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Episode 9: Book Launch Tips

S1 E9 · Quilling It

45 Plays24 days ago

What actually works when launching a book? Paul interviews Lindsay about her recent launch campaign–managing a street team, setting expectations with ARC readers, and why she’s now a known entity at her local post office. We share what’s worked, what we’ve ditched, and how to build a launch plan that’s both sustainable and effective.

Transcript

Introduction to Book Launch Strategies

00:00:14

Paul Regnier

Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Paul Regner.

00:00:18

Lindsay Franklin

I'm Lindsay Franklin.

00:00:20

Paul Regnier

And today we are talking about book launch. The big question on all the authors' minds, how do you do it? So many different strategies.

00:00:30

Paul Regnier

I've read like endless articles on how to do this and I found some techniques that work and some that not quite so good.

Case Study: 'The Restitching of Camille Dulane' Launch

00:00:39

Paul Regnier

um Lindsay, I know you've you've actually just finished a book launch just a few weeks ago, right? You launched The Restitching of Emmeline Dulane. Did I say that right?

00:00:51

Lindsay Franklin

You said Emlyn right, but this book is the restitching of Camille Dulane, her sister. so

00:00:56

Paul Regnier

Oh my goodness, I messed it up.

00:00:57

Lindsay Franklin

ah

00:00:58

Paul Regnier

I was thinking of the first book in the series. I'm so sorry.

00:01:00

Lindsay Franklin

yes, but you did pronounce that correctly.

00:01:01

Paul Regnier

The Restitching.

00:01:03

Lindsay Franklin

So yay, yay for Emlyn.

00:01:04

Paul Regnier

the The re-stitching of Camille Dulane. Okay.

00:01:08

Lindsay Franklin

Yes.

00:01:09

Paul Regnier

The lesser known Dulane's sister.

The Publisher's Role in Book Launches

00:01:11

Paul Regnier

um

00:01:11

Lindsay Franklin

ah

00:01:12

Paul Regnier

So you just went through all this like just a few weeks ago.

00:01:16

Lindsay Franklin

Yes.

00:01:17

Paul Regnier

um So this book launching is fresh in your mind.

00:01:17

Lindsay Franklin

Mm hmm.

00:01:21

Paul Regnier

um And the question like for me, and cause you're more of a planner, I like, I'm a little bit more of an impulsive, you know, promotion marketing kind of guy.

00:01:32

Paul Regnier

But you're a planner. So my question is like how far in advance when you have a book launch coming up, how far do you start planning? how how What's like the earliest things you start doing to get your book launch you know to a successful place?

Building a Street Team: Structure and Strategy

00:01:49

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah, so some of this is really dictated by the fact that I am traditionally published. And so my publisher has a schedule with what we're going to be doing with the cover reveal, for example.

00:02:01

Lindsay Franklin

So, and this varies a lot. There's no one correct way to do this, especially when it comes to timing. And recently, over the last couple years, I've seen traditional publishers kind of shorten and shorten the timeline that they use for for cover reveals and all of that.

00:02:17

Lindsay Franklin

But for us at Enclave, the cover reveal is six months before the release date. So I need to start my ah six whole months.

00:02:25

Paul Regnier

You just made me nervous when you said six months. I'm like, really? Not one month? ah

00:02:31

Lindsay Franklin

No, not three seconds before the book. I've seen that sometimes where authors are like, cover reveal, next week, release, you know, and just boom, let's go.

00:02:38

Paul Regnier

That's right. That's me. You're talking about me.

00:02:41

Lindsay Franklin

ah Which is not necessarily a ah bad thing because excitement is high. You you kind of take advantage of that that cover reveal excitement.

00:02:51

Lindsay Franklin

So there are different ways to approach this. So as we talk through launches in this episode, we will be talking about what did and didn't work for us. But I just kind of want to add that caveat that there's different different ways to approach.

00:03:04

Lindsay Franklin

So with my cover reveal being six months before release date, I really need to start about seven months before release release date so that I can start getting street team signups because my street team is a really big part of my launch strategy.

00:03:15

Paul Regnier

wow

00:03:22

Lindsay Franklin

So seven months before release date.

00:03:25

Paul Regnier

Wow. So when tell me this, because sometimes I get like the launch team, for me, sometimes like morphs into the arc team, the advanced reader team.

00:03:26

Lindsay Franklin

Mm hmm.

00:03:39

Paul Regnier

Like how do you, do you separate those two or or are they synonymous? Like how do you categorize those? And do you like talk to those two groups differently?

Engaging Street Teams with Incentives

00:03:50

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah. So I have done this a little bit differently over time again. So I've had five novel launches at this point. And I would say each one has been slightly different for a number of reasons. And I kind of messed up, I feel, with my Emlyn launch because that was my first one back after about four and a half years. Things had changed. I kind of was...

00:04:15

Lindsay Franklin

re-learning and re-remembering, I guess, what um this was all about. And so I sort of messed up where I didn't build my team before the cover reveal. So I did kind of have two separate things going. What I really prefer to do and what I did with Camille more recently is I built the team before the cover reveal. So I had my street team. I also had separate signups for people who only wanted to help with the cover reveal because a lot of people... you know like to do that, but can't commit to a whole launch season, which is totally fair.

00:04:48

Lindsay Franklin

um So i I do build two separate lists, but really my my priority is that street team list, because those are the people who want to help with the cover reveal, want to help you know hype my pre-order gifts when those are available. They want to get an e-arc, possibly win the drawing for a paperback arc. They want to you know have an early copy. They want to review it. They want to be there for the whole launch process. So that's definitely my priority list

Pre-order Gifts and Impact on Sales

00:05:19

Lindsay Franklin

that I build. But then I also love to have people who just want to hype the cover on cover reveal day and like, let's go. So the more the merrier with that kind of thing, right? If you could sort of take over your little corner of Instagram on cover reveal day and just have it it in everybody's feed everywhere, awesome. I love that.

00:05:36

Paul Regnier

I heard a couple of things in there that just gave me anxiety that I don't do. So like, oh my gosh, that sounds like so many things. So like the two things I heard, like I heard, did I, well, maybe I heard this wrong. Did I hear pre-order gifts?

00:05:51

Lindsay Franklin

Uh-huh.

00:05:52

Paul Regnier

You send people gifts when they pre-order? Is that, how does, what is that about? I don't even know that trick.

00:05:59

Lindsay Franklin

That's another big part of my launch strategy, and it's actually one of my favorite things. And because for me thinking about those fun little bits of swag and then getting to send those to some of my most hyped, most excited readers who are willing to pre-order.

00:06:15

Lindsay Franklin

Because remember, when we're talking pre-orders, we are usually talking about a full price hardcover or full price ebook or something that people are purchasing, right? And so when somebody is excited enough and cares enough to purchase i my upcoming novel full price, knowing that if they just kind of wait and sit on Amazon, that that's eventually going to Amazon's going to knock that price all the way down into the basement at some point.

00:06:24

Paul Regnier

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:06:42

Lindsay Franklin

Right. They're going to because that's what they do. They they will have it for preorder at full price. And then these days within the first year of release, they're going to knock that price really, really low.

00:06:54

Lindsay Franklin

um So I i understand that it's it's a financial sacrifice for readers who really want to like get it on release day and they're hyped, they're excited.

00:06:55

Paul Regnier

Mm-hmm.

00:07:06

Lindsay Franklin

So pre-order gifts are a little way that I can give back. to those

Maintaining Buzz with Limited Social Media Presence

00:07:12

Lindsay Franklin

readers who are, you know, with me on this journey, just super excited to to get my next story in their hands. So that is something that's, it's super important to me. It's fun because I get to design things or hire artists to help me with things. And I just, it keeps me sane during launch time because there's a lot of things about launch that stress me out, but getting to like make stickers is not one of them. I love that.

00:07:36

Paul Regnier

So you're actually, when you say gifts, it's not an like an electronic thing that you can just email. You're talking about like something physical, like a sticker or what, like a bookmark or something that you have to like mail out to people through snail mail.

00:07:49

Lindsay Franklin

Yes.

00:07:50

Paul Regnier

Wow.

00:07:51

Lindsay Franklin

Yes.

00:07:51

Paul Regnier

Wow.

00:07:51

Lindsay Franklin

Through like old school snail mail. And I will typically only do physical gifts for physical books. So for my Weaver trilogy, that would have been paperback. For the Rivenly sphere, those are hardcovers.

00:08:04

Lindsay Franklin

So um yes, I will mail physical gifts for physical books. And then I usually try to have some kind of digital, you know, something as well for people who do ebook or audio book pre-orders or for my international readers, because I do have a fair number of readers overseas and some really big fans

ARC Teams and Review Challenges

00:08:24

Lindsay Franklin

overseas.

00:08:24

Lindsay Franklin

And, you know, sometimes I can do physical things overseas. I will do that for my street team members because I have international street team members, but it's it does get cost prohibitive at a point um to ship anything or mail anything overseas.

00:08:29

Paul Regnier

Yep.

00:08:38

Paul Regnier

yeah

00:08:39

Lindsay Franklin

So I do like to have some digital options where at least people can, you know, sign up for those if I can't mail physical gifts.

00:08:40

Paul Regnier

yep

00:08:47

Lindsay Franklin

And I will also cap this. It's not like anybody under the sun who pre-orders and and submits their receipt to me gets this. if if it's If the gifts are a little on the pricier side or mailing is going to be a little pricier, then I'll cap it and maybe it's just the first 50 or you know I've done I've done significantly more than that but it totally depends on what I'm mailing out

00:09:11

Paul Regnier

Right. So, you know, you made me think of something else too, because there's a little bit of a, you know, marketing debate on sort of to pre-order or not to pre-order, right?

00:09:22

Lindsay Franklin

mm-hmm

00:09:22

Paul Regnier

Like some people will say like, oh, if you do a pre-order, it's going to mess up your launch day, launch week sales. like It's going to eat into that. So you you have less chance of like sort of skyrocketing in the Amazon algorithm if you're trying to get that you know number one bestseller in this category. This is probably like a whole other episode, but like like what's your like initial take on that?

00:09:48

Lindsay Franklin

So my experience with that is that I have seen my books hit number one new release, at least on Amazon in in their respective categories on cover reveal day.

00:10:01

Lindsay Franklin

And any point during the six months between cover reveal.

00:10:05

Paul Regnier

ah During pre-order, it's doing that? Oh, I didn't.

00:10:08

Lindsay Franklin

Yep.

00:10:08

Paul Regnier

You know, i thought Amazon didn't do it until it was actually live. they must I wonder if they changed something, because that was part of the argument that I remember, at least.

00:10:17

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah.

00:10:17

Paul Regnier

Maybe I'm thinking of an old argument that's not even there anymore.

00:10:18

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah. They may have done. They may have changed. they They like to do that. Amazon likes to change things up on us frequently.

00:10:25

Paul Regnier

Yeah. Yeah.

00:10:28

Lindsay Franklin

um So it is possible. But yes, they will do that at any point when the listing is live.

00:10:32

Paul Regnier

Interesting.

00:10:34

Lindsay Franklin

And so our listings will go live at Enclave, usually like Maybe if we're really on top of stuff, it's going to be like three or four weeks before the cover reveal. It'll go live without the cover visible.

00:10:45

Lindsay Franklin

And then cover reveal day, the cover gets pushed through. And so really at any point, we try to keep the listing a little bit hush hush before the reveal date um because it does have the description on there.

