Book launch is a significant event in any author’s life. It’s an even bigger event if you are a first-time author who is eager to make an impact on your readers. To make it a blast, many authors hire book promotion services. These services include many smaller tasks including marketing your book to the relevant bookstores, delivering the copies to the right locations, and creating awareness and demand among the right readers.
You can work with your professional book marketer to include or exclude different marketing tools depending on their return on investment (ROI). These tools may consist of paid advertisements, promoting via virtual events, content marketing, or book launch events. For cost-effectiveness and return on investment, many authors don’t include book launch events in their marketing mix.
Does this mean these events are a waste of money? They aren’t. However, these events don’t work for everybody. Also, you would want to consider the motivator behind these events before launching them. Here are a few reasons people indulge in book launch events. See, if your book launch can relate to any of these.
What is a Book Launch Event?
A book launch event is a celebration that invites attendees, does book signing, and sometimes does book reading from the author. For most renowned authors, this is a key milestone of their book marketing journey. It creates buzz, grows the book’s target audiences, promotes the book to potential but unaware readers, and makes sales.
Don’t assume that will be the case for first-time authors. If you don’t have an established readership, your book launch wouldn’t be a sales and marketing event. Take it as a celebration at best and don’t expect loads of attendees.
Now that you have understood the meaning of a book launch event, let’s dive into the questions you must ask to include or exclude it from your book marketing strategy.
Book Launch is a Small Part of a Complete Book Marketing Strategy
Have you completed the pre-launch marketing? Are you satisfied with the results? You see, a book launch event has a tiny impact on your book sales. This impact is so tiny that you can almost ignore it in the wake of sales from other marketing methods combined. You must create exposure for your book before you embark on launching your event.
A few ways to create this exposure are email marketing, social media marketing, and networking. When effectively done, these strategies can create a satisfactory number of potential readers in the pre-launch phase. With these numbers in mind, you should see if launching an event will attract enough attendees or not.
You Have a Sizeable Readership
As we mentioned earlier, a book launch event works best for those authors who have a significant readership and fan base. If you can gather your readership in your pre-launch marketing phase, this event may prove fruitful for you. Again, don’t assume that all the sales made in this event belong to the costs you incurred in it. Instead, these sales will relate to all the book marketing you have done till that point.
If you don’t have a sizeable readership, you have two options. You can choose to skip this event altogether. Skipping this event wouldn’t make a huge dent in your sales figure, after all. The second option is to go for it but take it as a celebration. If you can afford to set aside a few thousand bucks from the hefty book launch and marketing bills, you should pay yourself for your hard work of writing and publishing the book.
This Event Will Not Return Your Investment
Book writing and publishing is a money game. Sooner or later, you will want to profit from it. So, when you market your book, you take care of every marketing expense from hiring book launch services to paying paid advertisement costs. Unsurprisingly, you want to be positive about the returns you can get from these services.
Don’t bring this thought process into book launch events. As said earlier, unless you are a celebrated author, this event will only cost you money and will bring you no money. First-time authors usually throw their book launch party to celebrate finally getting their book out there.
Your Readers Are Located Locally
You also need to determine the nature of your event. Many authors choose in-person events in today’s time and age. However, the location of your readers will determine the type of event you will want. So, take account of the presence of your readers, inquire if they will be available for the event, and plan early.
The major factor that can prompt you to cancel an in-person event for your launch is the location of your readers, but that’s not the only reason. Many authors opt for a virtual event for their D-Day because they don’t want to spend enormous amounts on this celebration. With a virtual event, they save on the costs of the venue as well as serving food or snacks.
You Plan for Future Books
The biggest advantage of these events manifests in years. So, you would profit from it later in your author’s life when you gain credibility and exposure because of it and the buzz it creates in the media afterward. Surely, one or two events don’t give as much boost to your brand as a series of launch events. This series will signal to the readers that you are a serious, dedicated author.
Although a single launch event related to your first book wouldn’t make a lot of difference, you will see its impact in higher sale numbers in your second or third book launch. In other words, you should go for these events if you are planning to pen down more books.
Take Away
One norm that is followed across the book publishing industry is a book launch event. While this trend is known to not make money for the authors, it’s still followed by authors. However, if you are concerned about your budget, you should consider whether to go with it or not.
