Fun & Games With Holiday Weekend Book Launches
A few astute readers noted that I published SHIELD OF POWER over July 2nd and July 3rd, but did not send out the newsletter until July 8th, and wanted to know why I did that.
Short answer: holiday weekend.
Longer answer follows!
Holiday weekends are a tricky time to launch a book because the best ways to let people know about that book are email and social media, but a lot fewer people are checking email and social media on a holiday weekend. So that presents me with two options.
1.) Publish the book and put out the newsletter and social media on the holiday weekend, accepting the lower reach and conversion.
2.) Wait until after the holiday weekend to publish the book.
The problem with the second option is that there are some people who really, really want to read the book over the long holiday weekend.
So I went with option three:
3.) Publish the book before the holiday weekend, and then do the social media and newsletter after the weekend.
I think the usual term for this is a “soft launch.” I think it worked out pretty well. The people who really wanted the book and were checking Amazon every day were able to get it and read it over the holiday weekend. Everyone who would not have seen an email or social media post over the weekend did see them on Monday and Tuesday after the weekend.
It also worked with recent algorithmic changes at Amazon. Amazon is changing things all the time and has been doing so for all fourteen years I’ve been self-publishing. The latest change is that sales ranks get updated much, much less frequently than before. They used to change once an hour, but now they change twice a day at most and for books that don’t sell that many copies, they might change once a day. So in general it’s better to spread the launch out a bit rather than announce everything all at once.
I did the same thing with SHIELD OF BATTLE back in Easter, and it worked out pretty well then, and SHIELD OF POWER has so far gotten a very strong response. So I’ll probably keep the same plan the next time I have a release around a holiday weekend.
Meanwhile, thanks for reading SHIELD OF POWER! Don’t forget that it’s THE SHIELD WAR series is now complete, so if you’re one of the numerous people who email to say they only read completed series, now is your chance!
-JM