00:10:58

Lindsay Franklin

And so it's like a little spoilery, like you lose a little bit of that marketing steam to to have somebody reading that weeks before you reveal the cover. But anyway, on cover reveal revealed day, that's when everything goes out.

00:11:11

Lindsay Franklin

We hype it on socials and you can get a banner starting at any point when that listing is live. So I've seen my books have that banner on release or a reveal day rather.

00:11:24

Lindsay Franklin

And then at points, sometimes when I announce my pre-order gifts, that banner will come back.

00:11:25

Paul Regnier

wow

00:11:30

Lindsay Franklin

And then even with all of this pre-order, the kind of long lead up that we have, I usually, usually, maybe every time I'd have to go back and look.

00:11:40

Lindsay Franklin

I don't, I don't remember for sure, but I believe every release day I've still gotten that banner. So um I do understand the argument because kind of call that like a marketing storm or a marketing funnel or something where you, it's like you're, you're trying to concentrate your efforts so that you have a louder bang, right?

00:12:00

Lindsay Franklin

If you're going to, let's just use a round number and say a hundred, say you get a hundred pre-orders on Amazon, you know, just for the whole season, if you can kind of concentrate it into the space of one week.

00:12:01

Paul Regnier

Right.

00:12:12

Lindsay Franklin

So say you got all hundred of those pre-orders or those orders, I should say, on launch week. then yeah, you're probably going to shoot to not just number one new release, but number one bestseller in that category, because that's a lot.

00:12:24

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:12:25

Lindsay Franklin

That's a lot of units in one week. If you kind of spread those 100 units out over six months, then you may still kind of hit the banner, hit the new release number one um here and there, but it's a little bit less or it's much less concentrated.

00:12:40

Lindsay Franklin

So that's that's what Paul is talking about here ah for our listeners, you know, kind of condensing that all down so that you get a stronger punch in a shorter space of time.

00:12:41

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:12:47

Paul Regnier

Right. Right.

00:12:51

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah.

00:12:51

Paul Regnier

Well, because there are certain categories, like and and the more popular a category is, the more books you have to sell to get to that you know number one

Budgeting for Book Launches

00:13:01

Paul Regnier

spot.

00:13:02

Paul Regnier

right So I think that's why you know that concentrated effort is going.

00:13:03

Lindsay Franklin

Right.

00:13:06

Paul Regnier

um But I have heard that the algorithm now the ever-changing algorithm is pays ira um is a little more skeptical of those huge spikes, especially if it spikes up and then drops down really fast, then the algorithm is like, oh, this is just one-shot deal.

00:13:14

Lindsay Franklin

Our friend, yes. but

00:13:20

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:13:24

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:13:29

Paul Regnier

This isn't gonna last.

00:13:30

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:13:31

Paul Regnier

there's no They want the sustainability of sales. So there's always that.

00:13:34

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:13:36

Paul Regnier

And and there's various strategies to sort of keep it going, like doing discount runs and promos and different things like that. But um boy, that's interesting. Okay. So that's good to know.

00:13:47

Paul Regnier

That's good to know. That's actually like, I think that was one of the big arguments for, you know, not to pre-order because I don't do pre-order. I just launch it. But, you know, I try to hype it up.

00:13:58

Paul Regnier

um But so when you put together your launch team and you're saying like, this is something you're planning like six months in advance, are you, do you do it through?

00:14:09

Paul Regnier

Cause I'm like looking at the practical end of things. Like how do you do a call out on your newsletter or on your socials or on all of it? Like, Hey, I'm looking for a launch team for my new book, like sign up here, you know, with your email.

00:14:24

Paul Regnier

do you do that kind of thing?

00:14:26

Lindsay Franklin

I do. I'll usually create like a Google form, just something that's pretty simple.

00:14:27

Paul Regnier

Okay.

00:14:30

Paul Regnier

OK. Mm-hmm.

00:14:31

Lindsay Franklin

And I'll put a lot of information in there where, you know, these are the expectations. This is what it's all about. Because sometimes we hear arc team, launch team, street team, and Those are used interchangeably at times, but sometimes they mean different things. So I try to be really clear on the form itself.

00:14:49

Lindsay Franklin

This is what the expectations are for what I call my street team. And these are the kinds of benefits that you might receive. So I really love and appreciate my street teams because they just, I mean, they're just all in, a lot of them.

00:15:06

Lindsay Franklin

And some people join the team for different reasons, where they just are there to get the arc. you know they just want that e-arc to read early and post a review and that's awesome i i'm all for that so people join my team for different reasons so that's some percentage of my team if someone is only interested in the cover reveal then that's not really they don't need to join my street team for that i will send them the cover in advance and they can just be part of that and they don't have to join the team but If you want to be an ARC reader, then yes, you have to join my team for that.

00:15:12

Paul Regnier

um

00:15:39

Lindsay Franklin

And so those people are not necessarily doing what I have structured as monthly quests. So my team has quests that every month, here's the quest.

00:15:45

Paul Regnier

We're a monthly quest.

00:15:49

Lindsay Franklin

And if you want to complete the quest, it's never required. You're not going to get kicked off the team for not completing the request. But if you want to be...

00:15:55

Paul Regnier

You put it in that terminology. Do you say like, hail peasants, this week's quest, should you so choose to follow?

00:15:57

Lindsay Franklin

but Yes.

00:16:01

Lindsay Franklin

ah

00:16:04

Lindsay Franklin

I have not gone quite that far, but we do have quests and we have side quests and stuff. So um yes, and that's really fun to see. This is why this stuff is just happy for me.

00:16:15

Lindsay Franklin

It keeps me sane because it's just fun.

00:16:17

Paul Regnier

Yeah. Right.

00:16:17

Lindsay Franklin

It feels even though it is about marketing and it is about sales and it is all about that stuff.

00:16:17

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:16:23

Lindsay Franklin

It's it's also just about having fun and and doing kind of cute, exciting things.

00:16:27

Paul Regnier

right

00:16:29

Lindsay Franklin

And that makes me happy. So i will I will outline some of those expectations for, you know, if you want to do the quests, then you complete the required quest.

00:16:31

Paul Regnier

yeah

00:16:39

Lindsay Franklin

That is your ticket into the monthly prize drawing and then any side quests would count as it extra entries and so every month there's going to be a winner of that prize drawing and some people you know have been on my team for both emlyn and camille and they've not their names have not been ever drawn for the the monthly um prize you know for doing the quest, but they're still there and excited and hyped up.

00:17:07

Lindsay Franklin

So I know that it's like a nice incentive, but it's not really why most of the people are there. It's just kind of a fun extra thing that we get to do. So, um,

00:17:16

Paul Regnier

but You have monthly prizes too?

00:17:18

Lindsay Franklin

ahhu

00:17:19

Paul Regnier

Wow, there's a lot of prizes going on. And and these are things you mail out as well?

00:17:24

Lindsay Franklin

Yes. And these are these are kind of heftier because, yeah.

00:17:26

Paul Regnier

Wow, what is your stamp budget? It must be like to the moon.

00:17:30

Lindsay Franklin

Postage. Yeah, they know me at the post office.

00:17:32

Paul Regnier

Right?

00:17:33

Lindsay Franklin

but I just.

00:17:34

Paul Regnier

Hey, it's that stamp lady.

00:17:35

Lindsay Franklin

Yep. Here she is.

00:17:36

Paul Regnier

She wants another book of stamps.

00:17:38

Lindsay Franklin

Again, yeah. I always come in asking for weird things. They they do kind of give me side eyes sometimes. It's like, can I have the non-machinable, you know, like weird little stamps?

00:17:48

Lindsay Franklin

and And I live in a small town, so they'll pull out this little like book where they store all of their weird stamps, you know, the the kind of abnormal ones, and they'll pull it out. Well, we have 20. I can give you 20.

00:17:59

Lindsay Franklin

Okay, let me know when

Sustaining Engagement Post-Launch

00:18:01

Lindsay Franklin

you have more. I'll take that 20. I'll be back in for another 40 next week or whatever. So yeah, it's...

00:18:06

Paul Regnier

That's suspicious. You're on their watch list. um

00:18:08

Lindsay Franklin

Right. They know me.

00:18:10

Paul Regnier

yeah There is something that's kind of interesting that I wanted to hit on, like your ARC team. When you have people sign up as your advanced you know ARC advanced reader copy, you're sending them out an early e-book copy,

00:18:22

Paul Regnier

Um, and then you all, I'm assuming you say like, Hey, you know, if you get this copy, you know, please leave me a review on Amazon during launch day or launch week or whatever.

00:18:32

Lindsay Franklin

hmm.

00:18:34

Paul Regnier

Um, what is your success rate with that? I'm curious because I know not every, for me, like definitely not everyone that signs up and gets the free book actually follows through and leaves the review.

00:18:49

Paul Regnier

What's, what's your percentage of success on that?

00:18:50

Lindsay Franklin

Yes.

00:18:52

Lindsay Franklin

That is a very good question and is 100% metric that I should be tracking. But I think, okay, so for me as a TradPub author, i collect all of those names.

00:19:05

Lindsay Franklin

So I take my my street team list and I submit that to um the marketing director at Enclave. And Enclave is actually the one that sends out via book funnel, I believe.

00:19:16

Lindsay Franklin

um The

00:19:16

Paul Regnier

Yeah, book phone. That's what I use too.

00:19:18

Lindsay Franklin

Yes. Yes. Very commonly used tool for both indie and, you know, traditionally published authors. So it goes out via book funnel and I don't really have access to like the stats of who downloaded the book and and any of that.

00:19:33

Lindsay Franklin

So I don't see that piece of things, you know, what we should do since I, I just launched and I could always ask Trisina, the marketing director, I could ask her and she would she would probably tell me those stats.

00:19:36

Paul Regnier

Oh.

00:19:40

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:19:44

Lindsay Franklin

But what I should do since Camille launched, well, it's been a couple of weeks now. I'm just going to go see on Amazon and on Goodreads, just the number.

00:19:55

Lindsay Franklin

I'm not going to look at the star ratings, guys, because that's, we've we've talked about this before. That is when I go to crazy town, when I start fixating on the star ratings, but I can go look at the number of reviews.

00:20:01

Paul Regnier

Yeah, don't do that. Right.

00:20:06

Lindsay Franklin

that we have um and see kind of compared to the size of my team, maybe how many people have followed through and done a review.

00:20:13

Paul Regnier

Interesting.

00:20:14

Lindsay Franklin

So I will do that in the background while we continue to chat and see.

00:20:17

Paul Regnier

do you

00:20:17

Lindsay Franklin

But yes, it is very common to not have everybody follow through on that. That is expected.

00:20:23

Paul Regnier

So I'm guessing Enclave is the one that manages your book funnel account, or maybe they have like a master book funnel account for all their books. So, okay.

00:20:34

Lindsay Franklin

Correct.

00:20:34

Paul Regnier

I will tell you from the indie perspective, because I have my own book funnel account. And for people that don't know about book funnel, book funnel is sort of one of those must have things.

00:20:39

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:20:44

Paul Regnier

It's about, I think at least I the $15 a month, level, which I think is just above the base level. But it allows you to put up like ebooks that people can download. And and they usually have to you can set it so that they have to provide an email before they can download the free ebook.

