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Today I take you inside the book launch plans of author Leigh Stein. She and I worked together last year in preparation for the launch of her new book, Self Care: A Novel, which will be released in June.

I want to take you step-by-step into the process she went through to identify her ideal readers and develop her marketing plan. But first let’s start with the results of this work so far:

1. This is her fourth book, and she said has never had a publisher so engaged with promoting her book, so early in the book launch process. Part of this is because she pitched them the marketing ideas she and I developed 7 months ahead of launch in a 16 page document.
2. She has total clarity on her ideal readers and how she wants to reach them.
3. She knows exactly what marketing strategies she will be pursuing and how to get them done.

You can listen to Leigh and I discuss this via my most recent podcast episode, linked to at the end of this post. Okay, let’s dig into some key takeaways:

Develop Your Marketing Plan Early. Much Earlier Than You Think

Leigh and I began working together nearly a year ahead of launch. Why? Because it took us three months to do the research necessary to put together a solid marketing plan. If you wait until you are in the launch window of the book (a few months before publication), it is already too late to develop some of the most compelling and fulfilling ideas. Marketing is not just about a clever idea, it often hinges on developing the right relationships. This takes time. Leigh has had months and months to approach people about her ideas. This kind of relationship building and collaboration requires communication and trust, and you can’t rush that.

This is why a lot of marketing fails: someone puts together a plan at the moment they need it, then pitch it to people that they barely know. The result is often our biggest nightmare as writers:

• A panicked sense that things need to happen right now or your book won’t reach readers.
• Learning too late that you don’t have the right plan or relationships to really get people on board with marketing your book.

Word-of-mouth marketing takes time. Give it the attention that it deserves by being prepared ahead of time.

Spend the Time to Identify Your Ideal Readers

Leigh was very clear at the start of our work that she wanted to reach a different audience than the one she had developed over the years with her previous books. She has an incredible network of writers in her life, but for our work, she wanted to be sure to reach a certain type of reader.

We developed personas to represent her two core audiences, and gave them names and personalities. What is a persona? It is a shorthand way of describing an audience you hope to reach. You make it about engaging one person. This becomes a decision-making tool to help us identify the best marketing strategies to use. Instead of having a marketing idea and asking “Would my audience like this” and coming up with the answer of “Um, maybe. Some of them would, I guess.” We instead ask: “Would Lauren like this? Would Lauren LOVE this?”

This allowed us to pursue marketing ideas that felt as though they would truly connect with her ideal readers, and have word-of-mouth marketing potential built in.

Don’t Confuse Platform With Marketing

I see a lot of book proposals where the marketing section consists of vague ideas around “sharing on social media” or “starting an email newsletter.” While I love both of those things and work with writers to develop them nearly every single day, it is important to note the difference between an author platform and a marketing strategy.

An author platform is your ability to communicate and develop trusting relationships with potential readers. It may include a newsletter, social media, blog, podcast or so much else. While your platform can include marketing, the platform itself should not be confused with marketing.

For the work Leigh and I did, we did do a careful analysis of her platform, but we also focused on developing a few core marketing strategies specifically for her book launch. These ideas focused not only on what we felt would reach her ideal readers, but how they would create meaningful experiences that Leigh would love to be a part of.

This is critical. Marketing can — and should — be fun. It should feel meaningful.

As part of the document she presented to her publisher included the following marketing strategies: a limited edition zine that would be mailed to a few hundred people; a series of events that would include a range of speakers and topics; a podcast strategy, plus social media strategy, publicity work, and a month-to-month timeline to get it all done.

We talk about each of them in greater detail in the podcast linked below.

Seek Out Collaborators

Leigh and I first worked together when she took my Creative Shift Mastermind back in 2018. We kept in touch, and even though she has loads of experience in publishing, she knew that to truly invest in her book meant to bring on board collaborators.

It’s funny, I would say that she hired me because she has experience publishing. This is her 4th book, and she has many friends who are published authors. She knows that not all publishers can offer the kinds of hands-on help that many an author wants, and that they can’t begin strategizing very early in the book launch process. (Of course, all of this applies to self-published authors as well.)

So, even though Leigh had a marketing team, publicist, editor, and agent on her team already, she brought me on as a collaborator. For the marketing plans we developed, they are all about connecting with real people. They establish and grow professional relationships with the kinds of people who she is truly inspired by. These are her people.

Every element of the marketing is infused with outreach, with connecting, with collaborating, partnering, and what I call human-centered marketing.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking ‘play’ below, or in the following places:

• iTunes
• Google Play
• Spotify
• Stitcher

You can find Leigh in the following places on her website leighstein.com, her book Self Care: A Novel on Amazon, her Instagram @leighstein, and on Twitter @rhymeswithbee.

