Lessons from a book launch

A guest post from newbie author, Glenn Bryant

Earlier this year, I put a call out for people to pitch ideas to write for this newsletter. One of the people who got in touch with author Glenn Bryant.

Glenn and I have had a few chats over email and on The Empowered Author Facebook group. As a brand new author, with no previous book marketing experience, I thought it would be fun to share some of the lessons a new author has been learning through the marketing process. So, with no further ado, here are Glenn’s lessons!

#1 People don’t care about your social media. Impossible to accept 100%. We’re all human. But lowering your expectations on engagement you’ll achieve with a post is healthy. Often, your posts never really land with your audience. That spark of first engagement never really gets captured.

#2 People do care about your social media. I had been posting for a short while. Nothing crazy. Weekly or bi-weekly with curated posts and content. I had particularly poor engagement on LinkedIn, which was a surprise and a disappointment, because I knew I had a good following. Quietly stung, I tempered the frequency of my posts to fortnightly and focused my effort on Facebook, which I knew was my strongest platform and most loyal audience.

But people had been reading my posts on LinkedIn. They simply hadn’t been engaging with them. They kept coming up to me at work saying, ‘I’ve been reading your posts on LinkedIn Glenn. I just ordered your book! Congratulations. You must be thrilled.’ Who [happily] knew?  

#3 Bookmarks. Bookmarks? Yes, bookmarks. I shyly wasn’t sure what to do with them, at first. So I didn’t do anything after working with my publisher to design and print some. One day, I put a handful of them at the bottom of my laptop bag and took them with me to work. Best. Decision. Ever.

Bookmarks, covered in my book’s branding, were pretty much universally loved by work colleagues. I offered them as a light-hearted, curious gift, because, at first glance, they were just a bookmark. ‘Glenn, why are you giving me a bookmark? This is weird.’ Then they turned it over and saw that it was supporting the publication of a book, my book. And the penny dropped… ‘Wow Glenn, congratulations! You’ve written a book!’

I soon started to lose count of the amount of people who came up to me in the office, or messaged me, to say they’d ordered a copy of my book, on the back of my bookmark. Local bookshops too were fans and always took a clump off me to give to their customers. Boom.

#4 Getting your book in local bookshops. I was able to achieve this. In my experience, the closer the shop was to where I lived, the warmer the reaction I received from an approach. How did I make an approach?

First, perhaps worth saying, I was already a customer. Second, we connected on social media. Third, I formally emailed [attaching advance information sheet from my publisher] introducing myself and my book. My closing ‘call to action’ was asking if I could come in and say hello in person for 15 minutes. And they always got back with a happy, ‘Yes’. They ordered copies of my book through Gardners and I went back to visit to sign them, so they could sell them as such.

#5 A book launch event. I asked the local bookshop I had the best relationship with about the possibility of holding some form of popup event, to mark / celebrate my book’s publication. I asked at the end of a face-to-face meeting. I could have walked away from that meeting without asking, but, I stood there and thought, ‘Who knows? Ask’ So I did. And they agreed.

At the time of writing, the event is still to happen, on a Friday evening, for a generous hour, from 7pm. The shop till will be open to sell any books. And the event is open to anyone. Entry’s free. The bookshop will kindly arrange the space beforehand, making space in the shop; they will order extra copies of my book to sell on the night; provide glasses for drinks; and microphones for the speaking section.

What was on me? Buying and bringing all the drinks to serve people on the night. And inviting people / promoting the event, which I have been doing: to friends, family, work colleagues, neighbours, and acquaintances from our village pub.

#6 Approaching local media. I emailed them a personal hello / pitch letter, introducing me and my book, and why I’d written it: because of Juliet, my wife, who has a spinal cord injury and paralysis. My novel, at its heart, is an 85,000-word love letter to her. I attached a formal press release produced by my publisher and a professional portrait picture of me, and an image of the front cover of my book.

Established local and regional media [both where I live in South Oxfordshire, and where I grew up in Lincolnshire] did a mixture of interviews with me over email, Zoom or in person. For hyper local media, which I would not underestimate the value of, I took a different approach: I asked if they were interested in guest content from me, and they always said, ‘Yes, they were.’

#7 Begin launch work well in advance. I started perhaps six months ahead of my publication day. If that sounds extreme, it worked perfectly for me, so I never got too overwhelmed, feeling things were spinning out of control. And note, I work full-time Monday to Thursday, so my time each week is limited.

One of the best things, working comfortably in advance, was how the time really helped me distill how I pitched my book, which is so important, wherever or whoever you’re pitching to. Because it felt like I was continually re-pitching my novel and its merit all over again to different parties: bloggers / reviewers; bookshops; local media; and more. Over that period, I constantly refined that pitch… until it felt so much sharper. Plus, it felt like ‘mistakes’ I made six months out weren’t nearly as potentially costly to me as they would have been, say, six weeks out from publication.

#8 You do you. It can be another ‘almost impossible’ to avoid eyeing with envy how every other author is [ostensibly] killing it on social. They actually may well be, but they equally may well be privy to a larger following than you [and now is not the time to unpack why they have a bigger audience]. Let’s take a step back.

It’s life, isn’t it? Someone will always live in a more lux [and tidier! [how do people do that?]] house, drive a faster car, go on more expensive holidays. In life, for me, I’ve learnt you have to let other people do them. You do you. Be who you want to be. Not who others want you to be, nor who you think you ought to be.

Trying to introduce objectivity here, we’re all at different stages on the journey, and we all have different destinations in mind. Perhaps people buy a little bit of you when they buy your book, so there is a commercial argument to be and remain real, the real you.  

Thank you Glenn! Glenn Bryant is the author of Darkness Does Not Come At Once [aff link] published by The Book Guild, 28 April 2024. Watch Glenn talk about his cover on his YouTube channel: What's in a novel's front cover?