00:21:06

Paul Regnier

And usually do this to get those advanced readers so that when you do launch day, you know they will leave a review because like that's the worst when you launch a book and you're like, when's my first review going to come in? And you know you're dreading like someone that hates the book. It's like, one star.

00:21:23

Paul Regnier

I'm going to torpedo this book before it sees the light of day.

00:21:24

Lindsay Franklin

ah

00:21:26

Paul Regnier

So that's why you do this advanced reader team.

00:21:27

Lindsay Franklin

Right.

00:21:29

Paul Regnier

And BookFunnel is the way to do it because once you upload it, it it kind of manages like sending it out in different formats to different people. um And they deal with all the compliance and you know troubleshooting and all that kind of stuff.

00:21:39

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:21:44

Paul Regnier

It's just, it's so worth it. um But it also gives you the metrics of how many people signed up, how many people downloaded, right? So that's why I was asking you, because I know for me, it's less than I thought it would be.

00:21:58

Paul Regnier

So I, on average, I would say I get about a 50% success rate. Which I think it it kind of annoys me to if I'm being honest because it's like, dude, you got a free book.

00:22:08

Lindsay Franklin

ah

00:22:10

Paul Regnier

All I'm asking for is like a sentence or two.

00:22:11

Lindsay Franklin

Yep.

00:22:13

Paul Regnier

like and and yeah i didn't And I'm not asking for like this glowing review.

00:22:13

Lindsay Franklin

Right.

00:22:17

Paul Regnier

just like

00:22:18

Lindsay Franklin

Sure.

00:22:19

Paul Regnier

Although if you hated it, i I prefer that you didn't leave a review at all.

00:22:20

Lindsay Franklin

There's something. but

00:22:23

Paul Regnier

So if that's what's going on, that's fine too. but But you know what I mean? It's like, you know you just worked for like, what, like maybe half a year on this book or depending on how fast of a writer you are whatever, writing, editing, getting it it all ready.

00:22:34

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:22:38

Paul Regnier

So it's like, hey, I'm going to give this to you for free just like to help support me. Can you leave a review on Amazon? Because that helps with visibility and whatnot. That's the theory.

00:22:48

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:22:49

Paul Regnier

for ARC, but yeah, 50% is pretty like average for what I get for a response. And I always like, it always bums me out a little bit. Now I'm kind of like used to it.

00:23:00

Paul Regnier

I'm like, yeah, okay, whatever. You know, I got 40 signups. That means maybe 20 reviews. um it

00:23:05

Lindsay Franklin

who

00:23:06

Paul Regnier

you know again so But there is something I have learned recently is it really depends on where you're getting your ARC readers. like that

00:23:16

Lindsay Franklin

h

00:23:17

Paul Regnier

When I send it to my newsletter, which is more of my core audience, I would say, like people that have opted in and say like, oh yeah, we really like what you're doing. I'll get a higher success rate there.

00:23:31

Paul Regnier

And then Instagram is gonna be like a little less, which I would assume is most social media.

00:23:31

Lindsay Franklin

That makes sense.

00:23:38

Paul Regnier

um I don't know if it was my last book or the one before I tried Substack and that got like this huge boost in signups and I'm like, sweet, but that percentage was way low.

00:23:50

Paul Regnier

I i think that was like maybe 20, 30% of,

00:23:51

Lindsay Franklin

Interesting.

00:23:53

Paul Regnier

um

00:23:54

Lindsay Franklin

Wow. Interesting.

00:23:54

Paul Regnier

of

00:23:55

Lindsay Franklin

Hmm.

00:23:55

Paul Regnier

Yeah. So then I thought, okay, I'm not doing Substack anymore because these people are just looking for free books, at least the ones that that hit me up for it. so So that's part of it is like looking for the most impactful. And you know you might think like, hey, I don't care. Like the more, the better, because maybe I'll still get some. But for me, I don't know. I just get that thing like, I don't know. It's just like, that's a lot of free books that might've been a purchase.

00:24:22

Paul Regnier

I don't know.

00:24:22

Lindsay Franklin

Right.

00:24:23

Paul Regnier

it's It's a tightrope, right? You kind of got to make your own call on that.

00:24:25

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah.

00:24:26

Paul Regnier

But anyways, that's my little bit of insight, I guess.

00:24:28

Lindsay Franklin

It's kind of true. I, yeah, I think that's really true about pretty much everything we do related to launches where you have to kind of weigh the ah ROI on everything, you know, return on investment where whether that investment is free books that you're sending out,

00:24:41

Paul Regnier

Mm-hmm.

00:24:47

Lindsay Franklin

that could have been sales, but instead we're going to do free copy, hopefully get you know a review and hopefully ah a good review. But yes, we don't require that. But when somebody is interested enough to say, yeah I want to read an early copy,

00:25:00

Lindsay Franklin

the hope is, you know, yes, these are people who already know that they like my stuff or they're highly interested readers. And so those early reviews do tend to skew higher, not because we pressure our our ARC readers to do that, but it's because they are, it's it's a lot more self-selecting, I guess, where people who are already very interested or already know their fans of yours are signing up for that particular thing.

00:25:24

Lindsay Franklin

So that's why those early reviews always tend to be higher than once the book's kind of out there in the big wide world and somebody might stumble on it in some random, random way. And it's a two star for them.

00:25:34

Lindsay Franklin

That's totally fine.

00:25:35

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:25:35

Lindsay Franklin

That's, that is what happens.

00:25:36

Paul Regnier

Right. Yep.

00:25:37

Lindsay Franklin

And it just means that your book is out in the wide world and yay, some, somebody organically stumbled on it.

00:25:38

Paul Regnier

right

00:25:44

Lindsay Franklin

Yay. It's a good thing, right guys? We love

00:25:46

Paul Regnier

Right.

Selecting the Right Launch Team Members

00:25:47

Lindsay Franklin

the two stars.

00:25:47

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah.

00:25:49

Paul Regnier

So, okay. Sorry. I went on this long rambling sidetrack about arc readers, but you know, that's an ah important part of the process, but so, okay.

00:25:57

Lindsay Franklin

Absolutely.

00:25:58

Paul Regnier

So here we are, you've got your launch team, you you're getting your arc team, you're sending out all these mailers, which I never do. But you know that's part of why you have really big launches. you know Mine have been a little more up and down. like I've had good ones. I've had mediocre ones. But um I would say you put a lot of work into it. And that that sounds like it's really paying off, which is nice. um But again, it sounds like you are really kind of enjoying the process, which is always a good thing.

00:26:32

Paul Regnier

thing that I keep in mind for any promotional marketing effort. Like you don't wanna do something where you're just gritting your teeth and just like, oh, i hate doing this because I think that'll probably show through.

00:26:42

Paul Regnier

um

00:26:43

Lindsay Franklin

Yes.

00:26:43

Paul Regnier

So, but you're actually enjoying it. You're sending out these cool little gifts and it sounds like your launch teams are really appreciating all these cool things, even though you're on the watch watch list at your post you know

00:26:55

Lindsay Franklin

my first

00:26:56

Paul Regnier

at your post office

00:26:57

Lindsay Franklin

What is she mailing? And then when I show up with the actual envelopes, like this last time I sent out um my, because I was traveling, I launched a book and then hopped on a plane like four days later, which was insane.

00:27:09

Lindsay Franklin

But I really wanted to get out pre-order gifts. And my first round of street team exclusive swag, because that's another thing that I do. um And so I had this like big box of envelopes and like different weights and different stuff and all these stamps on them or whatever.

00:27:26

Lindsay Franklin

And the guy just looked at me like, okay, okay, ma'am, what are you doing? And there were a number of my street team ones that were going, I had four international ones and they were going to four different countries. And I was like, can you just weigh these ones separately and make sure that I i did the stamps right?

00:27:37

Paul Regnier

Oh, wow.

00:27:40

Lindsay Franklin

And he's like, yeah, you're you're fine. Okay. I just want all this swag to get where it's supposed to go.

00:27:43

Paul Regnier

ah

00:27:46

Lindsay Franklin

But yeah, they think I'm nuts there, but it's all good.

00:27:49

Paul Regnier

It's the stamp lady.

00:27:50

Lindsay Franklin

They're not wrong.

00:27:50

Paul Regnier

Look out.

00:27:50

Lindsay Franklin

yeah Stamp lady, here she comes. ah

00:27:53

Paul Regnier

um Well, cool. Okay. so you're So you're doing this and then what would be the next stage in the launch process or in the launch preparation process? And and where are we? Are we at like month three at this point?

00:28:07

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah. So we've we've done signups prior to the cover reveal. Then the cover reveal goes out. Yay. And I should say with the signups, I do cap because I know I'm going to be investing in my team.

00:28:14

Paul Regnier

Mm-hmm.

00:28:19

Lindsay Franklin

I want to offer, we have the monthly prizes and that budget kind of stays the same for me, but I do offer street team exclusive swag. So I have swag that's like, this is if you pre-order, you can do this.

00:28:30

Lindsay Franklin

And my street team is eligible for that too, because so those are some of my biggest fans. My most excited readers. So yeah, they're on the team and they're pre-ordering. They're amazing. I love my team. So they're eligible for the pre-order gifts, but I want to have something that's a little different that is just for people on the team and little swaggy things.

00:28:50

Lindsay Franklin

And so I know that I'm going to be investing in the production of that swag and then mailing it out. So I do cap the number of people on my street team so that I can make sure that the postage and the printing is not that big of a deal.

00:29:05

Lindsay Franklin

Because you know once you're printing 50 of something or 25 of something, it's not that much more to go ahead and print 100 or however many. so And often way cheaper per unit to do that.

00:29:17

Lindsay Franklin

So that the printing is not that big of a deal usually, but it's the postage that will kill you ah when you're sending stuff out. So I do like to keep ah the number on my team reasonable and within what I can do for postage budgets.

00:29:31

Lindsay Franklin

So I will vet people who come in and if somebody has been a really unresponsive member of the team in the past or they got that free book and I've never seen a review come through from them or something and yet they signed up again, i'm they're not going to be on my team.

00:29:43

Paul Regnier

hmm

00:29:47

Lindsay Franklin

um If I've seen them be real weird or negative on socials before, either about me or just about anything kind of, if if there's just something makes me feel icky about their

Traditional Publishing vs. Amazon Pricing

00:29:59

Lindsay Franklin

their social presence, they're not going to necessarily be on my team.

00:30:02

Lindsay Franklin

So I do vet the the people who come in because it's I don't just want to take anybody and everybody. I want to make sure that the team is a really fun, positive space, I think because it is somewhere I mentally retreat to during launch stress where it's just, it's my team and I'm excited, happy, yay.

00:30:20

Lindsay Franklin

It's it's sad when there's something that's kind of negative or stressful about the team.

00:30:21

Paul Regnier

Right. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

00:30:24

Lindsay Franklin

So I'm careful about that.

00:30:25

Paul Regnier

yeah

00:30:26

Lindsay Franklin

And then we do the cover reveal, yay. And that would be like the quest for that month is participate in the cover reveal, post somewhere, right? And then over the next few months, I will come up with tasks for them to do each month. So it might be, you know, for this book too, i should really pull up all of the quests because I have them written down somewhere. But for, you know, this one, it might be talk about something that was your favorite from book one that you're really excited for in book two. Make an aesthetic like mood board post. Now that the cover is out there, there's some kind of visuals to work with, you know, stuff like that, where it's pre-

00:31:06

Lindsay Franklin

pre-release and pre-arcs going out. So they haven't read the book yet. So the the quests have to really make sense for the stage that they're at with the story where they are excited for it. They've seen the cover. They've read book one, but they have not read book two yet.

