Want to start marketing your book in less than 10 minutes? I’ve asked Ben De Rienzo, co-founder and designer at Booklaunch.io, to share his expert tips and insights on how writers can use this one simple tool to build buzz and drive their book sales–and it can be set up in minutes. Want to know what it is? Keep reading!
You’ve worked hard for months—even years—on a fantastic book to share with the world.
Tons of time, energy, affection, and other bits of yourself are invested in this wonderful creation, and now is the time to put it out into the world.
The moment tingles with excitement, anxiety, and more than a few doubts. But you’re resolved to go through with it—to launch your book! Which begs the question:
How do you position your book launch to be as successful as possible?
This question is a recent obsession among authors.
From bestselling authors like Tim Ferriss to upstart authors like Pat Flynn, more and more professional authors are treating their book launches as big, celebratory events.
The logic is simple: attract as much word-of-mouth buzz to your book launch as possible to spark momentum. A groundswell of initial momentum drives a flood of initial sales. This flood begets more buzz and more sales. It’s a virtuous cycle.
But to walk in the footsteps of these successful authors, you’ll need one key asset: a professional book landing page.
The best landing pages feature attractive book covers, engaging book trailer videos, personal info about the authors, positive blurbs from other readers and authority figures, and more.
The combination of all these elements magnifies the value and intrigue of your book. Consequently, buying your book becomes a no-brainer!
“But, I already promote my book on my author website. Isn’t that enough?”
Creating a sidebar announcement for your newest book, or crafting an internal book page on your site (featuring each title’s cover, a short description and a buy button) are both effective in generating interest around your newest release.
But an external book landing page has at least three significant advantages over an internal book page or sidebar announcement:
1. Focus
Professional authors use book landing pages to concentrate focus and energy—which cultivates action. This focused target is the difference between reserving just a sidebar placement for a new book or a book page filed somewhere on your current site. A new project announcement will naturally compete with other titles and author events in the same vicinity.
Choosing a dedicated site that devotes nearly 100% of its surface area to one book gives your launch the attention it deserves and simplifies the call to action for readers: buy this book, now.
2. SEO Ranking
An additional benefit to having an external book landing page? SEO! You will add another hub of activity with relevant, external links to your author site/blog. Many top search engine optimizers agree that “getting external links is the single most important objective for attaining high rankings“.
3. Easy Social Sharing
Similar to the first point on focus, an external landing page makes it really easy for a reader to share your book on social media, or for you to share the link during interviews or podcasts. A new url like “booktitledotcom” can roll off the tongue better than the lengthier, commonly-used “authornamedotcom/books/booktitle”. Additionally, social followers are directed straight to the concentrated book information and purchase buttons, instead of an author page with multiple titles.
Since the goal of a book launch is to sell as many copies of the new book as possible, getting people to the relevant information without distraction is critical.
So, what are great options for creating a book landing page?
Thankfully, there are alternatives for creating book landing pages, and you might consider these based on budget, your technical skill level and the time you have before you launch. There are pros and cons for each option.
Option 1: Hire a professional
Hiring a professional web developer makes sense if you have ample time and are willing to allocate a larger budget.
This is the most expensive option, but gives you the ultimate in customization and ability to create a unique experience for your readers. Most designers don’t appreciate rush jobs, so they’ll likely charge extra for quick turnarounds.
Tip: Using a designer that has worked with authors before and understands your needs will help cut the development time.
Option 2: Do it yourself with WordPress
Purchasing a pre-built WordPress (or similar platform) theme and DIY-ing is less expensive and quicker to launch than hiring a designer, but non-tech savvy folks can easily spend days or weeks customizing their page.
Most writers don’t realize how complicated WordPress can be—seemingly easy tasks like incorporating a spam filter or adding an additional vendor purchase link button can tie you up for half a day or more. And your pages won’t be as unique unless you really know what you’re doing.
