen to price it at 1.99 instead of 2.99 to encourage readers to take a chance on an unknown author.

Since Ghee is based in the US, and has a target readership of a generally higher income, he did keep a low price on his books. A low price point for mid-high and high net worth individuals can often result in lower sales, as they view the product as less valuable and less worthy of spending time on.

Generally speaking, book length does not dictate price. Audience and genre do.

And an existing community will help with your launch, but it won’t maintain your momentum. Be sure to run launch-day promotions and after the first month, start working on paid ads. You don’t have to be famous to have a successful indie book launch!

If you need help on your book launch, remember The Nonsense-Free Editor offers marketing services.