00:31:21

Lindsay Franklin

So we have to keep all of that in mind when I'm designing my tasks for them. So that's what we kind of do in the months leading up to arcs going out and pre-order gifts being announced.

00:31:35

Lindsay Franklin

So that's kind of the stage that we're at with maybe like month three. And then again, this is dictated by my publisher, but at Enclave, we usually have, let's see, the paperback arcs are created from the first draft of the typeset. So that comes out before the e-arc.

00:31:53

Lindsay Franklin

So I will have the opportunity to order some paperback arcs and my publisher provides some of those to me and I can order extras. And that's something my team gets really excited about where if I have 10 to give out to my street team, I will do a drawing.

00:32:08

Lindsay Franklin

So I'll say to my team, anybody who wants to be entered into the drawing for a paperback arc, and this is exciting for them because for those who post on socials a lot, they now have a physical copy that they get to take a photo of and it gives them something concrete to use in their content.

00:32:20

Paul Regnier

Yeah, that's nice.

00:32:24

Lindsay Franklin

And that's really helpful for bookstagrammers and such. So they get real hype for those paperback arcs. And I get to do a drawing for that and mail those out. Those can go media mail.

00:32:35

Lindsay Franklin

So I don't put stamps on those. We've got our little labels and send those out. So ah The post office doesn't look at me weird when I bring in all of those ah books to send out because it's it's just less strange, I guess, than these envelopes with a billion stamps on them.

00:32:48

Lindsay Franklin

but um So that we do. I want to say that's about four months before release. And then the e-archs kind of go out the the next month after that, because that's like the final e-book at Enclave anyway.

00:33:04

Lindsay Franklin

We do our e-archs. It's like the finished formatted e e-book copy, and that goes out to the entire team. So everybody gets that, but only a handful of people get the paperback version on my teams.

00:33:18

Paul Regnier

Okay.

00:33:18

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:33:19

Paul Regnier

Okay. So you've got the signups, you've done the cover reveal. So are you revealing the cover three months before launch? Is that, did I get that right?

00:33:28

Lindsay Franklin

Six months.

00:33:29

Paul Regnier

Six months before launch?

00:33:30

Lindsay Franklin

Six months. I know.

00:33:31

Paul Regnier

Wow.

00:33:31

Lindsay Franklin

It's a pretty long lead up. And some traditional publishers have kind of condensed that process. um It just, it yeah, it really depends.

00:33:38

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:33:41

Lindsay Franklin

um And this is just what we do.

00:33:42

Paul Regnier

I always do like a month. I'm surprised that six because my fear is that like in six months, people will like completely forget about it.

00:33:43

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah.

00:33:50

Paul Regnier

But I guess it sounds like you're sort of like continuing this momentum.

00:33:51

Lindsay Franklin

Yes.

00:33:54

Paul Regnier

That's just like the first match you throw in the fire. And then you're like, hey, like I've got all this other stuff.

00:33:58

Lindsay Franklin

Right.

00:34:01

Paul Regnier

Here's some gifts and follow me and do these quests and all this kind of stuff. So you're kind of continuing it where I don't have all that extra momentum where I'm like, Like, OK, here's the cover, and next month it's coming out.

00:34:05

Lindsay Franklin

Yes.

00:34:12

Paul Regnier

um

00:34:12

Lindsay Franklin

Which is valid. Like we said at the at the beginning, that is a really valid way to do it. And honestly, even with as much as I love to do my street team stuff, if I were doing this indie and fully in control of every part of the process, I would probably do maybe a three-month lead up, I think.

00:34:31

Paul Regnier

Oh, really?

00:34:31

Lindsay Franklin

Three months would, yes, I think that would kind of be the sweet spot for me, maybe four, um because then there are fewer months between cover reveal and arcs, pre-order gifts, and then, you know, the actual release dates.

00:34:32

Paul Regnier

OK.

00:34:46

Lindsay Franklin

So there's a little bit less time to fill with that. And you're kind of, that would be the sweet spot for me, I think. I understand that at Enclave, we've got, there are a lot of moving parts, right?

00:34:56

Lindsay Franklin

Because we've got all these different books happening and lots of different things that need to occur.

Strategies for New Authors Without a Following

00:35:01

Lindsay Franklin

So that's why we have the six month lead up time. But if I were just doing this for myself, I would probably choose three to four months.

00:35:08

Paul Regnier

Gotcha. Okay, so I'm going to rewind just a little bit before we continue because um I'm curious for those that, let's say there's there's someone out there that's a newer author and they're just like, oh no, this is my first book.

00:35:09

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah.

00:35:23

Paul Regnier

Because we talk a lot about like, oh, you need to get your launch team from your newsletter, all the people that are already following you.

00:35:28

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

00:35:29

Paul Regnier

So all of a sudden you have this brand new author. It's like, I don't even have a newsletter. like What do I do? like How do I get a launch team? How do I get people to support you know my launch? like Where do I draw those people from?

00:35:41

Paul Regnier

And I know you had a pretty successful launch for your first book, Storypeddler. Um, so how did you go about that when it's like, I don't have a newsletter, I don't have any followers yet.

00:35:53

Paul Regnier

I mean, I assume you didn't have a newsletter at that point. Maybe you did. You can tell me. Um, but what did you do when you, this was like your first book, how did you kind of build up that launch team and buzz and all that kind of stuff?

00:36:06

Lindsay Franklin

Yes. And that really was where I was at. I honestly cannot remember. If I had a newsletter, it would have been quite small. So it might have existed, but it would have been really tiny.

00:36:15

Paul Regnier

Right.

00:36:17

Lindsay Franklin

I want to say I had about 200 followers on Instagram. I did have a fairly engaged Facebook following at that time because this was in the year of our Lord, 2018.

00:36:28

Lindsay Franklin

It was, you know, different. Okay.

00:36:34

Lindsay Franklin

Oh, I lost you for a second.

00:36:37

Paul Regnier

Yes, we're still recording.

00:36:37

Lindsay Franklin

Okay.

00:36:38

Paul Regnier

Sorry, sorry every listener.

00:36:38

Lindsay Franklin

Okay. We're back. ah We had a a little blip.

00:36:41

Paul Regnier

i don't know what happened there. A little glitch in the matrix. I saw two cats walking by and they were identical. I'm going to, just in case this is coming from my side, I'm going to turn on my Wi-Fi as sort of like a backup feed in case it's me.

00:36:55

Lindsay Franklin

Perfect.

00:36:57

Paul Regnier

I don't know. um But according to this, it's still recording. So,

00:37:02

Lindsay Franklin

Okay. I think we're still good. We will, we'll keep yapping as though we're still recording we'll find out in post-production what this all looks like.

00:37:07

Paul Regnier

yep. Exactly.

00:37:10

Lindsay Franklin

Sorry about that, everybody.

00:37:10

Paul Regnier

Exactly. We apologize for the technical difficulties. Your program will resume very soon.

00:37:15

Lindsay Franklin

Oh, ah goodness.

00:37:18

Paul Regnier

Okay. So you were talking about your first book. You're talking about like you didn't, if you had a newsletter, you don't even know if you had one, you didn't have that many followers on socials.

00:37:22

Lindsay Franklin

Yes.

00:37:25

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:37:28

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:37:29

Paul Regnier

Um, so yeah.

00:37:30

Lindsay Franklin

Yep.

00:37:30

Paul Regnier

How did you proceed at that point?

00:37:33

Lindsay Franklin

Yes. So my strategy with this was to try to create the feeling of a fandom, which was a little bit weird to do because no one had read the book.

00:37:41

Paul Regnier

Hmm.

00:37:45

Lindsay Franklin

There's like five people who have ever read this book, but I talked about it a little bit, not overwhelmingly so, but I gave just, you know, a little bit of information.

00:37:47

Paul Regnier

Right.

00:37:54

Lindsay Franklin

We had the back cover copy. We had a beautiful cover. um from Kirk DuPont. So I did not build my team prior to the cover reveal for book one. That is something that I do now because I do have more of a following on social media.

00:38:09

Lindsay Franklin

I have readers. And so it's it's a little bit different. But for book one, I'm pretty sure that we had the cover was already out there, the back cover copy or the blurb or the description, whatever you want to call that.

00:38:12

Paul Regnier

right

00:38:21

Lindsay Franklin

It's all the same thing. The copy on the back um was out there so that I could start to kind of hype that up.

00:38:24

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:38:28

Lindsay Franklin

And i really wanted, this was my thing for this book, I really wanted to be able to give everybody a paperback copy of the book.

00:38:38

Lindsay Franklin

If they were on my team, they were going to get a paperback copy. And i don't think that they came to me first. I feel like maybe the publisher sent them out. I might've sent them out myself. Gosh, it's been a minute now to try to remember all of the details. I might've sent them out myself. I can't recall. If I sent them out myself, then I would have signed them before sending them. But I had a certain amount that I was going to get for free based on my contract. My publisher is going to provide X number of paperbacks. And I said, okay, I need to keep my team small enough that I can send a paperback to every single person. And I wanted there to be kind of a fun Swag thing too for pre-orders and just all the things and I think probably everybody on my team also got that swag and I wanted to create the feeling of like, you know, I'm trying to think which fandoms were really big at that time, you know, Harry Potter was probably still a really big fandom but kind of, you know, creating that vibe of like,

00:39:36

Lindsay Franklin

fans and people who are excited to get the little swag things and and what have you. And I thought, okay, most of the people who sign up for this are probably going to be my friends and people who have you know been on the journey with me.

00:39:48

Lindsay Franklin

But half of my team who ended up signing up were people who I didn't know personally. They were readers, half, yes.

00:39:55

Paul Regnier

Half. Okay, that's big. Yeah.

00:39:57

Lindsay Franklin

And so my team was was pretty small, but it was like 40 people and 20 of them were like brand new to me people. And they were readers, they were reviewers.

00:40:05

Paul Regnier

Wow.

00:40:06

Lindsay Franklin

So I had posted about it on Facebook. I think I probably posted about it in groups that would have been interested, you know, like the the Realm Makers group on Facebook or something.

00:40:16

Paul Regnier

Sure.

00:40:17

Lindsay Franklin

um And I would have, yes, put it out there on Instagram. So I would have done all the normal channels. And so you don't have to find like 200 people. You don't have to find 300 people. You just have to find...

00:40:31

Lindsay Franklin

20 people who are really excited to read the story and that team of 40. So 20 people I knew and 20 people I didn't know, they were like self-selecting for people who read the description and thought,

00:40:48

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah, I want to be part of that. That sounds really cool. I want to be in on this. And that team of 40, my original street team was so special. I just, it was such a like cool group.

00:41:00

Lindsay Franklin

I started a Facebook group, like a secret Facebook group that was just them. And me in there and we would chat frequently. And so I know Facebook groups are not necessarily the thing anymore.

00:41:10

Paul Regnier

Yeah. Yeah.

00:41:13

Lindsay Franklin

But if you've got a small kind of intimate, very excited fandom type team like that, some platform where you can build community, I think is a really excellent way to launch that debut book out there.

00:41:28

Lindsay Franklin

So whether that's a discord server or whatever works for you, some kind of group chat somewhere, whatever platform

Library Targeting for Book Placement

00:41:34

Paul Regnier

yeah

00:41:34

Lindsay Franklin

makes sense for you and your team, that would be kind of how I would recommend doing that, where you've got this, like, it doesn't have to be big.

