The best time to release your new book

Yesterday I completed another book, making it ready for publication.

Over the previous three days, I have titivated with the internal layout, put the final finickity touches to my tome, trying to ensure I have no orphaned sentences, that the images, I have several throughout the book, are set as I wish and then, once again a run-through for any grammatical, punctuation or other errors such messing about can create.

For the two days before, I worked on finalising the cover.

The book Is now filed away awaiting the right window for publication. (I’m thinking sometime around May.)

The reason, I believe this will be the BEST time for me to release this book.

But is there a best time for you to release a book?

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Let’s look at how this publishing game pans out over the year, and what else might influence when you make your book available.

Publishing your book as soon as it is ready is termed ‘soft publication.’

Your ‘media date’ or ‘hard publication date’ or ‘release date’ can be whenever you think the stars are going to align with your media coverage and the success of your pre-release marketing.

It should be when you think you can sell the most books.

Traditionally, in the UK, new books are published on a Thursday, especially a Thursday between the 7^th and 14^th of the month.

The weeks leading up to autumn are often some of the busiest times for new releases, as publishers jockey to fill bookstore shelves ahead of the upcoming winter holidays.

If you read are a regular reader of my blog on writing, ‘Ramblings from a Writers Mind’ or have any of my books on authorship, you will know I often say, “Copy what the big boys do.”

The reason I say that is, the major publishers rarely do anything by chance. They spend a fortune on strategic planning and market research to ensure they get the right books, in the right places, at the right time to maximise their sales and hence their revenue.

Regarding the release of your next book, you could follow my advice and do the same as the major publishers.

But wait a moment. Let’s think about a few things first.

Some would say, do not release your book anytime between a Tuesday and a Thursday, because doing so will put your book in direct competition with the major publishing houses’ releases.

Suggestions of when is best include weekends, a Saturday will (generally) give you five whole days before the big houses release another title.

Some industry data points to Sundays and Mondays to attract the most journalistic attention.

It may be worth choosing a date early or late in the month, (before the 7^th, or after the 14^th), just after or just before the ‘Monthly Payday’.

Of course, there are other considerations, particularly for books of certain genres.

Romance books do well in early February, and a couple of weeks before the summer holiday period.

Horror works well from mid-November, and through October.

Introspective works sell best during the Summer, books like ‘Go Set a Watchman‘ for instance, as do many Adventure stories.

Books described as ‘light & airy‘ do well in the Springtime.

Unsurprisingly, winter tales, snowy themes and settings, do well during the winter months.

But there’s more to consider than the seasons.

The premise of your book can be all-important at certain times too.

Check out which television series are scheduled over the next six months to a year, find which have comparable stories, settings, locations, or characters to your book.

If your book is a period tale and a new costume drama is to be released on Television in August, then that program could help boost your sales.

If the new Sci-Fi blockbuster is due out in March… go for it. Major publishers have been known to change the name of a book to align with a mainstream film title.

For example, say a film, a Sci-Fi blockbuster sequel is named ‘Beyond the Far Crescent’, the publisher may alter a book’s title from, ‘From the Planets Shadow’ to ‘The Light of the Crescent’.

Never be afraid to re-title your book to align it with the marketplace, demographics, or current trends.

Consider too Special Calendar Days.

Easter time always sees a boost in Christian related books. Martin Luther King Day, for Black origin works. International Women’s Day, for strong female characters, feminism, and women’s rights. Remembrance Day, for War Stories, or Memoirs, for instance.

In this case, my advice would be, as I so often say, “do what the big boys do. Learn from them. Use their knowledge to compete with them.” It’s a bit like literary judo, using their size and bulk against them.

I admit there are no hard and fast rules, but I do suggest seriously planning when you release your next book.

Look ahead, research, find out what influences will affect your book, and create your strategy accordingly.

To help you decide when to release, or hold an ‘official’ launch day, here’s a rough guide cobbled together from industry data.