Option 3: Use a page building tool
If you’re looking for a solution that involves zero coding proficiency, a quick creation process, and is extremely light on the pocketbook, you should check out Booklaunch.io.
This page building tool is actually free to launch unlimited book pages, and has content sections that you can use for book info, video trailer, purchase links, endorsements, author info and social sharing. Setup is quick, and it is very easy to customize fonts and colors, or re-order the different sections of the page.
Authors that want to boost the effectiveness of their pages can upgrade to a premium tier, which offers custom domain naming, email capture, detailed analytics and removal of a branded footer.
At this point in your journey, you need an ally to help you get your book out into the world.
You want to make a big impact from day one.
A book landing page can help you accomplish that.
Stay tuned…
Next week in part 2 of this three-part series, we’ll walk you through the nine critical elements every book launch page needs to perform well.
Any questions or comments? Please share them below.
Hi Kimberley,
Excellent post!
I have recently come across Booklauch.io not to long ago. In fact, you have can have a look at my current book page for my latest release at the following link:
https://booklaunch.io/wballard27/thetruewriterslife
I am becoming a big fan of book launch and I am already beginning to make book pages for all of my top best selling books.
Can’t wait to read your next article in this series!
Thanks, William! Your book page looks impressive – on a scale of 1 – 10 (1 being a monkey could do it), how easy did you find it to put together?
On a scale of 1 – 10 (1 being a monkey could do it), how easy did you find it to put together?
To answer your question above, I would say a 1 (a monkey can do it) because it really is that simple through BookLaunch.io
Thanks for your feedback, William. 🙂
Have you thought of creating an author’s website to promote your book? I have a really cool one, http://www.type-a-lifestyle.com, where I post weekly articles, and I am getting 100 – 200 hits per day! Use an experienced book and web designer like DesignbyIndigo and it can be pretty cheap and easy. I also find posting articles to my website is a great way to stay prolific without having to go through all the work of publishing another book, which as you know is difficult and expensive.
Good points you make, Kim. In addition to maintaining my own website with my book listing page, I also keep a separate page for each title via Weebly.
I.e.,
Self-Revealization Acceptance® Series – http://self-revealization.weebly.com
The Way of the Modern Warrior – http://wayofmodernwarrior.weebly.com
The Shogun’s Scroll – http://shogunscroll.weebly.com
The Lady of the Rings – http://ladyrings.weebly.com
The Sword in the Boardroom – http://swordroom.weebly.com
Hanshi David Mann Adventure Series – http://hanshidavidmann.weebly.com
Sun Tzu’s Art of War – http://the-art-of-war.weebly.com
Musashi’s Book of Five Rings – http://book-of-five-rings.weebly.com
Zen and the Art of Stickfighting – http://stickfighting.weebly.com
The Living Tao – http://the-living-tao.weebly.com
Napoleon Means Business – http://napoleon-means-business.weebly.com
Homage for Miyamoto Musashi – http://homage-for-musashi.weebly.com
Abracadaver – And Other Satories and Poems – http://abracadaver-satories.weebly.com
This way, I can give readers and fans the opportunity to visit each book individually and also give them the option to Buy It Now
Oh, and it is very easy to set up a page.
Good tip, Stephen! I’m not familiar with how Weebly works, but it looks like it’s getting the job done.
Is there a cost to use Weebly, or is it free to set up all these sites?
The second post in this series will tackle the book page key elements – that article might help you fine tune these pages even further. 🙂
Hi Kimberley,
I use Weebly for my main website and blog and I find it works incredibly well.
Is there a cost to use Weebly, or is it free to set up all these sites?
In response to your question above, it is free to use Weebly when using their sub-domain features (e.i. the domain ends with .weebly.com), but in order to drop the sub-domain it does require to purchase a pro or business package from Weebly, which are reasonably priced.
Great information Kimberley. We can’t wait to delve into all your pertinent information.
Thanks!