00:41:41

Lindsay Franklin

It can be small, but mighty. And this team that is just, they really feel like they're going to love the story. And a lot of them are correct about that. And then just organically, they get out there and talk about it and they spread the word.

00:41:54

Lindsay Franklin

They recommend that book to all of their reader people. Or for me, because I write YA, I had a lot of parents in that group that were connected to homeschool communities. Or they have other parents who know that this is my reader friend, my reader friend mom, and she's going to recommend books for my kids.

00:42:10

Lindsay Franklin

And I mean, it just grew from from that space. And it was organic. I didn't pay for any of that. my My investment there was taking some of these copies I was going to get for free anyway.

00:42:23

Lindsay Franklin

And rather than selling them, which is something you can do with your free copies that you get from your publisher, right? You can take those to live events and sell them. But rather than doing that, oh we're going to give away most of those and and just kind of hope that that it's that the people who receive them love it enough to talk about it.

00:42:43

Lindsay Franklin

And they did.

00:42:44

Paul Regnier

Yeah. And you mentioned something that's, I think, important too, because there's trends, right? Like when you were doing this, Facebook groups were kind of a big thing.

00:42:56

Paul Regnier

I don't think they they are anymore, or at least they're not where they were ah back then.

00:42:57

Lindsay Franklin

Right.

00:42:59

Lindsay Franklin

No.

00:43:01

Paul Regnier

um So part of it is finding like...

00:43:02

Lindsay Franklin

Yay.

00:43:05

Paul Regnier

you know, what's really working now, right? Like I know Substack is kind of a thing now.

00:43:08

Lindsay Franklin

here

00:43:10

Paul Regnier

I don't know. I don't know how Substack necessarily plays into like book launch, like success, maybe. um i haven't used it enough to know.

00:43:21

Paul Regnier

I've done little things where I'll do like, because you can record like a little video or something like, hey, here's my new book. or or you could send out like a newsletter. Cause you kind of have your own you know quote unquote newsletter on there that you're sending out, which is almost like a secondary kind of supplemental newsletter to your main newsletter.

00:43:34

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah.

00:43:39

Paul Regnier

i would i wouldn't say replace I wouldn't say use that as a replacement because it's, I don't know, it works differently. Um, but, uh, but yeah, so at the time group, Facebook groups were good and, and you had a Facebook group that was really vibrant and that really helped in that initial launch.

00:43:52

Lindsay Franklin

who

00:43:57

Paul Regnier

So very cool. So, and then you ended up like really having a pretty nice initial book launch.

00:44:00

Lindsay Franklin

yeah

00:44:04

Paul Regnier

Is there any other tip for that initial book launch when it's your first book that you might, you know, think is something, a good practice to have?

00:44:09

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:44:13

Lindsay Franklin

Yes, there were two other things that I did that I think would be helpful to mention. And one of those things was i targeted libraries with an ad campaign.

00:44:21

Paul Regnier

whom

00:44:23

Lindsay Franklin

And I know that sounds kind of weird, maybe. I don't know. I don't know if it sounds weird.

00:44:26

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:44:27

Lindsay Franklin

I don't know how many people do that.

00:44:29

Paul Regnier

This is a new one for me.

00:44:29

Lindsay Franklin

But yes, i made i made little postcards.

00:44:30

Paul Regnier

I haven't even heard this.

00:44:35

Lindsay Franklin

And it was like, you know, very brief. There's not much you can fit on a postcard, especially if you're going to feature the cover, which you should. you have a beautiful cover you want to feature that on there um but there was you know a little bit of information maybe like a blurb from you know somebody who endorsed the book um And I sent that to, oh my gosh, how many did I send out for the Story Peddler?

00:44:58

Lindsay Franklin

I can't remember, maybe 500, 500 postcards.

00:45:00

Paul Regnier

Wow. Oh.

00:45:01

Lindsay Franklin

But postcards are are are not expensive to to send, um or they weren't back then. They're probably more now. But um yeah, so I sent those out.

00:45:11

Lindsay Franklin

And this was actually just like divine providence as I was creating this library targeting campaign. we got word from the publisher that Library Journal had reviewed the Story Peddler.

00:45:26

Lindsay Franklin

And so that was like, I couldn't have planned that because, you know, your publisher can send send your manuscript out to a bunch, and they and they should be sending your manuscript out to a bunch of different review outlets, but you can't control that.

00:45:26

Paul Regnier

oh

00:45:32

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:45:41

Lindsay Franklin

You know, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, they decide what they're going to review and what they're not going to review. So This, we couldn't have engineered it, but I'm very grateful that my publisher sent that manuscript to Library Journal and Library Journal decided to review it.

00:45:59

Lindsay Franklin

So as I'm in the process of sticking address labels on, I get word of this and we rushed out and I think I've submitted to Vistaprint really fast and got some stickers made that said reviewed in like the March 8th ah you know, edition of Library Journal.

00:46:15

Lindsay Franklin

So that would have been in 2018. The book was supposed to release in May. And we had not seen the review at that point. So I didn't know if it was even a positive review.

00:46:24

Paul Regnier

Yeah, fingers crossed.

00:46:25

Lindsay Franklin

And right, it was like, maybe the, you know, the riskiest thing that I've ever done is, oh, draw your attention, library buyer to this review.

00:46:35

Lindsay Franklin

And I have no idea if it's even positive yet. But we were hoping And it turned out to be a starred review that was the debut of the month for that issue.

00:46:39

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:46:45

Paul Regnier

Nice.

00:46:46

Lindsay Franklin

And so it ended up being very positive. And the Story Peddler ended up in hundreds of libraries across the country.

00:46:53

Paul Regnier

Wow.

00:46:54

Lindsay Franklin

So that was another thing.

00:46:55

Paul Regnier

I didn't even know that was the thing. So how do you even go about that?

00:46:56

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah.

00:46:58

Paul Regnier

Do you say like, hey, I'm ah i'm a debut author.

00:47:03

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:47:03

Paul Regnier

like I'm wondering what you even say on the postcard. And and if is this like a common practice or is this just something like you decided, I'm going to try this wild new strategy.

00:47:06

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:47:13

Paul Regnier

like What do you say? Do you say, I'm a debut author. i have a new book coming out. Would you like to carry it in your library? like What did you say?

00:47:21

Lindsay Franklin

It was, my goodness, I'm going to have to see if I can actually find, if I can find one of those postcards, because surely I have some somewhere. And I actually did this again with Emlyn. So like both book ones in my series where send it out and try to get it in libraries. I was a library reader as a kid, so I love to have my books in libraries. But yeah. I believe that we had like a, either the full description from the back cover or maybe a condensed version of it. And I know it had the cover on there and then it would have just very briefly had like a little mini version of my bio on there. And so it was less personal than I'm a debut author, but it was like,

00:48:04

Lindsay Franklin

this book is coming out and here's some of the hype, you know, for, for this book, here's, you know, the blurb from, ah Jill Williamson. I think I might've put Jill's on, on that postcard for Storypeddler.

00:48:15

Paul Regnier

Like the endorsement quote or whatever.

00:48:16

Lindsay Franklin

I can't remember. Uh-huh.

00:48:18

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:48:18

Lindsay Franklin

Yep. Like a little snippet of her endorsement quote. And then, you know, for readers of, and then listed a couple of comps um just to give the library buyer ah an idea of where this might be placed and if they might be interested in looking at it.

00:48:31

Paul Regnier

Hmm.

00:48:33

Lindsay Franklin

And then, you know, had that additional sticker on on there of reviewed in library journals so that they most libraries are going to be subscribed to that. So,

00:48:42

Paul Regnier

Sure, right.

00:48:43

Lindsay Franklin

And some of them do their buying just straight off of that list. They will just go down and see any of the positive reviews from Library Journal for that month, and they'll just buy. boom Boom, boom, boom, boom, straight down the list.

00:48:52

Paul Regnier

Wow.

00:48:53

Lindsay Franklin

So some of those those library ah purchases of the Story Peddler would have been organic from the starred review that that they would have seen in their copy.

00:49:03

Lindsay Franklin

And then others were probably helped along by my postcard campaign campaign.

00:49:06

Paul Regnier

Right.

00:49:06

Lindsay Franklin

So that was one thing that I did. And, you know, that that worked for me. And again, it's personally important for me to have my books in libraries because I was an avid reader whose family did not, like they could not support my reading habits.

00:49:14

Paul Regnier

Right.

00:49:23

Lindsay Franklin

We did not have the money to just buy me all of the books that I wanted to read. So I was ah a library borrower. So it's just a very full circle thing for me to have my books in libraries for other people to be able to check out.

00:49:36

Lindsay Franklin

It's important to me. So that was something that I will probably continue to do as long as I can get those addresses to, that's kind of the tricky part is getting the addresses of where you need to mail all of those two and finding those lists, but they exist.

00:49:50

Paul Regnier

Right.

00:49:52

Lindsay Franklin

They are out there. That was one thing.

00:49:54

Paul Regnier

Okay. So that was one thing you said you had two things.

00:49:57

Lindsay Franklin

Yes. The other thing I learned with the Story Peddler, I was so excited because my dad, who is an artist, he's an illustrator, and he actually drew the maps for all of my Weaver Trilogy books, so which was super cool to have his art, especially in that series where art is magic and was so inspired by my like childhood books

00:50:09

Paul Regnier

Oh, wow. That's cool.

00:50:15

Paul Regnier

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

00:50:19

Lindsay Franklin

standing next to his drafting table and watching him draw, you know, so it was very cool to have another full circle moment to have his maps.

00:50:25

Paul Regnier

Yeah, sentimental too.

00:50:27

Lindsay Franklin

Yes, very much.

00:50:27

Paul Regnier

That's so cool.

00:50:28

Lindsay Franklin

So I thought it would be really cool to do like the map art printed on kind of parchmenty looking paper, you know, as one of the pre-order goodies, which Love that for a pre-order goodie because it's super cheap to produce.

Cost-effective Mailing for Pre-orders

00:50:43

Lindsay Franklin

It's basically just a a copy like you know or ah a you know black and white print essentially at you know Kinko's or wherever. Does Kinko's still exist? Yes.

00:50:53

Lindsay Franklin

I don't know. Office Depot.

00:50:53

Paul Regnier

i know to

00:50:54

Lindsay Franklin

That's where I go. Oh my, I just aged myself, I think. FedEx Kinkos, that's still a thing, right?

00:50:57

Paul Regnier

I remember Kinko's

00:50:59

Lindsay Franklin

ah Anyway, I digress.

00:51:01

Paul Regnier

as far as I know.

00:51:03

Lindsay Franklin

but um So yeah, super cheap because whatever the cost of just one single black and white print is, you just print it on that nice paper. And so very easy to to create that piece of swag. And it looks beautiful.

00:51:16

Lindsay Franklin

However, but that was a full you know size sheet of paper that I was printing.

00:51:16

Paul Regnier

Right.

00:51:22

Lindsay Franklin

And so then i had to mail that out. And you don't want to mail it in in something where it's going to get bent or whatever. So I ended up with these full size eight and a half by 11 rigid mailers that I had to send out.

00:51:34

Paul Regnier

Oh my goodness.

00:51:36

Lindsay Franklin

And so that was kind of pricey. that was They were expensive to mail.

