Marketing Your Book Pre-Launch, At-Launch, and Post-Launch

Lauren: Hey everyone, welcome back to Publish & Prosper. And welcome back to my co-host, Matt.

Matt: Why are you always welcoming me back?

Lauren: Because it's nice. 

Matt: But I think that gives people the impression that I might not come back each time. 

Lauren: I'm always actually a little bit surprised when you do. Every Monday that you're not here early in the morning on Monday, I'm like, is this the Monday that Matt bails on me? 

Matt: Oh, so is that wishful thinking on your part or worry?

Lauren: That's a good question. 

Matt: No - oh, okay. 

Lauren: That's a good question.

Matt: Maybe I won't come back. 

Lauren: No, no, definitely not. But you were a little late today and I was definitely sitting here like, oh, no, is this it? Is this it, right before we leave for PodFest? Is this when it all falls apart? 

Matt: Yeah, no, it wasn't. I - through a series of weird events over the weekend, I just - yeah, let's just say I was late for good reason, but doesn't mean I'm not showing up. Here I am. 

Lauren: That's fine. I appreciate that you're here at all and that we're here recording.

Matt: Which I'm excited about because today we get to talk about one of the things that you and I actually do for a living besides podcasting and helping authors make a lot of money which is marketing. 

Lauren: Right, you know, just kind of the end all be all of our jobs, literally. 

Matt: What we originally hired to do and then we went off and said, hey, let us do a podcast. And they were like, okay. 

Lauren: Yeah, actually this is probably the definition of my career, considering, you know, the things that we're gonna talk about today, I've done in at least three different jobs.

Matt: Good.

Lauren:  I guess I've kind of made a career out of this particular episode. 

Matt: Marketing or book marketing?

Lauren: Book marketing, specifically. 

Matt: Okay yeah, yeah. 

Lauren: So yeah, if you listened to one of our recent episodes, we mentioned that we would do a podcast episode on the stages of book marketing; pre-launch marketing, at launch marketing, and post-launch marketing. And both of us, like as soon as we said that, as soon as that episode was over, we both just looked at each other and were like, we gotta do that episode right away. We were just really excited to be like, let's get this one done. There's so much to talk about in here. And actually we're gonna take it a step further. And the next few episodes we do are all gonna be book-marketing focused. 

Today we're gonna start with an overview of the three stages of book marketing. I mean, we're probably gonna dive into some of these topics just because that's the nature of who we are as conversationalists and podcast hosts and people. But then the next few episodes that come out after this one are also going to be taking a closer look at specific parts of book marketing. 

Matt: Yeah

Lauren: We're excited to get started with these, or at least I am. I can't speak for Matt. I'm excited to get started with these. 

Matt: I am excited, yes. It might not read in my voice or show on my face, but I am excited. The first one's going to be a pretty big one. And so we just want to give you guys a heads up that pre-launch marketing will have quite a bit of content related to it, and rightly so. A little word of warning, don't feel overwhelmed, but pre-launch marketing is one of the most important stages. 

[3:23]

Lauren: Yeah, I mean, I would argue it is the most important stage and I'm pretty sure we've said that in other episodes as well, we've talked about the importance of pre-launch marketing. We've talked about the fact that if you wait until your book is published, you're already too late. 

Matt: Oh, yeah. 

Lauren: You've already dropped the ball. And just like in case we haven't made that clear already, we're going to back it up now by just going through the multitude of things that you should be doing before your book is ever published. And I'm going to start us off right off the bat with the very first thing you should do is pick a launch date. 

Matt: We just lost half our listeners.

Lauren: Too bad. 

Matt: But Lauren, I'm not ready to pick a launch date. 

Lauren: I don't care. You need a finish line. You can't run a marathon when you don't know how long it's gonna be. 

Matt: Well, you know it's gonna be 26.2, whatever, right? 

Lauren: I knew you were gonna say that. 

Matt: So technically, you know how long it's gonna be.

Lauren: You can't run a race of an indeterminate length or time if you don't know how long it's going to be. You have to know how to pace yourself. You have to know what your end goal is. You have to know when you need things done by. And actually some of these things on here, you need to let other people know those things as well. So you really can't do anything until you pick a target launch date. 

Matt: Fine. I concede. 

Lauren: Wow that’s it? Wow. Ooh.