Awesome, John! Stay tuned… 😉
Great article. As a book promoter myself it has surprised me how many authors think that all the work is done once their book hit Amazon….But in reality that’s when all the fun really begins in a heavily condensed marketplace. I love the idea of outside hub-pages; we tend to highlight that very point with both our book promotion and free chapter pages.
It’s true, Psymon. Writing the book is only half the work. 🙂
Loved the post Kimberley. I wrote a post on my blog about the book launch that can make you a best-selling author. It’s along the same lines and complements you great post. Thanks and enjoy!
Thanks, Pierre!
I seen several authors both debut and well-known that change the focus of their site during the launch with special headers, designs, etc. So points one and two don’t hold up too well for me. I can see the ease of social sharing, but most of that is a clickable tweets and stuff like that now too.
Although I like the idea of a book website, I’m not convinced it’s essential.
Thanks for your input, Hannah. A book website may not be essential, especially if you have an author website in place.
But having reviews, endorsements, downloadable images, tweetables, and additional info about your book all in one place – with no other distractions – is a powerful way to get a potential book buyer’s attention.
Here are a couple of book websites in action:
Jeff Goins’ “Wrecked” http://wreckedthebook.com
Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick’s “The Art of Social Media” http://artof.social
These author’s books are still being promoted on their sites, but having an external landing page can be the key to catapulting book sales.
Thank you for using our site as an example, Kimberly! Guy Kawasaki and Shawn Welch found it to be very helpful to have the APEthebook website for APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur as a resource for others so we wanted to create something similar for The Art of Social Media. People have really loved the Artof.Social website and I was recently interviewed about the website as part of our launch so I think it’s been a win for us!
Valuable insights, Peg! I appreciate the “insider” perspective from someone who is actually in the trenches of launching their new book. 🙂
What do you recommend for series? A site for the series or for each book.
My recommendation would be a site or landing page for the series. As a reader/buyer, I would find it frustrating to have to go to several places to get the full story on the series (or to buy).
That’s what I was thinking too, but I didn’t know if that was to presumptuous (to have a series site when the first book comes out – I mean what if it’s a flop! :O)
Don’t worry about a flop. Think of everything like an experiment. If you try something and it doesn’t work, try something else. Nothing is really a failure if you can learn something from the experience, right?
And for most authors, a book is a “flop” because nobody knows it exists – not because thousands read it and determine it a failure.
This anonymity allows you to “fail” without an audience. So feel free to work the kinks out while nobody is watching – yet! 😉
LOL – so true!
Excellent content and the booklaunch.io is pretty amazing. thank you for all the great tips
My pleasure, Bruce! Glad you found it helpful. 🙂
I saw yesterday’s webinar and I’ve played with the system and I am definitely impressed with the quality and the ease of use.
I do have one question, though … If you already have an author web page, a FB page, a Goodreads page, etc., and you’re having trouble getting word out about those, how does having an external book page help in that? Don’t you have to have some way of making people aware of the external landing site? I guess I’m just not understanding how people who don’t already know about you and your book are going to stumble across the landing page.
Yep, the Booklaunch tool is pretty slick and (finally) something that doesn’t require a lot of tech-savvy.
Creating book landing pages allows you to target your audience, offer them something of value, and convert a higher percentage of your visitors into book buyers.
In addition to search, visitors can find your site and its landing pages through a number of marketing channels including:
Potential readers can also find your landing pages through calls-to-action you place throughout your website, or by you (or others) sharing the link to those landing pages during interviews, speaking engagements, conferences, etc.
The more points of contact you can create for your readers to find you, the better. And book landing pages provide a very focused environment for visitors to make a decision: buy or not buy.
If, as you say, you have many of these things in place but are gaining no traction, you need to take a closer look at your message and the content you’re sharing. If you’re getting visitors but no engagement, you’re probably targeting the wrong audience (i.e., your message doesn’t resonate).