January

Self-help; diet; inspirational; business.

If your book fits into this category, you’ll find the media are particularly interested at this time. Mianly because it’s what many consumers are thinking about. Consider New Year’s resolutions, business forecasting/planning.

February

Self-help associated with relationships; debut authors; business; fiction.

If you are a debut, or relatively new indie author, this month is (generally) not so full of new titles, and there may be more promotion, and media opportunities, as a result.

March

Debut authors; mysteries; fiction

April

Women’s fiction

May

Beach reads; women’s fiction; biographies; books on mountain climbing (Good month for indies)

June

More beach reads; women’s fiction; biographies, or nonfiction that appeal to male readers on vacation, or for Father’s Day.

July

Quieter month, better for debut authors; more of what you saw in June.

A suitable time for indies, as there are fewer ‘new releases to compete with.

August

Debut authors; education-related titles; narrative nonfiction by lesser-known writers… read indie authors. (Get in, before next month.)

September

Public affairs and politics; serial authors in fiction and nonfiction; cooking; highly publicised titles by debut authors with mainstream publishers.

This is the main month, traditionally the annual main release month for major publishers. It is an incredibly competitive month and not indie-friendly.

October

More politics; cooking; big nonfiction titles by well-known personalities and writers; higher-end photography books; art books.

Not an indie-friendly month, unless you are releasing an art or photography title, possibly a nice, glossy, hardcover ‘Coffee Table’ tome.

November

Photography; art; gift books; ‘big name’ authors; diaries and journals, and anything you can think of that will sell in the current budget year.

Go for a well-planned strategic, high publicity release in early November through to the last few days of October.)

December

A good month for lesser-known authors. A variety of books are published, including latecomers for Christmas, or titles for people who want to get a jump on the usual January offerings.

Good for indies looking to establish base sales going into the following year.

UPDATE:

Regarding ‘Jack’s Dtis2’, the book I mentioned at the start of this post; I gave it a ‘soft release’ in March, (with a pre-order by invitation only) followed by an ongoing, promotional program targeted directly at my market segment. The book is still selling in good numbers a year later, and shows no signs of slowing down.

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Feel free to browse this site, there are a plethora of posts written for writers and authors of all experiences, and abilities.

I am open to comments and am happy to answer your questions on any aspect of ‘Being Indie’.

Many questions we have about authorship are answered in the books shown below. Both are books of distilled knowledge; they are NOT guides or how-to books but indispensable books for any writers library.

You can download both now, or read for FREE on Kindle Unlimited. Simply click on the links below

https://mybook.to/Authorstuff https://mybook.to/FrugalAuthorugalAuthor

How to sell you book series by writing another book.

 

 

Does this title sound stupid? (Don’t answer that.)

I was trying to come up with a fancy, clever, literary genius of a title, one which would give an undeniable clue to the content of this post.

I got a few good ones lined up and then re-read them. Most were so oblique even I forgot the connection. Others read more like popular newspaper headings than a serious post about writing.

In the end, I settled for what you have above. Which cannot be too bad because here you are, reading me waffling on about something inane.

Okay, on with my post.

Many of my indie author friends, especially those who tend to write in a specific genre, have one or more series of books.

I know writing a book series is no new thing, but it is one which has become resurgent in popularity over recent years. This is partly because of a shift in reading habits, which in turn is partly influenced by film and television ‘franchises’. (I shall not go into the reading trends and patterns regarding general social psychology of the masses here… albeit a subject I love.)

The ideal is to have someone buy a copy of one of your books and like it so much they rush out and by the whole series… or nowadays go to an online bookstore; not so much fun as browsing a ‘real’ shops shelves but quite practical, especially for social hermits.

Anyway… I seem to be digressing.

The problem, it seems, lays with having ‘that someone’ buy the first book of your series.

Herein lies a quandary.

Until such a person has a copy of your book in their sticky mittens, they shall never know how captivating the story is. They shall never know your carefully crafted characters, fall in love with your protagonist or hold disdain for your antagonist.