Thanks!
-Dan

This week I was thinking about a quote from author Leigh Stein: “Launching a book is like an iceberg: the public sees the crown of ice at the surface of the water, but they don’t see the mass below the surface that grows over many months.”

An illustrator on my team, Klare Petit Frère, created this based on the quote:

I mean, that says it all, right? The tactics written on the iceberg are just a small sampling of potential actions that may be a part of a book launch. As writers, we may hope that writing and releasing the book is “enough.” Enough for what? To reach readers. To be purchased. Read. Discussed. Shared. To have an impact on someone’s life.

For many of us, that doesn’t just magically happen. There is so much work that happens below the surface.

I spend each day in the trenches with writers developing marketing strategies and helping to execute them. This is the practical stuff to identify one’s ideal reader, develop an author platform, launch books, and so much else.

Today I want to talk about the ingredients that makes one strategy work, while another flops.

The solution is this free app that you can download… oh, okay, no it’s not. There is no magic app that will make any of this easier. Sorry.

If you are a writer who wants to create and share your work in a manner that feels authentic and fulfilling read on…

Step #1: Create! Like It Matters. Like It’s a Priority.

I spoke to a writer this week who said something to me that I loved: “I write every day, relentlessly.”

I often hear about how writers struggle to find the time to write. Days, weeks, even months go by where very few words get down on the page. It just kills me a little bit inside when I hear that a writer doesn’t write. Don’t get me wrong, I know that people are busy, and their lives are filled with important responsibilities.

But I feel that writing is the best marketing. To not treat it like a third-rate hobby, your ninth identity, and the thing you can do only when everything else falls into place in life.

When you develop a writing habit, you are immersed in a process that makes it easier to communicate what you write and why. This gives you something to share on social media with other writers and readers. It is a reason to talk about writing: the process, inspiration, and themes.

If you don’t feel you have a solid writing habit, here are some quick tips to establish one:

• Set a ridiculously small goal to begin, such as writing for 1 minute a day. Or once sentence. Once you get the habit established you can grow from there.
• You have to do this every single day, no breaks.
• Find excuses to write that challenge your assumptions. Stuck on a scene? Waiting for edits on a chapter? Write something else. Something weird, silly, different — anything as long as you write.
• Befriend writers. Surround yourself with those who make writing a priority. That could be local to you, but could also be online.
• Stay accountable: post an update to social media sharing that you wrote.

Here is a post where I discuss what I learned writing every single day for a year. The process doesn’t look exciting, but it’s how the work of writing and sharing gets done. This is a series of images from back when I took a photo of myself each day writing:

Step #2: Stop Collecting To-Do’s, Gurus, and Systems. Pick One and Commit To It.

Many writers I speak to are overwhelmed by all of the advice of marketing tasks they are told they “have” to do. In order to try to figure it out, they end up collecting advice. They take course after course, listen to podcast after podcast, and keep discovering the next guru who seems to magically solve their problems… until they discover a new person a few weeks later.

This can be fun, a process of tasting and testing loads of different ideas. The problem is that they always half-bake them.

It’s like buying self-help book after self-help book, and never fully reading them, and never taking an action on the advice within them. It fills you with ideas, it immerses you in an ecosystem that feels like you are embracing change…. but without the actual actions it takes for change to happen.

This is the difficult part of transformation — of learning who your ideal readers are, where they show up, how to engage them, and then develop practices around sharing your work like it matters. Maybe you have seen this illustration somewhere:

That squiggly part is where you don’t jump from random idea that feels comfortable to random idea that feels comfortable. It’s where you stick with a system, mentor, or idea long enough to move past the messy middle.

(If anyone knows the name of the illustrator who created this, let me know. I want to give them credit, but I couldn’t find it.)

I want to give a small example of this from the past week. In one of my programs, I encourage writers to directly reach out to connect with those who inspire them. A writer shared this feedback:

“Here’s a great BIG testament to Dan and how, thanks to him, I used social media to keep it small and have a meaningful fun connection! I wanted to get in touch with an actor in [a popular muscial] so I Tweeted him. My Tweet led to his quick response which led to a question and an answer and we went back and forth until I literally had a Twitter interview. By the end, I had accidentally acquired an entire mid-section for my blog post. The whole experience was fun and it didn’t matter that no one “liked” our Tweets or that no one else was following.”

She took the action that so many skip, taking the social risk to directly reach out to someone that you can’t imagine actually reciprocating with you.

Real progress with finding and engaging your audience requires social risk, not hiding behind the “safety” of vanilla best practices that everyone else is already copying. Don’t just collect ideas and hop from one to the next. When you find a compelling marketing idea, system, or a mentor who resonates with you, double-down on seeing that through all the way. Because you will learn so much in the process, that you can later take with you when you are ready for something new.