Matt: I threw you off. There's a little bit of silence there. Yes, you should pick a launch date and stick to it. And as Lauren just alluded to as well, for those of you who are like me, that does not like to pick target launch dates for anything because that pressure is very overwhelming, it will help you stay accountable. So picking a launch date and sharing that with somebody will help you stay accountable. And hopefully you share it with the right people who then become your cheerleaders. Lauren's right, pick a launch date, even though I hate to say she's right. 

Lauren: Thank you, thank you. I will take that one. I have it recorded on audio enough times now that I could just make an edit of Matt saying, Lauren's right.

Matt: I hope that you don't. 

Lauren: I don't know, it might come in handy someday. 

Matt: Well, yeah, you might want to share that with my family as well and then they can use it against me. 

Lauren: Oh, that's so true. Alright.

[5:16]

Matt: Well, once you pick the launch date and you share it, what we see a lot of people do, especially these days with the whole writing in public thing, is sharing that launch date publicly. And so in doing so, you start priming your readership, your audience, your fans and followers to know like, okay, this is the target launch date. And hopefully that has them tune in a little bit more to the things that you post because it could pertain to your new book, but it’ll also, again, add that extra level of accountability.

Lauren: For sure. And that is something that's another thing you're really going to want to do with this pre-launch time is prime your audience in general, whether that's building an audience if you don't already have one or letting your existing audience know that you have something coming. I mean, realistically, unless you're Beyonce, a surprise drop isn't going to be a success. You need people to be aware of the fact that this is coming. You need to have people to notify that something is coming. So you have to work on, like, building that audience of people. 

But whatever you're doing, don't be coy about it. I mean, you can be coy about like, you know, it's gonna be some really cool content in it. I'm not gonna give you, like, a chapter by chapter summary ahead of time.
 
Matt: Right. 

Lauren: But there's only so long that you can get away with ‘something big is coming. I'm really excited to announce that something really cool is coming,’ before your audience is like, ‘okay, yeah, we get it.’ 

Matt: Yeah, and I think it doesn't even have to be all of these pieces of breadcrumbs that pertain to the actual plot or storyline or content necessarily. We see a lot of authors who quote unquote write in public, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're putting all the content in public. It just means they're sharing with the public, their audience, their fans and followers where they're at in the process. It could be something as simple as like, ‘hey everybody, I just finished my fourth chapter. I'm super excited about this. I've been really pumped on my writing habits and just want to let you guys know I'm four chapters in. I'm feeling really good about this.’ It can be that.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: And people really love to see that, especially your true fans and followers. And, but again, it also helps build an audience when people see that you're actively working towards something and there's going to be a finished result that they could potentially get their hands on.

Lauren: Yeah. And I know we've mentioned this in the past, but it's worth repeating. It's a great way to get people personally invested in what you're building. You know, if you are talking about publicly, repeatedly like working on this or I got this accomplished today, or I just wrote a chapter that it was so good that by the end I had to just like sit down and take a breather because it was so intense that even I couldn't wait to get to the end of it. And then that's going to make your audience be like, oh, I want to read that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Like what, I need to know what that is. Or you know, whatever the case may be, whether it's working on chapters or even just ‘found the perfect cover designer. And I'm so excited for how it's going to turn out. Like this book is going to look so cool. I can't wait to share the cover with everybody.’

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Those little milestones that get people interested in what you're doing and personally invested in what you're doing. 

Matt: Yeah. On the nonfiction side, Austin Church has done a really good job of that. He’s currently writing his first book, called Free Money, and he did a really good job of posting those sort of highlights each day on LinkedIn, or every other day or whatever. And then he has a weekly newsletter where occasionally he would drop some of those things in. And they were just more about, you know, his progress and where he'd gotten to, or getting excited because the last few cover options he was sent from the designer looked really great. And those things really, I think, kept his audience hanging on, ready to see the finished product, which I think is now about to go live. So yeah, it's really cool to watch that stuff happen. 

[8:35]

Lauren: Yeah, for sure. You know, obviously the getting your audience ready part is the given. People already know that, that's not new information to everybody. I think one of the other things that's really important to start doing pre-launch that might not be as obvious is to start building your author network. And that's not the audience that you're targeting as potential readers, potential buyers, but rather the people that are going to help you connect with those audiences, help you sell your books, and help you grow your brand with anything from podcast appearances or guest blog posts, or maybe people that if they are running conferences or events and you want to be speaking at an event or something like that. Even something like a newsletter sponsorship, if you want to say hey like I want my book announced or I want you to review my book and put a review of it in your newsletter. How can we do that? You got to start making those connections with people before you have the book in hand. 