00:51:39

Paul Regnier

you

00:51:41

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah.

00:51:41

Paul Regnier

I feel like you're single handedly keeping your local post office afloat. Like you're like their number one contributor.

00:51:48

Lindsay Franklin

That was a mistake. That was a mistake. And so um I learned that after that point,

00:51:54

Paul Regnier

Sounds expensive. Yeah.

00:51:56

Lindsay Franklin

it It was pricey. But again, that was my debut. That was my first launch. And so the numbers were much smaller.

00:52:00

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:52:02

Lindsay Franklin

So it's not like, it you know, we we didn't we didn't have to like put out a second mortgage on the house.

00:52:04

Paul Regnier

Oh, right, right. Yeah.

00:52:07

Lindsay Franklin

It was fine. It was still kind of within budget because it was a much smaller number of things I was sending out.

00:52:08

Paul Regnier

Right.

00:52:13

Lindsay Franklin

But I thought, okay, next time. I am going to make sure everything I have i send will fit in a four by six envelope.

00:52:16

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:52:21

Lindsay Franklin

And so for every launch thereafter, I've done every piece of swag that I send out for pre-order gifts and, and ideally for my street team swag as well, everything will fit in a little four by six envelope so that I can use standard stamps and it's just a lot easier, a lot more cost-effective.

00:52:22

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:52:34

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:52:37

Paul Regnier

yeah

00:52:40

Paul Regnier

Yeah. ah Gosh, I'm thinking like you would probably be so great at a Kickstarter campaign because, you know, those are all about all the extra little swag and gifts and tears of like, hey, if you start, join me here and i'll you'll get this.

00:52:55

Paul Regnier

And you know what I mean? Which is an episode for another time.

00:52:57

Lindsay Franklin

I love those.

00:52:59

Paul Regnier

But like I would, it sounds like you're almost already doing that with with all these things.

00:53:00

Lindsay Franklin

Yes. but

00:53:05

Paul Regnier

So, yeah.

00:53:05

Lindsay Franklin

I would love that.

00:53:07

Paul Regnier

Okay, so good. That's good tips for like the first-time author um if you're really excited about buying a lot of stamps and envelopes. um but So let's go back to where you are now.

00:53:21

Paul Regnier

You're at sort of, I guess we stopped at like the three-month mark.

00:53:21

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

00:53:25

Paul Regnier

You've done your cover reveal, you've got your launch team, you've got your arc readers and all this. um So now where do you go as you're pulling it into the second half of your launch? What do you do at that point?

00:53:39

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah. So at that point, we're going to probably launch the pre-order gifts and put that out there. And it's good timing because the street team members have, a lot of them have read the ARC at that point.

00:53:52

Lindsay Franklin

So they've read it and they can't review on Amazon or any retail sites or most retail sites, I think, at that point prior to release date. But they can start to review on Goodreads and they can review on their socials and start talking about it.

00:54:01

Paul Regnier

Right. Hmm. oh

00:54:06

Lindsay Franklin

So... That's what a lot of team members are doing. And then when it's like, boom, here's the pre-order gifts, they get really hyped about that. And they just go out and do all of this very grassroots kind of promotion. And especially this last time when my day job swamped me and my personal life swamped me because I got sick in the middle of all of this. And I just...

00:54:33

Lindsay Franklin

couldn't be on socials the way that I needed to be during my launch period and things just got yes I picked up you know hand foot and mouth disease from licking all the stamps now that's not what I had but I did have COVID that's what I had um so yeah no I did not lick stamps and send my COVID off to people though did not do that I promise I would not do that

00:54:37

Paul Regnier

Probably from licking all those stamps.

00:54:43

Paul Regnier

ah

00:54:49

Paul Regnier

Oh boy. era Your whole street team got sick.

00:54:59

Lindsay Franklin

Oh my gosh, that' that's awful. I'm like sending the measles in the mail. Terrible. No, i will not ever. um Yes. So my team was so instrumental in keeping the conversation going online.

00:55:15

Lindsay Franklin

And I could at least like share their posts to my stories or repost some of their things when I was

00:55:19

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

00:55:20

Lindsay Franklin

sick and down for the count. I just couldn't. And so that was really cool. And yeah, I love to hire artists during that phase and get just really, really beautiful stuff that that I know my readers are going to be excited about.

00:55:24

Paul Regnier

Yeah. Yeah.

00:55:34

Lindsay Franklin

So this time I did... um character art for my kind of main couple in this in this story or in this series. And people flipped out over that. And then I had another artist design um a sticker for Frank the Wyvern, which is She's a fan favorite character, even though this wyvern has not one line of dialogue or anything. She doesn't speak. But she's she's very sassy, um even though she can't actually say words. And she became a fan favorite immediately with book one. So I thought, OK, book two, we definitely need some Frank swag. um So it's just that's all super fun. And so that kind of comes after we do the arc stuff for the team. And then we just go hard on doing endorsement reveals, continuing to push the pre-order stuff until if and until I run out. It depends on how much I produce of it. And that changes. Sometimes I have a really limited amount of pre-order stuff that I'm going to do if I decide to do something pricier. Or this time I kind of went...

00:56:38

Lindsay Franklin

a little lower key where I had a significant volume and it was like, okay, anybody who wants to, I could probably meet the demand for it at this point. So, um so yeah, it just kind of depends on what I'm producing and where, where the spirit moves me with what I decide to make that time.

00:56:56

Lindsay Franklin

If it's, you know, if it's going to be art prints or, or stickers or gosh, what else have I done? I've done all kinds of things and book plates are always part of my pre-order, swag thing because those are just stickers and really easy for me to sign and then people can put that in their hardcover that they pre-ordered yay so yeah that's that's kind of what we do yeah and I'll do endorsement reveals that kind of keeps the hype going right up until launch day and then boom

00:57:16

Paul Regnier

Okay.

00:57:23

Paul Regnier

And is this on socials, on your newsletter?

00:57:26

Lindsay Franklin

Both. yeah both um

00:57:28

Paul Regnier

Like what? Okay. Okay.

00:57:31

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah, both. kind of everywhere. and I do try to i try to keep some things exclusive for my newsletter, sometimes offer them a little something extra, because like you said, i think of those as my core issues. people. Although sometimes I know I just have some very peripheral kind of interested people. Maybe they signed up a year ago for a giveaway or something. We were doing a big giveaway, sign up for my newsletter, and then they decided to stick around. So some people on my list have never even read any of my books, but I have a lot of my core readers there. And so I like to maybe have something a little

00:58:06

Lindsay Franklin

exclusive there or that's revealed to them first. I like to reveal things there first and then go wide with it on socials. So just kind of managing those different communities and making sure that everybody feels appreciated in that space where I have them because I really do appreciate them.

00:58:23

Lindsay Franklin

Because all of these strategies that we're talking about today would not be successful if nobody was listening, if nobody cared about what I was saying and or what my team was saying.

00:58:32

Paul Regnier

Right.

00:58:35

Lindsay Franklin

And so I really do appreciate the people who are there on my socials or commenting on my posts or have given me permission to send emails into their inbox with how many emails we get these days.

00:58:41

Paul Regnier

Sure.

00:58:46

Lindsay Franklin

Oh, my gosh.

00:58:47

Paul Regnier

Oh my goodness, yeah.

00:58:48

Lindsay Franklin

Right?

00:58:50

Paul Regnier

Right, so so it sounds like at this point, you've got people doing like the pre-orders.

00:58:51

Lindsay Franklin

So...

00:58:57

Paul Regnier

People are leaving like at least Goodreads reviews, because it sounds like Goodreads allows early reviews before release.

00:58:57

Lindsay Franklin

Mm hmm.

00:59:06

Paul Regnier

can't do it on Amazon till launch day. And then you're, you know, you're posting and sending your newsletter with endorsement quotes. And, um, do you do that thing where you kind of give a line from the book or a little passage from the book?

00:59:20

Paul Regnier

Like, Hey, here's one of my favorite passages in my upcoming book to do that kind of stuff too.

00:59:26

Lindsay Franklin

I do. so if Ideally, if I were on socials during my launch as much as I wanted to be, then yes, um I would be doing that. my I will give assignments like that to my team, like pull your favorite quote and post that on socials.

00:59:42

Lindsay Franklin

Like that might be a quest for for that month or a side quest for them to do. So that's also, yes, effective. And something else I want to say before I forget is that all of this stuff that we're talking about leading up to you can also do a lot of this after the fact.

00:59:59

Lindsay Franklin

It's not as though, oh, my book is launched and now it's that's it, it's over.

01:00:01

Paul Regnier

Right. Yeah.

01:00:04

Lindsay Franklin

No, because of exactly what I mentioned or alluded to earlier in the episode where I talked about how Amazon will have, and other retailers too, but Amazon does this the most, where they will have it for pre-order at full price and then they over time will drop the price super, super low.

01:00:22

Lindsay Franklin

This is what they have done with books for decades and why so many bookstores have gone out of business because they can't compete with those really, really low prices that Amazon will put on those books. So

01:00:32

Paul Regnier

Are you saying, so that pi price drop, I don't quite understand. Are you saying for the ebook, for the paperback? What are you saying?

01:00:39

Lindsay Franklin

no, for the physical books. So for ebook, yes.

01:00:42

Paul Regnier

For the paperback and the hard cover.

01:00:45

Lindsay Franklin

Paperbacks and hardcovers.

01:00:45

Paul Regnier

Okay, because because on the indie side of things, I set that price and it doesn't automatically change.

01:00:46

Lindsay Franklin

Yes. Mm-hmm.

01:00:53

Paul Regnier

So what, does this, did they arbitrarily do it for traditionally published books?

01:00:53

Lindsay Franklin

Yes.

01:00:59

Lindsay Franklin

Yes. So we are in control.

01:01:00

Paul Regnier

Oh, OK, that's interesting. I didn't know that.

01:01:03

Lindsay Franklin

Yes. We are in control of our um ebook pricing. So if there's ever an e-book sale, that's something that we as a publisher are running, that we're, you know, we want to drop this price.

01:01:07

Paul Regnier

Huh. Yeah.

01:01:15

Lindsay Franklin

You know, we currently have Kathy Tyre's ah e-book box set for her Firebird series is $7.99 for, you know, the month of February as a reader appreciation thing and leading up to her launch um of her new series next month.

01:01:21

Paul Regnier

Right.

01:01:30

Lindsay Franklin

So that's something we... we designed um when it comes to physical books. So whether paperback or hardcover, we set the retail price and Amazon keeps it the retail price throughout the pre-order period.

01:01:43

Lindsay Franklin

And then they control the price after that. So when you see, and they do this to, to all traditional publishers that I'm aware of, you see it on super gigantic, big name, big name, bestseller um authors out there where they, you know, you'll see a paperback for like $2.

01:02:01

Lindsay Franklin

of their their book. They drop it super low.

01:02:03

Paul Regnier

Wow.

01:02:04

Lindsay Franklin

And Amazon's pricing strategy has always been that books are their loss leaders. So when you look at that and go, how can Amazon possibly be making money on those books?

01:02:10

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:02:14

Lindsay Franklin

The answer is they're not.

01:02:15

Paul Regnier

Huh.

01:02:16

Lindsay Franklin

They're not. That is not the strategy. The strategy is price the books beneath what they're paying for them. Okay. So they lose money on every one of those sales, but train the consumer to shop exclusively on Amazon for books, but also everything, everything.