Step #3: The Surest Way to Fail Is To Do This Alone

Don’t go it alone. When you consider how you will share your writing, I strongly encourage you to have collaborators. This could be a mentor or coach, or it could be a colleague (other writers), a formal group you belong to, or even a highly engaged friend.

This should be true 1:1 engagement, not just being a member of a group or organization with thousands of people. Why? Because connecting to other people in a meaningful manner around your writing is best when the process itself is social. When you have someone helping you thinking through actions, keep you accountable to them, and help you through that squiggly line in the chart above.

There is such a profound difference between guessing what to do vs getting feedback from someone you trust. This doesn’t have to be complicated either. For instance, a writer I know just signed up for one of my programs. She asked me a series of questions in the first week, and in a single 12 minute video, I helped her feel a sense of validation and clarity on some key aspects of her author platform, including:

• How she talks about why she writes and uses that to set her goals.
• Deciding which social media channels to use.
• Website branding plans.
• Whether to use a pen name.
• Feedback on a marketing idea that gave her a whole new way to think about it.

She described how for many of these, she had been struggling with them for awhile, and with my feedback, she totally understands what she needs to do. And I want to be clear here, it’s not that she is just blindly following my advice, she is not. Having a collaborator can help you understand what feels right deep inside you. It helps you make decisions and take actions authentic to who you are.

I always say that the two key elements of an author’s platform are communication and trust. Invest in both of these things by finding people to collaborate with you on how you share your work. This gives you an incredible resource to help you work through your goals and challenges.

Step #4: Be Consistent. Be Consistent. Be Consistent.

Be consistent with the strategies you do choose to embrace. Don’t just show up willy nilly to many places or marketing tactics and expect great results.

When you decide to share, do it consistently. Show up often. Connect with others directly. Double-down on it by trying to give it more creative energy, instead of siphoning it off to 3 other new ideas.

For instance, one of my writing clients is just starting to develop his platform online. We got really clear about his ideal readers, where they show up online, who they trust, and what resonates with them. We streamlined his efforts, and when he started getting traction in one social media channel, we began putting more focus on it. This is about showing up to it with consistency.

A couple week’s back I shared a social media case study of author Rachel Hollis. As I studied both a single week of her usage of Instagram, and looked back on her 8 years on that platform, I found she showed up consistently. Thousands of ways that she shared her message and connected directly with her ideal readers.

If you want to go deeper on any of this, here are some resources to check out:

• My book: Be the Gateway: A Practical Guide to Sharing Your Creative Work and Engaging an Audience
• My 4-week programs on marketing, social media, author websites, email newsletters, blogs, and more!
• My weekly podcast: The Creative Shift with Dan Blank

Thanks!
-Dan

This week I was the guest on a podcast with author Miranda Beverly-Whittemore. Several years back, I helped her launch her novel called Bittersweet, and it ended up hitting the New York Times bestseller list. In the podcast we were reflecting on key actions and lessons we took to launch the book. Miranda characterized our approach like this:

“Why not turn marketing into play?”

She and I spent more than a year on that book launch. I often advise writers to begin considering their author platform, marketing plan, and launches way before they think they need them. What did we do in that time? Here is a partial list of some of the highlights:

• We created a blog that offered fans a behind-the-scenes look at our work together. More than 100 posts were shared, and it became a huge resource for other writers. More than 5 years later, I still have people tell me that this is how they discovered Miranda and her writing.
• We did a massive book giveaway that involved more than 20 other authors, including Roxane Gay, Megan Abbott, Emma Straub, and many others. Our goal was to flip the idea of a giveaway. Instead of Miranda spending weeks saying “win my book!” we designed it to support fellow authors, reward readers, and create community. It was a huge hit.
• We developed her social media presence so she could truly show up in the lives of the authors she was meeting, with booksellers and those who support books, and of course with readers.

Some people would take that list and try to sell it as a “roadmap.” Like, if they just copy those actions, they will potentially have a New York Times bestseller. But that isn’t how it works. Something Miranda brought up was the critical importance of collaboration. Of not isolating yourself and trying to figure this all out alone.

When you collaborate with others around marketing, you have someone to help you brainstorm, to identify new strategic ideas, to see your work and possibilities in a new light. It is not just a calculation of splitting the workload, it is investing in your potential. This comes back to Miranda’s prompt of “Why not turn marketing into play?” Instead of this feeling like an arduous and scary task, what if marketing felt like a truly creative process. One where you focused on connecting real people to writing you love, where you focused on helping, and where the measures of success were about the richness of the experiences and your fulfillment as a writer?