Matt: Yeah and a big part of that is research, right? So if you're an author and you subscribe to certain newsletters of other authors or organizations that are parallel to what you do or any of those things, reaching out to them and asking them first, do they offer paid newsletter advertising? Sometimes you can buy a spot in their newsletter to announce your new book for relatively inexpensively. And then sometimes, you know, they might just have a section already where they talk about newly published authors or new books where you might be able to get it in there for free.

But also researching again, are there podcasts you listen to where they offer some sort of advertising or things like that? Again, you might be able to purchase a short advertisement about your new book, your new release, start looking at the ones that offer interviews and make yourself a nice little list and say, okay, these podcasts are really relevant to the content that I write, the book that I'm writing, and then reach out to them and just be like, listen, I don't know if you, you know, are taking on any new interviewees anytime soon, but I plan on launching latest book and I'd love to come on and talk about it if you'll have me. You'd be surprised at how many would love to have you on to talk about your book. So that's, I think, what you're referring to is just doing that research and building up kind of that networking spreadsheet, that list of all the potential places where you could either be a guest or purchase some paid sponsorship or advertising, trying to mark down whatever possible free and earned media you could get as well.

[10:44]

Lauren: I think that's a really helpful thing to have in general. You should also have some kind of reference for yourself that is…I don't really know what the right term would be, but I guess like a list of relevant outlets. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: If you are writing middle grade or young adult horror, and you know, there is a podcast called Teen Creeps that is two women co-host a podcast where they read old school, like Goosebumps 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Horror and stuff like that. And they read them and review them and talk about them on air. That is a relevant outlet for something that you might want to reach out to them. And/or even if you don't reach out to them, when you're doing targeted marketing, people that are fans of that podcast might be relevant fans for you. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: Great thing to have. 

Matt: Conversely, if you're nonfiction writer, we talk about newsletters, which are really popular right now, you might subscribe to some newsletters that are ancillary or parallel to what you're writing about. If you're writing a book about let's say social media, and you follow some really good marketing newsletters or creator newsletters or things like that, the audience is going to be very similar. Much of those audiences could probably benefit from your book, assuming you're a great writer and you have some really cool stuff in there. And so yeah, same thing, reaching out to them and finding out about opportunities to be in that newsletter to reach that potentially wider audience that might be able to make use of your book.

Lauren: Yeah. And that goes for like any variety of content types or media types, whether that's a newsletter, Facebook group, going to the event itself, like blah, blah, blah. There are all these opportunities for you to connect with people in that audience group. You just have to make sure you're aware of what those options are. That's definitely a list that I think would be a great reference for you to have and something that you should be working on pre-launch. 

Matt: Another cool thing that might actually fall a little further down in our list, or some of our other stages, but I'll just insert it here since we're kind of talking about sponsorship opportunities is: we've seen an uptick in people reaching out to conferences and events and just saying, ‘hey, you know, I'd love to be a sponsor of the event if you have any open. And the way that I'd like to sponsor is provide 50 free copies of my book to put in your swag bags, or things like that.’ If you are selling direct or if you have the option to be able to purchase your books from whoever's doing your books for you, hopefully Lulu, at, you know, a reasonable price, that's a good option. We've seen people have some good success with that and that turnaround to bring them tenfold of the readers and or business opportunities. 

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely.

Matt: So I think the list that you were referring to earlier, a lot of people would think that as more of like a traditional PR networking list. You know, here, Sarah in our PR department, she has a list and it's pretty much a static list of outlets in places that anytime Lulu has something new that we wanna talk about, a new feature or something like that, she hits that list of newsletters. They might be actual news outlets, local and national, things like that. And so I think what you were referring to earlier is for authors to build their own list. That's something that they'll use each time. They launch a book or something that they can always go back to that list to start with. And you can also keep track of ones that in the past did give you the opportunity, whether it was paid or earned. So, you know, you're going to contact them first and then continue to hit that list. Cause you never know when you hit that list, when you might be successful, when you won't, but again, making a list of all of the relevant outlets and media opportunities, whether those be podcasts or otherwise, and having that list is, is always going to be helpful.

