Notes from a US book launch
Plus: building your marketing plan and OOO
Building your marketing plan
Over the last few weeks, I have shared the basics of building a marketing plan:
Write your sales pitch (and think through your wider story)
Marketing plans can get very complicated, but at its core, those are the things you need to think about. With those foundations in place, you’re ready to create a simple, sustainable plan that actually works for you and gets your book into the hands of the right readers.
The only thing left to do would be to decide when you are going to do what, and on that note I would really like to emphasise two things:
Start WAY EARLIER than you probably think you should. I used to get so many requests for people who wanted to build a marketing plan for a book that was being published in the next week or two.
a) If you want to hire someone, don’t assume they’ll be free next week,
b) a lot of marketing involves building relationships, doing research into who you want to work with, warming people up to your book and the idea of you as a writer.
And c) You will be so much less stressed if you give yourself time to write your plan, decide what you’re going to do and pre-prepare as much of it as possible. Start at least 6 months in advance if you can, please!On the flip side, remember that once it’s out there, your book is generally out forever. If you CAN’T market in advance, remember that you CAN market it for the next year or two or ten. James Clear has had one book (so far) and he just keeps banging the drum for it. Think long term!
Finally — not everyone is a plan kind of person. I totally get that. I still think that thinking through these points will be useful for you, even if you don’t actively write out a formal plan.
If you’re showing up somewhere to talk about your book on a regular basis, connecting with readers in some way, and putting yourself beyond your existing audience whenever you can, that’s a good start!
Have you built your plan yet? I would love to read posts from authors about the marketing plan they’ve built and followed (whether or not you use the points I’ve laid out).
From Burnout to Barnes & Noble
Dr. Claire Plumbly approached me much earlier this year to ask if I’d like a piece from her about promoting her book in the US. I know a fair few of you UK based authors have struggled with this, so of course I said absolutely, yes please!
Her story obviously won’t be immediately applicable to everyone — some of you will be self-published, some will have publishers that are ‘publishing’ into the US, but actually have no sales or marketing team there, some of you will be better connected than others, etc — but as with everything I share in this newsletter, I hope there is something you can gain from reading about her experience — I thought her note on how useful UK podcasts were was particularly interesting.
How My Book Crossed the Atlantic by Dr Claire Plumbly author of Burnout: How to Manage Your Nervous System Before It Manages You (UK).
How do you launch a book in a country where no one knows your name?!
I’m a British clinical psychologist, and when my book crossed the Atlantic to launch in the US, I knew exactly three Americans. Naturally I emailed each of them - a humble little campaign to ask if they might kindly buy a copy and maybe leave a review on Amazon so it didn’t look too sad on the sales page with no star ratings.
Imagine my shock then when my agent emailed with the news that 3,500 copies had sold in the first month.
Whilst I didn’t have a big US following or connections to draw on, I did have something that unexpectedly carried the book further than I imagined: my voice.
Over 2,000 of those sales in month one were audiobooks. This aligned with feedback from my literary agent, who confirmed that audio self-help is booming in the US right now. It makes sense: people who are burnt-out might be too busy to stop and read a paperback, so are more likely to absorb the content whilst driving, jogging or cooking.
It also meant that the podcasts I’d guested on over here in the UK — from self-help shows to entrepreneur burnout interviews — had done some of the heavy lifting for me over in the US too. Podcasts are so international now, people can listen from anywhere.
My US publisher (Hachette Balance) were also great — they lined up two US-specific podcasts for me on the run up to launch and even got me an interview with the NYT, which sadly didn’t pan out but it boosted my confidence which was still fun!
One of the most fascinating elements of the US launch was the title. Originally, The Trauma of Burnout was my working title — the one I used while shaping the early manuscript because it perfectly blended my trauma-training with my approach to burnout. But my UK publisher worried the word “trauma” might feel too heavy for a British audience. In the end, we went with Burnout: How to Manage Your Nervous System Before It Manages You, a more explanatory title that seems to be doing well over here.
In contrast, the US publisher loved the original title and even managed to get it stocked in brick-and-mortar stores like Barnes & Noble. In the UK, I walk into Waterstones and see a wall of celebrity memoirs and cookbooks. In the US my book is next to Brené Brown!
Even better - the title seems to work in attracting people who don’t know me. A few weeks ago, NYT bestselling author
gave the US edition a shout-out in her Saturday Substack Recommendation post, saying she’d picked it up because the title intrigued her. That’s the magic of a name that strikes the right cultural nerve.So, what did I learn from launching a book in a country where I was starting from scratch?
Podcasts work well right now! Pitch, pitch, pitch. You’ll get lots of no-replies but eventually some come back with a yes. I learnt to pitch from
in her Hype Yourself membership. [Note from Katie: I think I say this every week — if you aren’t following Lucy you need to, right now!]Titles matter more than you think. What sounds too clinical in one market might be magnetic in another. Work with your agent, editor, any member of your team to think carefully about the right title and image for the country.
Different shelves, different rules. The US still appear to invest in real-life shelf space for self-help books. The UK seem more about big author names. I feel less hurt by this now I understand how it all works.
Good luck with your own US launch!
Thank you Claire! Burnout: How to Manage Your Nervous System Before It Manages You is out now!
Currently I’m…
Heading into summer mode! I’m looking forward to continuing to bed into my new job, taking most Fridays fully off thorughout the summer, and heading to New York with my kiddos for the first time.
As I mentioned last week, there will be no newsletters over the summer period, so I’ll be back in September.
I think the format and cadence of this email will change significantly when I get back. I have already made the decision to stop paid subscriptions to this newsletter (so if you are a paid subscriber, you should have had something from me about this last week).
Turns out, working in house is brilliant but full on. By September I think my brain will be more adapted, as I won’t be learning so much new information every day, but I’m not sure how much I want to talk about marketing on my day ‘off’.
So — more on that to come when I know what I’m doing.
Have a wonderful summer and I’ll be back soon!
very informative! Have a great summer Katie!