For the past few weeks I have been sharing ideas and resources on the value of social media for writers. In that time, I have had so many conversations with writers about their goals and challenges with social media. Perhaps some of these feel familiar to you:

• “My life is inherently boring. What would I even share?”
• “I don’t photograph well.”
• “I don’t have the time for one more thing, and social media already overwhelms me.”

I always focus on truly listening when people tell me things like this. I want to understand where they are coming from, but I also want to consider: what are their hopes for sharing their writing, and how can they get there?

This is the work I do each day, working directly with writers to help them consider their goals, move past roadblocks, and make real connections between their writing and those who will appreciate it.

I have found that social media is a powerful way for a writer to share their voice and connect with readers. This is an incredible way to:

• Connect with readers and writers who love what you write.
• Find readers before, during, and between book launches.
• Develop your following of true fans.

Doing this is not about gaming algorithms or over-promoting yourself. It is showing up as the writer you are, learning how to share what you create and why, and being open to filling your life with writers and readers who are inspired by the same things you are.

It is about living the life of a writer every single day.

Thanks!
-Dan

So often we talk about the importance of an author platform to:

1. Identify the ideal readers for your writing.
2. Create a meaningful way for you to reach those readers.
3. Prepare for a book launch.

I was listening to a podcast this week and heard this quote:

This podcast episode discussed how to launch a book, and did a wonderful job of illustrating why I encourage writers to consider their author platform, marketing and book launches years before they feel they need it. You can listen to that episode here.

This is a great reminder that an author platform is not a number. It is not how many followers you have. Your platform as an author is your ability to communicate with real people and develop a sense of trust and connection to them.

Now, that doesn’t mean that social media, websites, newsletters, blogs, can’t be a part of one’s author platform. But it is what happens through those channels — the manner in which you and your writing connects with a reader — that is the true meaning of the platform.

That is why I always talk about the concept of Human-Centered Marketing. The process I teach is not about buttons, algorithms, and gaming the system. I’m not encouraging people to go for quick, but hollow, wins.

Instead I focus on the practical steps to truly identify who your ideal readers are, how you can reach them, and how that turns into a manageable process that grows over time.

It is not uncommon for me to see an author who has tens of thousands of followers, but very very little engagement. Many of their posts have almost no activity: no likes, no comments, no shares. That is because the number itself doesn’t matter. Without an engaged human being on the other end of it, the number is meaningless.

An author shared this with me this week who just published her first book:

“I would’ve given up and the manuscript would be sitting on my computer drive, if it had not been for you. I found your book and your site and began to follow you. I have taken a couple of your classes. You helped me believe that I could do social media in a way that felt comfortable for me. That helped me believe that I could reach the readers who need this story. I just began posting about my book yesterday and the Facebook post was shared 14 times and commented on by more than a hundred people. In the publishing economy that’s nothing. But as I think about the effort in terms of touching one person at a time, it’s such a joyfilled experience.”

This, of course, made my whole week! That she decided to finish the book, publish it, and through her efforts, she is really reaching people.

In the past few weeks I have shared a lot in my blog, newsletter, and a Facebook Group I run about social media. In that process, writers have shared their concerns with social media. Some are overwhelmed by it, others have very real concerns about negative impacts of social media. I created a video yesterday to try to address this with a piece of advice: make it small. Make your social media efforts focused on fewer people in order to make it meaningful. You can watch the full video here:

That video was shared to my Reader Connection Project Facebook Group, which you can join here if you like.

I want to leave you with two interviews I’ve shared with writers recently.

Last summer, Teru Clavel released her first book: World Class: One Mother’s Journey Halfway Around the Globe in Search of the Best Education for Her Children. It was published by a major publisher (the Atria Books imprint of Simon & Schuster), was well reviewed in major media (Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus, etc), she appeared on the TODAY Show plus other TV and radio, and was interviewed on dozens of podcasts. She’s got a blog on Psychology Today, plus shares on social media and so much else. In this episode she gets radically honest about the book launch process – what worked and what she learned along the way. Including this: “This is not easy. There are so many rejections. For one success, there were hundreds of pitches where I got rejected.” You can listen to my interview with Teru here.

Finally, how does one find the time and energy to embrace creativity after the bottom has dropped out of their life? In my interview with Shannon Connery,PhD, she gets honest about what it means to build a life filled with intention, creativity, and happiness. She says: “Now I find creativity really energizing and engaging. I feel inspired by the process. I wouldn’t have done any of this in my old life. Before I was stripped of everything, I cared what people thought, I cared about fitting in. I would never have just started a podcast and put it out there. But because I went through all of that, and now have an authentic life with friends, and people who are 100% supportive if I want to write a book.” You can listen to my interview with Shannon here.

Thanks!
-Dan