Published: 2018-07-22T00:00:00.000+01:00
Edited: 2025-02-24T00:00:00.000+00:00
Status: 🌲evergreen

How not to launch your novel

Reading time: 5 minutes

I released my latest novel, Novis, back in January 2018.

It is a sci-fi retelling of the Norse epic Beowulf, only instead of of having a cast of belligerent warrior men I've filled the book with powerful, competent women. Women of colour, queer women, women who defy the constraints of modern society. As do the men I included.

Novis is without a doubt the best thing I have written to date, and I am immensely proud of it.

So why have sales of this book been so lacklustre?

Simply put, because I fucked up the launch.

I didn't do this book justice out of the gate and as a result it has suffered, limping along with precious few sales and even fewer reviews.

I'm sad that this book isn't getting the attention I feel it deserves, but it's been a learning experience that will help me do better with my next book.

And who knows, one day I might be able to give it a new lease of life by putting out a sequel.

In the meantime, here are all the things I did wrong so you can learn how not to launch your own book.

Rushed to launch

Most of the issues with Novis' launch come from this single mistake. I rushed the launch, and as a result did it poorly.

I had the noblest of intentions with this; I picked a launch date for emotional reasons, wanting to essentially publish a novel as a gift to my partner on our tenth anniversary.

Cute right?

But that wasn't the right reason to choose that particular date. And worse, it meant that there was no scope to push the date back as things started to go wrong.

In the end I was racing against the clock trying to get everything done in time to make the launch. It was rushed, and almost every part of the process was done poorly as a result.

Lesson learned.

Launched at the wrong time

Another huge issue with the date I chose was the fact it was a completely unsuitable date for launching anything.

Late January. The month after Christmas. Before anyone had got paid.

Yeah, no wonder it didn't do well. No one had any fucking money to buy my book, even if they wanted to.

And because next to no one bought it in the first week after publication, it didn't have the momentum it needed to do well after that.

I also fucked up the timing of announcing this book.

Announcing a book in mid-December when everyone iss shitting themselves about Christmas is a massive mistake. Especially if the thing you're announcing isn't going to be out until after Christmas and is no good as a last minute present option.

So, yeah. Don't do that.

Launched before I was ready

The other big mistake I made was deciding on the release date of Novis before I had everything ready. And I compounded that by announcing the date before I was ready.

When I announced the date of publication for Novis I didn't:

Yeah. I was woefully unprepared.

And so when issues cropped up with all of these things, I basically had no time in which to fix them.

Which meant that come launch day the print copies of the books had artwork that was the wrong size.

On the one hand, people who bought physical copy in the first week now have a rare, collectible version of Novis.

On the other hand it was incredibly unprofessional of me and isn't gonna inspire confidence in customers who aren't my friends.

I fixed the issue pretty quickly, but all of this should have been sorted out well in advance of launch day.

Didn't give the project my full attention

I have to admit that launching Novis wasn't the only project I was working on at the time.

And while I definitely think it's fine to be writing the next book whole launching your current one, what I was doing was so, so much worse.

In addition to preparing the launch of Novis I was also doing the behind-the scenes work for releasing two other books.

TWO OTHER BOOKS.

Yeah, that was a mistake.

One of them was On A Dark Wave, Floundering, a personal project which, like Novis, I wanted to get out for a particular date. But the other book was a project I'd started years a go with my university friends and was something that I won't ever earn any money for. It could have waited.

If I got to do it all over again I would have prioritised On A Dark Wave, Floundering to get it out for the date it was important to get it out for. Novis would get announced and released when it was read and I would have given my partner something else as an anniversary present. The other project would get done when everything else was sorted.

I would absolutely not recommend working on launching three books at once. Especially if they have no relation to each other.

No pre-order advertising

The final issue I realised with the way I launched Nvis was that I didn't do any promotion for the pre-order.

Pre-orders are important because they boost your day one sales and help the algorithms various stores use to get your books in front of potential readers.

Roughly speaking, the more pre-orders you have, the more day one sales you get, then the more likely it is that Amazon or wherever will promote your books to people. Without robust pre-order sales it is very unlikely your book will end up in front of new readers.

Since I was pressed for time on Novis' launch AND I was working on other books as well, I did basically no promotion of the pre-order. Not even to friends or family or the people who like my Facebook page.

I certainly didn't do any paid advertisement for Novis.

As a result I had less than half the number of pre-orders I got for my previous novel, The Whisper of the Leaves, and sales of Novis have continued to lag behind that of other books.

What I will do next time

I haven't let the disappointment of Novis deter me though. I have at least another four books currently in the pipeline for publication, but I'm taking my time with the next one. I've learned from the mistakes I made with Novis.

When it comes to launching the next book I'm gonna listen to my own advice and make sure I do the following:

Do I expect to make mistakes with the next book I launch?

Oh hell yes.

Every book I write and publish is a learning experience and I'm not arrogant enough to think that I'll ever get to a point where I'll make no mistakes.

What is important to me is that I am constantly learning and growing from my experiences. And that means trying not to make the same mistakes twice.

The launch of Novis was an absolute clusterfuck, but I learned important things from it. I'm hoping that by sharing my mistakes you'll be able to avoid making these mistakes in the first place.

Because let me tell you it's just a little bit heartbreaking when a book you love doesn't do as well as you'd hoped. Especially when you know it could have been so easily avoided.

We're all just doing the best we can when it comes to this writing and publishing business, and us little guys gotta stick together. Learn from my mistakes, and with a little luck and a lot of preparation, your next book launch will be a success.

I'm hoping me will be too. I'll let you know how it goes.

And hey, if you want to help Novis along, feel free to grab a copy.

Originally published at medium.com