01:02:33

Paul Regnier

books.

01:02:36

Paul Regnier

That's interesting. I wonder why they allow indie publishers to lock in their prices and have full control over that.

01:02:45

Lindsay Franklin

I feel as though, yeah.

01:02:45

Paul Regnier

And they don't, cause I would imagine they would just have some stipulation like Amazon reserves the right to adjust your prices whenever they feel like it.

01:02:47

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

01:02:53

Paul Regnier

You know what i mean? Like, and what are you going to say?

01:02:54

Lindsay Franklin

Right.

01:02:55

Paul Regnier

You'll say, okay, cause you're Amazon and you can push me around, I guess. But like, they don't like I set my prices and it stays there until I even set my prices for different countries um to the penny and it stays there.

01:03:01

Lindsay Franklin

Right.

01:03:08

Lindsay Franklin

who Yep.

01:03:11

Paul Regnier

And you because you get a percentage

01:03:11

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah. That's how it is with the e-books for us. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

01:03:15

Paul Regnier

yeah That's so weird. Wow, I didn't even know that. What a trip.

01:03:18

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah, I think they treat they treat indie authors and traditional publishers quite differently. They they interact very differently. in And but there's both positives and negatives on you know both sides or each side of of that equation, where some things that they do to indie authors are really you know, it's really tough over there.

01:03:32

Paul Regnier

Mm-hmm.

01:03:39

Lindsay Franklin

And then, you know, some stuff that they do with traditional publishers, really tough over there. So this is one of those things that's really difficult where, because.

01:03:47

Paul Regnier

Huh. You'd think they'd give preferential treatment to the big publishers and all us little peon indie authors.

01:03:53

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah. ah

01:03:56

Paul Regnier

They'd be like, hey, you know you just got to take the crumbs that we give you. So that's really interesting. Wow. How cool.

01:04:03

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah.

01:04:04

Paul Regnier

Point one for indie authors.

01:04:04

Lindsay Franklin

So, and it does depend on the way that the publisher's contract is set up. So it it depends on like, we are not necessarily making our percentage off of whatever they decide to charge for it.

01:04:13

Paul Regnier

Hmm.

01:04:24

Lindsay Franklin

We're going to make the same as the publisher. So whatever rate we've negotiated with them, that is what they pay for our books. So that's why I say they lose money on it.

01:04:32

Paul Regnier

Oh, okay. That's that there, there's the catch right there.

01:04:35

Lindsay Franklin

Yes. There it is. There it is.

01:04:37

Paul Regnier

So you're still, you're still making the same price for each sale and they're, they're eating it, I guess they're eating the loss and probably writing it off at the end of the year.

01:04:39

Lindsay Franklin

yeah

01:04:47

Lindsay Franklin

Yes, they are.

01:04:50

Paul Regnier

Wow. Okay.

01:04:50

Lindsay Franklin

Yep.

01:04:51

Paul Regnier

Huh?

01:04:51

Lindsay Franklin

And what they have done, if you look at what Amazon... Because Amazon started as books, right? It was like just books.

01:04:57

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:04:58

Lindsay Franklin

But over the years, it's become like the largest department store, right? In in the world where they sell everything. And so they have effectively trained us with their prime free shipping and all these things that they offer, super cheap books, all of that.

01:05:10

Paul Regnier

Right. Yeah.

01:05:13

Lindsay Franklin

They've trained us to shop for everything there. And we do. And so it doesn't matter that they lose money on I'm guessing thousands and thousands and thousands of copies of books they are losing money on every single day.

01:05:17

Paul Regnier

Right.

01:05:24

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:05:26

Lindsay Franklin

And it doesn't matter because they are selling such high volumes of everything else. But this is why a lot of people boycott Amazon because they look at that and go, oo but but you know, and they're not they're not OK with it.

01:05:35

Paul Regnier

Right.

01:05:36

Lindsay Franklin

We as authors and publishers like a most of us need to work with Amazon. It's a really important market for us.

01:05:44

Paul Regnier

Oh, yeah.

01:05:44

Lindsay Franklin

But.

01:05:45

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:05:45

Lindsay Franklin

That's why when you hear some people talk about in the book space, talking about boycotting Amazon, whether as an indie author, because we know several who will only sell direct to consumer, like come to my website and that's the only place you can find my books.

01:05:59

Lindsay Franklin

I've seen several indie authors do that because they have a big enough following who will follow them.

01:06:03

Paul Regnier

Yeah, when you're big, you can do that.

01:06:05

Lindsay Franklin

When you're big, you can do that.

01:06:05

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:06:06

Lindsay Franklin

And it's kind of like, I don't know of any big publishers who do that where they only sell direct to consumer. i can't think of any, maybe. Maybe.

01:06:15

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:06:15

Lindsay Franklin

If our listeners know of any, y'all can tell us in the comments about that.

01:06:18

Paul Regnier

Bright.

01:06:18

Lindsay Franklin

big But I can't think of any. ah But yeah, it's it's really kind of fascinating what what they do. and um But circling back to the launch ah topic is because of this, because as consumers, we have been trained and times are tough.

01:06:34

Lindsay Franklin

I get it. If you if like the $5 hardcover is the difference between you being able to read the book or not read the book, ah buy the $5 hardcover. No worries.

01:06:43

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:06:44

Lindsay Franklin

you know like I'm in support of that. It's fine. um And so you know because of that, books can have kind of a longer tail on the launch period, so to speak, where you know people, consumers, readers might be waiting for that time when the price is going to drop.

01:07:00

Lindsay Franklin

like I think Emlyn is probably $9 or $10 on Amazon currently, and that's ah the retail price is $24.99 on that.

01:07:01

Paul Regnier

yeah

01:07:08

Lindsay Franklin

So people might be waiting for that kind of price cut. And so you can sort of have ah almost another sales burst or another launch burst almost when the price starts to kind of tick down on um Amazon for traditionally published authors who are in that position.

01:07:22

Paul Regnier

yeah

01:07:25

Lindsay Franklin

So you you don't have to feel like, oh, the launch is done and it didn't go great and now we're just done. I'm i'm not even going to talk about this book anymore. No, you keep keep doing that kind of like promotion-y stuff to to keep the momentum going.

01:07:39

Paul Regnier

Yeah. Yeah.

01:07:40

Lindsay Franklin

And especially if it's a series, yeah, keep going with it.

01:07:43

Paul Regnier

yeah You have to or else it'll just fall into obscurity.

01:07:44

Lindsay Franklin

You can have a long tail. Yeah.

01:07:47

Paul Regnier

Even if you had a great launch, you got to kind of keep something going through ads.

01:07:48

Lindsay Franklin

Yep. Absolutely.

01:07:52

Paul Regnier

I would, that would be my recommend.

01:07:54

Lindsay Franklin

Mm

01:07:54

Paul Regnier

That's how I keep my sales going.

01:07:54

Lindsay Franklin

Yep. Mm

01:07:56

Paul Regnier

Amazon ads, you know, it's just like without those, I don't know, like all the other stuff I've tried and I still do is kind, it kind of helps, but Amazon ads is definitely like the number one, like,

01:08:09

Paul Regnier

you know thing that keeps the momentum going um boy that makes so much sense now now that you've told me about that the arbitrary price drop because i was um i'm these new books that i'm doing and i'm getting ready to launch i mean we're talking about book launch i'm getting ready to launch a new book in about two weeks here it's another middle grade fantasy adventure yeah yeah um and i'm looking for arc readers

01:08:27

Lindsay Franklin

Yay.

01:08:33

Paul Regnier

ah if you'd like to sign up.

01:08:34

Lindsay Franklin

Yay.

01:08:36

Paul Regnier

um I have a link.

01:08:38

Lindsay Franklin

And now where can people do that?

01:08:39

Paul Regnier

ah Yes, thank you.

01:08:39

Lindsay Franklin

You have to tell them where they can go.

01:08:40

Paul Regnier

I have a link on my Instagram account. So it's, if you just look at my bio, you'll see it.

01:08:44

Lindsay Franklin

There you go.

01:08:46

Paul Regnier

But, um but yeah, no, cause I was looking cause I'm publishing in the middle grade fantasy market. So when I was looking at, you know, like some of the best sellers and stuff, I was seeing their hard covers like 10 bucks.

01:09:01

Paul Regnier

And so like, how are they doing that? Because the hardcover is more expensive to create than, because I did a hardcover for my last one, and because I love hardcovers, but it's not, like financially speaking, it's way less profitable than a paperback.

01:09:06

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

01:09:19

Paul Regnier

So i make I make about the same, but um I have to charge like way more for the hardcover, even to make the same as a paperback.

01:09:20

Lindsay Franklin

yes

01:09:29

Paul Regnier

So I'll do the paperback at $14.99, but now for the hardcover, I gotta go like 21 or something like that just to get that same profit.

01:09:38

Lindsay Franklin

Mm-hmm.

01:09:38

Paul Regnier

um So that's why I was wondering, like, I'll see these $10 hardcovers and I'm like, how are they doing that?

01:09:39

Lindsay Franklin

Yep.

01:09:43

Lindsay Franklin

listen

01:09:44

Paul Regnier

But now I know how.

01:09:46

Lindsay Franklin

Now you know how.

01:09:46

Paul Regnier

It's Amazon is doing that and they're still making

01:09:46

Lindsay Franklin

Uh-huh. And they are losing money. They are losing money on that because, yep, and that's how it's not it's not about turning profit for them on each of those individual products.

01:09:50

Paul Regnier

Wow. Okay. I get it.

Market Challenges for Bookstores

01:09:59

Lindsay Franklin

It is more about squashing competition and And training the consumers.

01:09:59

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:10:03

Paul Regnier

Yes. Right.

01:10:05

Lindsay Franklin

So it's, yeah, it does feel kind of, ooh, when you think about it, it's it's not it's not great.

01:10:09

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:10:10

Lindsay Franklin

But that's why, you know, we've lost borders and why Barnes & Noble has had to really like recalibrate what they're doing because this is a ah really um aggressive, aggressive strategy.

01:10:14

Paul Regnier

All right.

01:10:22

Lindsay Franklin

and And that's why they treat indies differently because indies are are likely using PODs So print-on-demand technology.

01:10:23

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:10:31

Lindsay Franklin

And there's just like a different, the the calculus is just different when kind of mathing here with all of this.

01:10:32

Paul Regnier

Right.

01:10:37

Lindsay Franklin

When doing the math, it's it's all going to shake out a little differently when you're talking about those POD books.

01:10:38

Paul Regnier

Mm-hmm.

01:10:44

Lindsay Franklin

So yeah, they they treat them as totally separate entities. It's like two different business models with the way that Amazon interacts with indies versus trad.

01:10:53

Paul Regnier

Yeah. Well, this is officially our longest episode ever.

01:10:58

Lindsay Franklin

ah

01:10:58

Paul Regnier

We've crossed the hour mark. um So we're going to go for two hours.

01:11:01

Lindsay Franklin

Yay!

01:11:04

Paul Regnier

No.

01:11:05

Lindsay Franklin

Woohoo!

01:11:05

Paul Regnier

um So, but but before, cause I don't want to like, and without you getting, cause I think we're up to launch

Launch Day Celebrations and Activities

01:11:13

Paul Regnier

day. Is there any final things you do as you lead up to that actual launch day that we've missed? Yeah.

