The rank of Best Seller is a numbers game. The day & week we publish we are competing with all the other books out there. The more people who buy & review our book, the higher we rank... Thank goodness we are doing this together!

There are a lot of moving parts to a successful book launch. In this article, we will cover early marketing as well as exploring what a launch team is & how to gather people around you to have a successful book launch.

Every phase of the creation of your book is really important, but as we always say in Red Thread, start marketing your book from the very beginning of the process; you are a writer, and your book gives you authority. You also need to know how to position yourself as the authority early.

The first questions you should ask yourself are to clarify your goals & expectations:

• What are your goals for your book launch? #books, sales, $ earned, degree of media attention, other?
• How much time & energy do you have to devote to this process?
• How much support, financial, technical, or other resources do you have?
• How much are you willing to learn in the next few months?
• What is your zone of genius?

Once you answer these questions, you'll have much more clarity to start thinking about your strategy, and get your book out there.

Let's start getting the world excited about this book:

• Share that you are writing a book, it is an accomplishment and you should celebrate it.
• Tag the co-authors, reviewers, folks referenced or quoted in your book & celebrate each other.
• Share your writing journey: the struggles, the excitement, the growth... all of it (good, bad  & ugly) Your audience becomes invested in the result when you let them in on the journey.
• Design your author page.
• Plan live & virtual events at least 1-3 months ahead.

At Red Thread Publishing we want you to learn a little more about a key aspect when giving birth to your book: having a powerful Launch Team!

Launch Team: a group of people, organized ahead of time to support the successful launch (public publication) of a book.

There are many ways of gathering a Launch Team, you can invite your friends and your community to help make your book a success, and you can start as early as you want, but we recommend you to have your team at least 2 weeks before publishing.

Ask them to: 

• Preorder/ buy your book on launch day for $0.99
• Be the first ones to leave a review. (Within 2 days) 
• Share to their communities
• Publish Day: Celebrate with you & make a big deal about it by sharing about your book, posting a picture holding your book, and sharing a post or reel to get more people aware of the book & the value it adds to prospective readers.  

The moment of truth has come!

The day has arrived, the day your book is finally Published! Or you plan your preorder window (ebook only).

This is the day your Launch Team actually shows up!

You have spent several days preparing everything with your Launch Team (Ideally you want to have a 90 days time window before the publishing date to plan your launch & invite your team), and although your book is finally published, your marketing strategy does not end here, you will need all the collaboration of your team to bring your book to all those who need it.

One day before your book comes out, post/email your Team and let them know that the date is coming. The day before Launch is also ideal to remind your friends and followers with a post on your social networks.

On Launch day we encourage you to post several times to remind your community that this is the day, share updates when you rank well & celebrate.

Activate your Launch Team!

The key to success here is planning ahead of time & honestly persistence, make sure your Team knows WHAT they need to do WHEN they need to do it… Celebrate & reward them. 

• Share reviews as reminders (Aim for 50 book reviews)
• Share book quotes and images on social media. (Double check your social media campaign is running smoothly)
• Promote your book on their blog, newsletter, podcast, etc.
• Remind them to pre-order/ Buy a copy of your new book.
• Go Live every day on Launch Week. Let your readers be a part of all of it with you.

It's important to follow up on your team! If perhaps they don't know how to leave a review, teach them, show them HOW.

Time to celebrate big!

How are you going to honor & commemorate this accomplishment? Here's something important to be coordinated with your Launch Team, so think about this ahead of time.

This is well beyond posting on social media, it is about you recognizing the leap you have taken, pausing long enough to make it mean something. So think & plan what kind of celebration this deserves, but also, it is good to have some clear points so that your social networks are part of the celebration:

• Post 9 am local time. 
• Midday post.
• 6 pm Post.
• Day After post.
• Thank your Launch Team & all the people who bought your book.
• Celebrate the rankings!
• Ask for reviews - share a direct link to the review page & make it easy for people!

We want as many people to know about and buy the book TODAY, these 24 hours are the ones that really make the difference.

A well-planned party

We've said it once and we´ll say it again, we are going to CELEBRATE, think about how you want to celebrate this accomplishment:

• Who is invited?
• What do you need to put in place?

Whether you decide to hold a virtual or face-to-face event, we invite you to support yourself in your Launch Team to coordinate it. The logistics of the event will depend on your objectives, your resources, and your creativity... but the important thing is to Celebrate this great achievement!

Say thank you

AND YOU DID IT! Share the love with your Launch Team a few days later, gratitude goes a long way. You can also tag them in a thank you post.

We hope that this article will help you solve the most important questions to put together the best Launch Team for your book. But we also know that having an extra guideline never hurts, download the full Launch team checklist & Launch week checklist.