Lauren: I am a spreadsheet girlie. I have a truly aggressive number of spreadsheets, both for work and for personal use. This is one of those that I would highly recommend, even if you're not a spreadsheet person. Like, this is the time to make yourself a spreadsheet with a complete list of anybody that you could potentially reach out to, and then keep track of did you reach out to them? When did you reach out to them? Keep dates. If you follow up, if you want to follow up with people, you're going to want to keep dates. If they respond to you and say, like, let us know when the book is out and we'll connect then, you're going to want to keep a note of that. If they respond to you and say, like, you know, we're not interested right now, but in the future…you absolutely want a place where you can keep track of all that. And to Matt's point about different outlets that you can reach out to. Yeah. Not necessarily just people that are in your audience base. Also local news or something like that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Like something that, it doesn't necessarily have to be ‘I wrote a book about social media marketing and I reached out to audiences that are also interested in social media marketing.’ Your local paper might be interested in writing something about it. Your college's alumni magazine might be interested in including a little feature about your new book or something like that. 

Matt: You might need to do something to make them interested though too. So you might get a lot of like no's or non-responses. But if you had a local, let's say middle school or high school and your book was appropriate for that audience. We'll take the example you were using earlier, teen horror. And let's just say you offered to donate 25 copies to one of their English classes or whatever to use. You take that information, assuming that that happened, and then you turn that into a press release. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Local author donates 25 copies of her latest release or his latest release to a local school and you know, whatever, maybe even make a contest around it. That is something wholly different for a local news outlet to pick up than just a run of the mill, hey, local author publishes latest in a trilogy of teen horror. Sometimes you might have to get a little creative. AndI wanna step back and caveat all of this and we should've done this at the top and I apologize, but most of what we're talking about here, at least a good chunk of this, is what would happen if you contracted a PR agency to do this work for you. This is a lot of what they do. So for those of you that have more money than time, and you're really not interested in doing this, that's fine, go find a very author-specific PR firm to help you, and this is a lot of what they'll do. But for those of you that would like to make a go of it on your own and not spend all that money ahead of time, we're giving you basically the roadmap, the blueprint to do a lot of this. Again, just wanted to give the caveat that if you're listening to this and you're like, nah, I'd rather pay somebody to do it, you can, you absolutely can. I think a lot of this, once you start getting into it, is not complicated, it's just time consuming. But it's worth it. 

Lauren: A lot of it too, even if you do hire a team of people to help you, you're still going to have to provide them some of the stuff 

Matt: Sure.

Lauren: That we're talking about here. So it's going to be a time commitment no matter what.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Just depends on exactly how much time you're going to be committing to it. 

Matt: That's right. Yeah. 

Lauren: Another way that you could maybe get local press attention, if you're looking for that, is to consider hosting a launch event. If you want to have a book signing at a local bookstore, local library, this is your opportunity to do so. This was what I used to do at the bookstore that I worked at. I spent the first year and a half that I worked there specifically organizing self-published author events. And one of the number one things that we would say to people is, if your book is already out, this event is a waste of time. If it's already out and all of your local friends and family have already purchased it, no one's gonna come buy additional copies of your book from this signing. So if you are interested in having a big book signing, a big event, pre-launch is the time to get it set up and ready to go and planned for the week that you want your book to come out. Which is also why the very first thing I said in this was pick a launch date. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Commit to it. 

Matt: Yeah. That makes sense. 

[17:42]

Lauren: What else? Let's see. 

Matt: You're going to want some beta readers. You're probably going to want to try and get some reviewers, people who would potentially write blurbs for the cover of your book, yeah? 

Lauren: What is a blurb?

Matt: Blurbs are just another way to say testimonial or something like that, but a nice little couple of sentences or a paragraph from preferably somebody who carries a little bit of weight or recognition in your genre. So if you're writing sci-fi or fantasy, a blurb from somebody who writes nonfiction marketing psychology is not going to do you any good. But if there's another author in your genre or field that at least some people, if not many, know of then getting a blurb from them would be quite helpful, which is why it makes networking with other authors really important. We did an episode a few back about in-person author events. A lot of people will say ‘what's the benefit to me to network with other authors? You know, I'm worried that there's not gonna be enough benefit there and I'm an introvert so I don't want to do that, but this is one of those benefits. When you go to launch your next book, if you need some blurbs, or some testimonials, specifically from people that have some recognition in your genre or industry, that's a great way to do that, to forge those relationships. Yeah, blurbs are great, definitely one of the things that you really should be thinking about when you're looking at pre-launch marketing. 