Neither will they learn how well you write, narrate or how charming a tale spinner you are. Which would all be a ‘bit of a shame’.

Oh, I hear so many of you thinking, “it’s all about promotion and marketing, that’s how you get readers.”

Well, yes and no.

Yes, it is about promoting your works, and NO… Allow me to enlighten you on my reasoning.

It is not all about promoting your books. (‘Promoting’ is a word I shall use as an ‘umbrella’ term to include marketing, advertising and such hoo-ha for the duration of this post.)

It is all about promoting you, your books, both individually and collectively, and your author brand, in a certain way.

If I were to cover all these topics, in one post, I would end up writing an entire thesis three thousand pages long, neither something I have time to write in one sitting, or, I am sure, you have time to read. So, I shall concentrate purely on one aspect and follow up, in future posts, on other relevant subjects.

As the amazingly conceived title of this post states, I shall continue discussing your book series.

It has become something of an urban legend, a myth which survives to the present day and one which far too many authors still fall prey to, that is the one which says: “if you give your first book of a series away as a freebie you will gain lots of new readers who will buy all your other books.”  

BULLSHUSH.  

 

That is a lie, promoted by those who generate financial gain from (often desperate) indie authors. Free may have been a viable option in the early days of the internet when Amazon was just a simple bookstore when indie authors were referred to as desktop publishers and vanity press meant having a book for sale outside of a mainstream publishing house. (See: https://wp.me/p5nj7r-1fn )

There are ways forward, none are push and go or plug and play. Each takes time and consistent effort to achieve and not all will work equally for all authors, their books or series. Book promotion is not an exact science.

Thunderclaps, Daycause, Blog hops, Tweet chains can all form part of your overall promotional strategy… You know, the carefully planned and timed schedule you have designed. The one which ensures you maximise each promotional effort… Yeh, that’s the one, your synergetic multi-arena integrated sales stratagem for the 2018/19 marketing period.

However, few authors consider writing a further book, or two or three or more to help gain and build readership and, on the face of it, with good reason. After all, writing another book is only adding to the series and that takes us back to square one… doesn’t it?

Not necessarily.

You see, this is about taking a new approach to authors promotions, in this case, Prequels… now, I know prequels are not new; way back when, we had Charlotte Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre’ (1874); but did you know that Jean Rhys wrote the ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ in 1966 as a prequel and response, describing the background to the marriage Jane learns about after going to work for Mr Rochester?

How about a prequel with a difference?

Let me ask you some questions…

What if… you could write a shorter book, a book especially targeted at attracting readers to your current series?

What if…  a group of authors would help you promote that book?

What if…  a book brand would include your book in its promotions, making it constantly visible to a global audience, online, in magazines and via social media?

What if…

What if…  you became an Electric Eclectic author?

Currently, Electric Eclectic are well known for their ebook Novelettes, their short stories books which help connect readers and authors.

But now, Electric Eclectic is launching a form of book they call a ‘Proquel’

These are Prequels, Character Backstories and Parallels designed specifically to introduce readers to your book series, in fact, the name Proquel is simply an amalgamation of the words promotion and prequel. (Pretty cool, yeah?)

Now… unlike many books, an Electric Eclectic proquel is unashamedly a promotional tool. While there is no compromise regarding the quality of content or storytelling, these books do not have to be full-length novels, but novella’s, with a suggested word count of between 17K and 40K words.

Once assessed and accepted by Electric Eclectic, your book(s) benefit from all the marketing and promotional activities of Electric Eclectic and your fellow EE authors.

You will have your books on the Electric Eclectic website along with a personal author page and much more. You can check out the Electric Eclectic website HERE.

And…this is the BEST BIT… you make money on your proquels too… yep, you still earn full royalties on your book sales. 

 

Electric Eclectic is NOT a publisher and does NOT take royalties.