01:11:20

Lindsay Franklin

Launch day for me is always just yay celebration. the The quest for my team, my team for launch month will have two required quests and it's just yay on release day, post something that's just, oh, the book is out and um then get your review posted to Amazon.

01:11:25

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:11:39

Lindsay Franklin

And I figure it's okay to have two required ones for that month because those are both pretty like expected. And if they've already written the review for Goodreads, super easy to just go, oh, book is out.

01:11:49

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:11:50

Lindsay Franklin

Now I can go copy paste over on Amazon.

01:11:51

Paul Regnier

Copy paste, yeah.

01:11:52

Lindsay Franklin

Yep, that's pretty easy. So that's what we do launch day. i will do different ways of celebrating on launch day. It just depends, you know, if I'm going to do an event at a bookstore or with Emlyn, I did a live, uh, live stream Q and a, and I did that with Morgan Bussey, which was super fun.

01:12:10

Lindsay Franklin

And we had readers submit questions in advance.

01:12:10

Paul Regnier

Huh. huh

01:12:12

Lindsay Franklin

So that was really fun this time because I was traveling in four days after it was very low key. And my big event that I'm doing for Camille is we're going to do a spoiler chat Zoom call in April.

01:12:25

Lindsay Franklin

So that gives everybody time to read it. If they were not on the ARC team or the street team and just got their books in February, then by April, they will hopefully have it read and they can come join the Zoom call and submit questions in advance.

01:12:41

Lindsay Franklin

And I will talk about anything about the whole series because

Post-Launch Strategies and Ads Consultation

01:12:45

Lindsay Franklin

everybody in the room will have read the book. And so that's why it's spoiler chat because we'll you know talk about all the spoilers and just squeal about things and be excited and it'll be super fun.

01:12:55

Lindsay Franklin

Uh-huh.

01:12:56

Paul Regnier

And then and you do that through like a video chat kind of situation?

01:13:00

Lindsay Franklin

Yep.

01:13:00

Paul Regnier

Okay.

01:13:00

Lindsay Franklin

And we'll do that live and then record it for anybody who, um, I'll probably do zoom, I think for this one.

01:13:02

Paul Regnier

On Facebook or?

01:13:06

Paul Regnier

Oh, Zoom.

01:13:07

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah. I'll try zoom.

01:13:08

Paul Regnier

Wait, so just so you're doing it with another author.

01:13:09

Lindsay Franklin

um,

01:13:11

Paul Regnier

You said you did it with Morgan Bussey.

01:13:14

Lindsay Franklin

so

01:13:14

Paul Regnier

And so it's like a dual launch celebration or something like that?

01:13:18

Lindsay Franklin

So last time for Emlyn, we did that on Instagram Live. We did a live stream on Instagram on launch day.

01:13:22

Paul Regnier

Okay. Okay.

01:13:25

Lindsay Franklin

So this one's a little bit different. This one's after the fact. And that one was really fun to do on Instagram on launch day. But different kinds of questions there because you want to avoid spoilers in that context, right?

01:13:37

Lindsay Franklin

Because a lot of people have just gotten their books that day.

01:13:37

Paul Regnier

Yeah. Hmm.

01:13:40

Lindsay Franklin

And so you don't want to like do a bunch of spoilers. So that's why it's really helpful to have another author there. And you can talk more generally about books and about, you know, we could talk about her release that she had done, you know, like six months prior, and just kind of riff off of each other and answer reader questions.

01:13:53

Paul Regnier

m

01:13:57

Lindsay Franklin

So that's a little different vibe. With the spoiler chat, it's going to be like deep diving into the story. So any questions they want to ask about why did you decide to have them jump into this sphere?

01:14:07

Lindsay Franklin

Or how did you come up with the idea for whatever?

01:14:08

Paul Regnier

oh Oh, wow.

01:14:10

Lindsay Franklin

They'll ask real specific questions about this series. And I can deep dive because it's private and on a Zoom call, I can do all the spoilers I want to and not worry about any of my readers who have not gotten there yet with their their books.

01:14:24

Lindsay Franklin

So I'm looking forward to that.

01:14:25

Paul Regnier

And these are just chats that are coming in, like that you're reading and answering kind of? Okay, I haven't done that.

01:14:30

Lindsay Franklin

Yeah. So they can either like, yeah, it's fun.

01:14:30

Paul Regnier

That sounds pretty cool.

01:14:33

Lindsay Franklin

So they can either ask questions in the chat right there live on the call. And also when I send out the link, so I'll send out an email for this that has the Zoom link. I will also have a form in there, like just a Google form, really simple.

01:14:45

Lindsay Franklin

They can just submit questions through ah there. So I'll have some in advance and some will come up live and, you know, maybe yeah I'll bring people on screen to have them ask verbally, you know, just whatever, whatever seems, uh,

01:14:58

Lindsay Franklin

right in the moment I'll do. So it's, it's a really cool thing that doesn't require a ton of advanced prep. I just have to make sure I get the link out there and the forum out there and make sure logistically all of that works.

01:15:11

Lindsay Franklin

But as far as just talking to people, it's just answering questions for 90 minutes. I'm going to do like an hour and a half and yeah, it should be super fun.

01:15:19

Paul Regnier

Dang, that's cool.

01:15:19

Lindsay Franklin

So yeah.

01:15:20

Paul Regnier

Hopefully no one says like, what's up with this plot hole in chapter five, you know, and you're like, oh, darn it.

01:15:25

Lindsay Franklin

I mean, yeah. Okay. We'll fix that in the paperback.

01:15:29

Paul Regnier

right

01:15:30

Lindsay Franklin

ah

01:15:31

Paul Regnier

Oh, man. Well, very cool. um And then any post-launch things other than just kind of keeping that momentum? like My advice was was the ads.

01:15:41

Paul Regnier

and And, you know, I see people doing like,

01:15:42

Lindsay Franklin

Yes. We're going to do a whole episode on that.

01:15:45

Paul Regnier

Should we? Okay. Is that like a whole nother thing?

01:15:47

Lindsay Franklin

Yes.

01:15:48

Paul Regnier

The post launch stuff?

01:15:48

Lindsay Franklin

Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

01:15:49

Paul Regnier

Okay.

01:15:49

Lindsay Franklin

And I'm going to be picking Paul's brain on that one and interviewing because I have no clue. And that's something that we need our resident indie author to educate us on. So I'm excited for that.

01:15:59

Paul Regnier

Yeah. Wow. I mean, gosh, after all these things you did, like I'm like, wow, I'm way behind the eight ball on this because I don't do half that stuff.

01:16:07

Lindsay Franklin

hmm.

01:16:10

Paul Regnier

And you're talking about celebration video. I'm like, I'm celebrating with tri-tip and potatoes at the end.

01:16:16

Lindsay Franklin

Yes, we do that too.

01:16:16

Paul Regnier

i guess I should live stream like, hey, here's my steak dinner. Celebrate with me.

01:16:20

Lindsay Franklin

You you know what?

01:16:21

Paul Regnier

Get your own steak. Yeah.

01:16:22

Lindsay Franklin

You should take a photo and post that and be like, celebrate.

01:16:22

Paul Regnier

ah

01:16:26

Lindsay Franklin

Here we go.

01:16:26

Paul Regnier

Right.

01:16:26

Lindsay Franklin

Have the book with you in the steak photo.

01:16:26

Paul Regnier

Yeah. See, I don't think of those things. I i don't know what it is.

01:16:30

Lindsay Franklin

he

01:16:30

Paul Regnier

like

01:16:31

Lindsay Franklin

but

01:16:31

Paul Regnier

Or I think like, oh, this is so lame. like no one Everyone's going to think this is stupid.

01:16:34

Lindsay Franklin

and no but

01:16:36

Paul Regnier

Why would I do that? um But I will tell you like the the thing that I am interested in doing and I may do is you know the whole AI video stuff, which is like crazy what it can do now.

Creative AI in Book Promotion

01:16:51

Paul Regnier

I was thinking about doing some book promotion stuff with that, where you can video yourself, like just running through a field or something, but all of a sudden you can take that, feed it into AI, and then you know it's putting a ranger's outfit on you and you're

01:17:06

Lindsay Franklin

my gosh.

01:17:07

Paul Regnier

and you have like orcs chasing you, but you're saying the same things and it's still you. But it's like AI is like throwing you into like a fantasy scenario or something like that.

01:17:16

Lindsay Franklin

It's crazy.

01:17:17

Paul Regnier

And it's so awesome.

01:17:18

Lindsay Franklin

It's just a why.

01:17:18

Paul Regnier

It's like, okay, that I can get behind. like A picture of me eating a steak is not interesting, but me running from orcs, that's cool.

01:17:29

Lindsay Franklin

There you go. That's the why.

01:17:30

Paul Regnier

So i i may that may be my thing, we'll see. I haven't i haven't tried that, but that's like my newest you know thing percolating in my head. But yeah, we'll see how that goes.

01:17:42

Paul Regnier

Anyways, all the AI haters hate me now because I'm siding with the robots. um Anyways, okay, so we should probably wrap this up. We're like a minute so or an hour 17 in.

01:17:54

Lindsay Franklin

My goodness.

01:17:54

Paul Regnier

But anyways, we hope that this has been very helpful for everyone like looking to launch their book or or improve their book launch.

Sustainable and Enjoyable Launch Practices

01:18:04

Paul Regnier

um Do what Lindsay does.

01:18:06

Paul Regnier

Don't do what I do.

01:18:07

Lindsay Franklin

No, you know what we should say? This is going to be my closing thought. My closing thought is do what works for you.

01:18:11

Paul Regnier

Yes.

01:18:15

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:18:15

Lindsay Franklin

And what feels sustainable and exciting to you. And yes, book launches are going to, there's there's some stress involved with that, right?

01:18:20

Paul Regnier

Yeah.

01:18:25

Lindsay Franklin

And it's work. it It is work. But if the idea of either creating or commissioning swag and printing it and sending sending all of that out makes you want to die, then don't do that thing.

01:18:36

Lindsay Franklin

Don't do that thing because that's not going to be a good strategy for you. And, ah you know, so you want to take whatever bits and pieces of anything that um Paul or I have said ah throughout this hour and 18 minutes, um take bits and pieces and think, yes, that is

01:18:51

Paul Regnier

Yeah. Right. Right.

01:18:53

Lindsay Franklin

could work for me or I could adapt or adopt that in some kind of way and you know take my my launches to the next level, then do that thing.

01:18:58

Paul Regnier

yeah

01:19:02

Lindsay Franklin

Only when it you know brings you joy, makes you happy, or you feel like, yeah, I could i could do that. um There's not every single thing, like the library postcards, for example. Sitting there and stamping library postcards does not bring me joy.

01:19:15

Lindsay Franklin

And the way it brings me joy to send stuff to my street team. But the thought of my books being in libraries for readers who are like me, who aren't going to go into the bookstore because they don't have the money to buy those books, then that part brings me joy.

01:19:29

Lindsay Franklin

And, you know, so just make it sustainable for you and make it something that makes sense for you. And don't feel like you have to copy what anybody else is doing.

01:19:40

Lindsay Franklin

It's just about finding your own way and whatever keeps you sane during launch time. That's what you should do.

01:19:47

Paul Regnier

Wise words from Lindsey Franklin. I think we should end with that. All right. Thank you, everyone, for listening. And i hope this is helpful. And we'll see you next time.

01:19:57

Lindsay Franklin

Bye.