Lauren: I always kind of look at them as the distinction between like a blurb and a review is the marketing purpose of it because I do think that, like Matt was saying, I have purchased books before without reading the cover copy or knowing anything about the author. But when I saw the name of somebody who blurbed the book, and it's like one of my favorite authors is on the front cover of the book saying, this was the best book I've read so far this year. Okay, that's enough for me. If an author that I love and trust has said this, that sounds great. So I think the blurb is a little bit more of a marketing tactic based on who it came from, like Matt said. Or if it's a testimonial, it's somebody, especially for nonfiction, somebody that said, like, you know, I used this or I connected with this person. I used this book, I used their practices, and it helped me do whatever it is they’re marketing that this book will help you do. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: As opposed to reviews are…it doesn't matter who they're coming from. What matters is that it's coming from somebody who read the book, but the name of the person who's reviewing it, it could be anybody. 

Matt: My hot take is that reviews don't matter. I'm glad nobody has our email address right now because that's a mixed bag. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I think a lot of people would agree and a lot of people would disagree, but I definitely trust blurbs, word of mouth, and just again, knowing the author or who that author runs in circles with prior to reviews. To me, these days, reviews are pointless. I won't look at a review for a book. I just won't. And even if I do look at it, regardless of what that review says, it's not going to influence whether or not I buy that book or pick that book up. What's going to make me pick that book up are things like you said. I may see a blurb on the cover of that book that's from another trusted author or creator or somebody that I do like, or at least I know of and I kind of have an idea, like, you know. I read a lot of marketing books, Seth Godin's not gonna write a blurb for somebody if he doesn't think the content's at least pretty decent to good marketing content. So I might pick that book up, even if I've never heard of that author. But if somebody wrote a review of that book and was like, oh, this is a great book, I love it, it really helped my digital marketing career, that doesn't mean anything to me. 

Lauren: On a personal level, I completely agree with you. Unfortunately, the publishing industry as a whole does not agree with you. But I agree in terms of how we use word of mouth marketing, and how we use…not social proof because it's not actually social proof, but I guess the authority building. The stamp of approval from somebody else that’s, you know, saying like this person is legit. And I'm telling you that because I blurbed their book. 

To make the point of why this needs to be done ahead of time, Matt and I have both just referenced the fact that these blurbs from other authors and creators are on the cover of the book somewhere. So obviously, if you're trying to include this content as marketing in your book, whether that's on the front cover, on the back cover, or in the first couple of pages.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: You obviously need them before the book is published in order to be able to add them.

Matt: Yeah, beta readers, again, another popular and important thing to do, start setting up a small list of beta readers, reaching out to friends, but others in the industry are trusted people and see if they'd be willing to read an advanced copy of your book. Again, that helps with getting blurbs. So you often want to send an advanced copy or an ARC to somebody who you're hoping to get a blurb from and have them double as a beta reader, and maybe give you a little bit of feedback. And also they oftentimes will become part of your street team. And so an important thing to have is a street team for launch, people who are going to be out there talking about your book. This is oftentimes friends, colleagues, and coworkers, beta readers. These are all important steps in establishing a street team for launch time marketing as well. 

[22:15]

Lauren: So that's a lot of the stuff that is going to involve the terrible part of publishing, which is speaking to other people. That's a lot of the… it's always funny to me because so many people that are drawn to writing in general and books are introverts. And now we're like giving you all these steps that are like, go out and talk to a bunch of strangers, which sounds awful. 

Matt: Yeah but, we're also introverted marketers. So I'd like to think that we take that into account when we talk to people and we try to give them naturally the best ways to go out and market from a introvert-friendly standpoint. 

Lauren: So true.

Matt: I was on another interview recently, and what I love to tell people is that marketing is just making friends. If you're doing it right, that's all it is. And whatever your way of making friends is, that should be your way of marketing. Unless your way of making friends includes physical violence. But otherwise, if your way of making friends is to go to in-person events or to see people in person, then that's how you should market. You should focus on those types of activities. But if your way of making friends is online, then focus on that. Find the social media channels that you've been really good at dealing with and double down on those. So keep that in mind too. And we talk about marketing. We know that a lot of creative people don't enjoy marketing and sales and the business side of what they do. But if you try to approach it in a more friendly way and just think, hey, marketing is just building relationships and making friends. And you come at it from the way you would do that in your personal life. It does make these things a lot easier.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I have nothing to add to that. I’m mostly just sitting here already picturing the social graphics that I'm going to make using that quote that Matt just gave us. Yeah, no, that's it. But just in case you're a little burnt out already on the idea of social marketing and making friends and however you want to put it, there's plenty that you can do ahead of time, pre-launch, that is purely just streamlining your marketing efforts, getting things ready on the backend, getting situated in a way that is gonna help you with all of these things, but it's still just prep work for that. And a lot of that is gonna be stuff like email list maintenance, social channel maintenance, website maintenance. So let's talk a little bit about some of that on the backend.