You will get all the above for a minimal fee… and I mean a minimal fee.

You have nothing to lose.

So, why not find out more about becoming an Electric Eclectic author and, how writing just one other book, could help you sell your whole series?

With major ground shifts and changes occurring throughout the publishing and online worlds, becoming an Electric Eclectic author could be the best decision you make this year.

Simply Email EEbookbranding@mail.com for further information.

 

Dark Words

Dark, deep, emotional… My new book… 

http://amzn.to/2DQjmR0 

We all have dark times in our lives; times when the clouds of uncertainty gather about us, when the shadows in our minds slam shut the doorway of hope.

These are times when the future looks bleak, when tomorrow is nothing more than a harbinger of anguish and our past lives a wasteland of futile labour.

Sitting in darkened rooms, listening to sad songs and reading dark words lends a little comfort to our souls as we contemplate the tattered remains of our world.

This book shares those days, the long cold nights of loneliness and apprehensive dread of what bleakness awaits us when the sun rises.

Like you, I have visited this world of soulless existence. It is where part of me shall always remain, huddled in the gloom, in corners of the deepest recesses of my mind.

Paul White

Grab your copy today

http://amzn.to/2DQjmR0

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Looking for more books? Why not check out CQI Magazine’s ‘Must Reads‘ for 2018

With The LIST

One reason why I don’t give my books away.

Because I have worked hard, very hard in making the book a reality.

The uninitiated may feel that is a glib remark, but it is not if you consider….

I first had to come up with the idea, a notion of a story and ensure it had a start point, a good tale to tell and was one which draws to a satisfactory conclusion.

That is, it has a beginning, a middle and an end.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Then try it now, in the next few seconds. Say these words aloud….ready….go…”My story begins when……”

Well, come on. You said it was easy, so what’s keeping you?……

OK. Times up.

Let’s move on.

I shall say ‘we writers’ from now on, have an outline of a story in our head. We know where we want it to start. We may even have a few words which may become the opening lines when we start writing.

Each writer has their own way of plotting and constructing a novel. So, for generalist purpose I am adopting the supposition this is a writer who plots onto a storyline…to a degree.

For the next few days, we shall be breaking down the sequence of the story in our mind, transcribing it onto a plot graph, a timeline of planned stages. This is something we shall change numerous times over the next few days. We shall have the characters, particularly the protagonist, face challenges they must overcome. We will build his/her character as realistically and as humanly flawed as suits the plot and will have our readers empathise, at some stage, with the antagonist. Possibly disbelieving in the actions of the hero….who may yet actually be the real baddy!

This is the type of conflict associated with plotting the story. Already at this stage, the story wants to take charge of the author, as later, during the writing of the first draft, so shall the characters. They WILL take on a life of their own. They WILL wake the writer in the early hours of the morning, banging on the door of new concept.

The same characters WILL, on another night, keep the writer awake until the sun rises just so they can move forward, continue their journey within the unfolding pages of new manuscript.

Most authors become almost, if not entirely obsessed with writing the tale. Some seem, even become unsociable, withdrawn. Because the story must be told, it must be typewritten onto paper or into computer memory. If the writer stops or is distracted for too long, the thread begins to fade, the momentum halted, the spirit lost. The new lives, those characters created start to wither, even die.

Writers are, in the worlds they create, Gods among characters, guides of destiny and givers of fulfilment, destroyers of life, of societies, of cities and planets. The author is omnipotent.

It is a role, a responsibility we take seriously. It is a heavy burden we bear.

Come the end of the first draft and an entire year’s supply of coffee beans. I/we, the authors, sit back in our chairs and breathe a sigh of relief.

It is a short respite.

Soon our noses are back at the grindstone. We now need to read, edit and re-write the entire work. A first draft, no matter how carefully crafted, is just that. A first draft.

Now we really start work. No longer are we flying in full creativity mode, now we are in a roll-your-sleeves-up and get stuck in approach to the task.