[24:18]

Matt: So briefly, email list maintenance, that's an easy one. We'll just skim through that. If you don't have an email list started already, if you're not one of those who have been experimenting with email newsletters or building an email list, now's the time to start. Definitely, way before your book launches, be spending a little bit of time brushing up on that, figuring out which email software you wanna use, and really digging into the benefits of building that email list and trying to get a lot of your social following over to your email list. That's really gonna help you out. 

And then for social media, again, focusing on what channels you do utilize and which ones you're best at. You shouldn't be on all of them, by the way. If you're trying to use all social media channels, you're failing already. 

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: Pick one or two, you know, that you're really good at, that you're comfortable with, that you can show up every day on - because consistency is what matters - and just double down on those. But do a quick audit of your social media accounts. Look at how many followers you have, your engagement rates. Look at what types of posts your followers are responding to the most, because you're going to keep all that in mind when you do start marketing. Taking a quick social media audit, looking at your accounts, what your avatar looks like that you're using lately. Does your bio, header still accurately represent who you are and what you're writing? You know, those types of things. So I think those are important.

I skimmed through those because they're relatively important, but the most important, I think, in the pre-launch marketing plans and activities that we just mentioned would be the website maintenance and making sure that A, you have one and B, if you do already have one that again, just like your social media channels, that everything is up to date there. It accurately reflects what you're doing, what you're creating, what you're hoping to come to market with and a lot of the other things that are going to be important when it comes to marketing that book because if you don't have a website, you don't really have anywhere to send anybody

Lauren: Right. Kind of important.

Matt: Once that book comes out, except Amazon and that's no good. So what are some things with the website that you think people really should be aware of? 

[26:02]

Lauren: Well, just real quick before we go there, if you're listening to this and you're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, go back, I want to do the social media and the email list stuff. We're going to do two episodes on both of those. So it's coming. So we'll just skim over those for now. But website stuff. One of the things I think is the most important to do is go through your website and make sure everything works on it. And that is everything from making sure the links that are on there are set up accurately. You know, there's nothing worse than when someone finds your author website and they want to go check your Instagram, so they go to click the button that is built in on a bunch of websites, and they go to click on it and it takes them to a dead page. Definitely you want to make sure everything works. Everything is set up there. That also includes things like your sales options. If you are doing direct sales, now is the time to make sure that your website is set up for that, is set up to support that. 

Also to make sure that you personally are ready to support customers coming to your website. If you're going to be doing direct sales, do you have contact info on your page for how people can get in touch with you if they need help with an order? Or do you have maybe an FAQ section on your website or something like that, that you can help streamline the sales process once your book is live and ready to go. You don't want to be finding out the week that your book is live, that something is broken on the backend and people can't buy your book directly from you or people can't get in touch with you.

Matt: Yeah, that's really important. Making sure all that stuff works and testing it and testing it again, right before, you know, launch day. Just again, to make sure that you start sending people to your website to buy your book, which you should, that everything works properly. 

[27:29]

Lauren: Yep. That's also the time to consider if you are going to be doing pre-sales of your book, which is going to be an option if you are doing direct sales. If you are interested in doing pre-sales, obviously, you've got to do that before the book is launched. It's not a pre-sale if it's after the…I feel like I don't have to explain that, right? We got that? 

Matt: I don't think much explanation is needed there but you know. 

Lauren: Okay. So yeah you know these are all just things that obviously you want to make sure that they're done ahead of time and that we're focusing on that. Also, as a part of that, as a part of all of that maintenance and audit and website checking and all of that, another spreadsheet: set up a system for yourself for what your goals are on all of those different platforms while you're doing this maintenance on them. Set up a system for what your goals are and how you're going to track those goals. So you know, if you're going to be using Google Analytics to track people that come to your website or people that engage with your social posts and go from your social channels to your website, or your emails to your website. You need to get that set up. You need to be using the correct tracking systems in order to be able to do that. And you need to have the time to set that up. So you need to know what your marketing goals are, what your sales goals are, what your traffic goals are, and figure out a way that you're going to track those things and have those systems implemented and in place before you start pushing a lot of traffic to your website or your social channels or whatever, wherever you wind up sending people.

Matt: Yeah, and don't get too worried when you start hearing Lauren refer to things like Google Analytics and stuff. If you're using something like Shopify or one of those for your website, you'll get basic analytics already, so you'll get to see a lot of that already, but you'll have the option to build out some more advanced tracking and analytics, which is really important and helpful later on down the road. Lauren's absolutely right, wherever you can stomach it, or figure it out, or if you're already a pro at it, great, but make sure that you have some form of tracking and analytics set up for your traffic, your website, potentially the traffic coming from your social media channels, email, all that stuff. Really important to make sure that you can gauge the results of your efforts at the end of all this otherwise you'll never know what to change or do better or double down on. 

[29:31]

Matt: Also relatively, if not very important, Lauren mentioned at the top of this, potentially putting together a press kit for yourself. So when you do reach out to different outlets or podcasts or blogs or, or, you know, places where you want to try and get some coverage, whether it's earned or paid, you know, you need to have something, a nice little link or package you can send to people that has things like, you know, your book description, maybe the elevator pitch for that book. If you have examples of other titles that are comparable to yours, any promo materials you have, like your author photo or author bio, you need to give these people something to go off of. You can't just give them a blind email with, hey, I'm launching this book on whatever it is, extraterrestrial romance, and I'd love for you to cover it. But they don't know who you are, they don't know what you look like, they don't know what the book, there's no description or elevator pitch, no list of blurbs or reviews or anything that you've started gathering. You gotta have all that together in a nice little press kit for yourself that you can use to market yourself and your books with.

Lauren: It's just something that's good to have on hand for yourself because it'll save you time later with the efforts that you make reaching out to people. One of the things that I would have happen all the time when I was doing these author events at Book Revue was, I would reach out to people after we'd approved the event and officially confirmed we were doing it. And I would reach out to people and say like, ‘hey, I need to start creating the event flyer and post it up on our website. Can you please send me a JPEG of your cover art and your author photo?’ People would email me back and be like, ‘what's a JPEG?’ Or like, ‘here's a selfie that I took on my potato phone and it's about 200 pixels by 200 pixels and you can use this, right?’ And it was just never a good time trying to, like, get these assets from people. And then every now and then somebody would immediately respond and be like, ‘no problem, here's a nice little folder that I have with my book description and the cover art and my author photo and my author bio.’ And would respond to me so quickly that I would know that they had this all ready to go. And I was always just like, this is it. This is the mark of a professional author, or content creator, or entrepreneur, or whatever the case may be, somebody who knows what they're doing and is prepared for it, so. Great to have. 

Matt: You can also put all that on your site too. You can have a section of your website dedicated to those materials and just make them downloadable. And we've seen people do that as well. So whatever's easiest for you. But I think the important thing like Lauren is stating is that you have it available or you give it to them proactively one or the other. Don't make them come looking for it, cause in most cases they won't. It's just like submitting a resume for a job to somebody, but it's only 50% complete. They're not going to come back to you and say, hey, where's the rest of your resume? They're going to throw it in the pile of no thank yous. Don't give them a reason to say no thank you. Give them all the reasons to say yes, thank you. We'd be interested. 

Lauren: Absolutely. I have a bunch of blog posts to link in the show notes for this episode that dive into the more specific sections of this. Like I know there's gonna be one on putting together your pre-launch publishing timeline, one about growing your author network, and there is one on how to pitch your book, which includes details of what to include in a press kit. We are also going to have a downloadable checklist because I know we've been talking for a really long time and it's just pre-launch stuff that we've been talking about so far. So if you're listening to this and you're overwhelmed by the amount of stuff that we just rattled off and then still said, but that's only one third of the marketing timeline that you guys are talking about today, we'll put together a downloadable checklist that has a more concise bullet point version of what we're talking about here so that you can kind of see it all laid out like that.

[33:00]

Lauren: In the meantime, I think that's most of what we would want to talk about for pre-launch marketing. So let's say you've done all that. You burned through the checklist. You got everything done that you needed to. And now it is launch week. 

Matt: Yay, launch week. 