Generally, this stage takes twice as long as the first. Deleting words, sentences and replacing them… or not. Moving paragraphs or rephrasing entire sections of the manuscript. Rearranging the position and order of entire chapters, even deleting them…or writing new ones. There is no limit to the fettling undertaken at this stage.

Once we are (reasonably) happy with draft number six/seven/ eleven? We congratulate ourselves and add a tot or two of whisky into the large mug of rich black coffee, our drug of choice.

Happily, we tell our copy editor we are ready for them to scan our documents. Oh, she says. (Not a sexist remark, simply the fact I have found most of the best editors are women), you need a line editor before you run it past me!

So, weeks later, with some alterations to plot and structure, you eventually pass the manuscript over to your copy editor….. and wait… and wait, which is a good thing. Annoying, frustrating, but good.

You see your editor should be busy… if she is not it could indicate no one wants her services?

The second reason you should be happy to wait is, you want a thoroughly good job done, don’t you? Therefore proper, good, concise editing with a comprehensive feedback means taking all the time required to do the job right. Right?

Everything is not lost during this time, because you have to have a cover. If you have not yet made any advance towards having one designed, now is a great opportunity, it will take your mind off waiting for your editor.

Unless you are a graphic designer or illustrator I would leave the cover to an expert. Even if you are an artist I would, at the very least, consult with one. You see a book cover is NOT what most people (readers/ writers/authors) think it is.

Comes the day when your book cover, both paperback and Kindle versions are ready. You are excited because your manuscript has just arrived back from your editor… the pages listed with notes, amendments and suggestions.

Now, instead of moving forward, instead of getting a step closer to publication you must revisit your story. Once more you sit and work through the entire manuscript, making alterations, altering tense, reading those suggestions and editorial input regarding clarity, flow and all that other stuff.

Three days, (or week/months?) later, in a foul mood and with a raging headache you stab the send button returning, the now amended manuscript, to your editor.

This is when you wonder where the last year of your life has gone. This is when you look out of the window and wonder why it is snowing… in June… only June has long passed. You missed it.

You were living in your own Neverland, guiding your characters away from disaster and death. Now, all of a sudden life seems so much more…. empty.

The story is with your editor. The cover made. Time seems to hang about endlessly, waiting…tick-tock, tick-tock.

After a day or two of doing virtually nothing, it all gets too much. You plan a launch date, but not too soon. Then you organise a thunderclap, a blogging chain, advertising, a cover reveal and whatever blows your frock up.

Hey, guess what, your manuscript is back, this time there are only a few notes, easy stuff to sort out. So, you do. It only takes the best part of a day, or week, or month, this time.

Now you can busy yourself again. This time you need to format your manuscript into book form. One for each type of book, i.e. paperback and eBook, but also for the platforms you may be using, Createspace, Lulu, Smashwords and so forth. Of course, you can have a professional do this, or you can seek the help of a fellow author… all work well if organised properly.

The next stage is proofreading. Each format needs to be proofread. You can do the first run yourself, pick up on any errors made during formatting, check the margins, headers, page numbering, kerning, font, point size and such. But, I bet you will miss a shed load. So, have other eyes, preferably an experienced proof-reader, one with a good track record, even someone recommended.

Now you press the send on your keypad again and hey-ho the formatted manuscript(s) is/are off to your proof-reader, who will pick up on any punctuation, capitalisation, space and… other issues you WILL have missed.

ONLY after you have fixed all those errors will your story, which up to now has just been a manuscript with a working title, become a book.

Upload to print…. congratulations. It has taken you around eighteen months to two years of blood, sweat, tears and toil. Of mood swings and social deprivation, headaches, doubts, pain, fear and uncertainty to turn your dream into your baby.

Well done you.

Genuine congratulations are in order.

NOW YOU WANT TO GIVE IT AWAY?

That is (one reason) I don’t give my books away.

I have many more.

Sleep well, Paul White.