Lauren: Congratulations. Kind of a big deal. Which is actually going to be one of the first things that I'm going to say. It is a big deal. And I know it's a really hard…not for everybody, but I know for a lot of people, it's really hard to like, shout yourself out. But if there's ever a time in your life to do so, you've published a book and it's a big deal. And now is the time to make a big deal out of it. And now is the time to tell everybody. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And that includes, I don't care if your friends and family are so sick of hearing you talk about you have a book coming out. I am such a dedicated diehard reader. We've talked about this a lot. I will put book release dates on my calendar so that I don't forget, and I still don't remember when they're coming out. I am just terrible at stuff like that. So even books that I am so excited about, I still need the reminder. I still need to open up Instagram that morning and see the author that I follow post ‘it's launch day. I'm so excited that people finally get to read this book that I worked really hard on!’ And that's my reminder to be like, oh, that's right. I have to stop at Barnes & Noble on the way home from work today. 

Matt: Yeah. I mean, along that point, I think that when you talk about things like social media and other places where you might be talking about the fact that you just published your book or today's the day it's available, it's launched, you can buy it on my site, whatever it is that you're saying, put some inflection in there. Like, you should be excited about it, Lauren's right. For a lot of people, the event of publishing a book or making it available to the public is oftentimes just as large, if not larger than purchasing a car or, you know, signing your first lease agreement or something like that. Like you put a lot of work into this. It takes a lot to do that and you made it across the finish line. So you should let that be reflected in the way that you talk to people publicly about it and really, really play up, because they're going to feed off your energy. If you just go on social media and you make a post like, hey, drop my latest book today. It's good. You should check it out. Click here. Most people are going to scroll right past that. 

Lauren: Yeah, no, not. If you are not excited about it. Why should I be excited about it? 

Matt: Absolutely 

Lauren: And I, you know, you're talking to - you’re talk to, you are, y’all listening to this are - I mean, if you're anything like me, you're actively talking back to the podcast that you're listening to. 

Matt: Also, did you catch that Lauren just used the word y'all and she's only been down here from New York for a few years? 

Lauren: I worked y'all into my vocabulary as soon as possible. 

Matt: As soon as you crossed the line to North Carolina when you moved?

Lauren: Yeah, it's such a convenient word. It's such an inclusive, convenient word. I just immediately forced myself to work it into my vocabulary. 

Matt: Alright. You did good. 

Lauren: And it has been five years.

Matt: Has it been that long already? 

Lauren: Uh huh.

Matt: Don't put me on your street team for your book. 

Lauren: But yeah, I think it's very important to hype yourself up. This is coming from two people who are pretty deadpan a lot of the time about things and like aren't overly emotive publicly, but there are some things that you got to get hyped up for, and this is one of them. Also while you're in the process of letting everybody know that your book is out, make sure that it is accessible from every possible platform. So every social channel that you have, make sure that there is a link and not just a post, like not just today's post that is going to get lost in the shuffle, but there's a link in your bio, there's a link in your profile. If it's a platform that you have the ability to pin something to the top of your page, make sure that you're pinning a post that has a link to your new book on there. If you have multiple books already, it's fine to have it linked to your just regular bookshop page, but just make sure that if it's in your email signature, if it's in your email newsletter. Anything that you are sharing anywhere like ‘my book is out today.’ Make sure there is a working link that people can click on to go buy your book. 

Matt: Shamelessly everywhere. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah, don't feel bad. Make sure that link is everywhere. And that's one of the benefits of selling direct, by the way. So, just had to work that in there.

Lauren: I think we can make a drinking game out of every time Matt sneaks in a selling direct tip into an episode. 

Matt: I don't know if that's good for our audience, but.

Lauren: I didn't say what kind of drinks. 

[37:11]

Matt: Oh, well, that's fair. Alright. So we're talking about our book. We just launched it. We're on social media. We are out in the middle of our street and our cul-de-sac yelling to people that we just published our book and we're dancing and we're doing all the things. What about all those people that we got on board as a street team? What are we doing with them? 

Lauren: Making sure that they are right out there hyping you up too.

Matt: I got it. 

Lauren: Anybody that you can, anybody that you feel comfortable with, this is the time to say like, ‘hey, thank you so much for blurbing my book, reviewing my book, helping with this part of the process. Could you give me a quick shout out today?’ 

Matt: Mmhmm. 

Lauren: Tell people. 

Matt: That's right. Today's the day that you can shamelessly plug yourself, plug your book, just do it all day long, get it all out, ask everybody to repost your posts or post authentically, put that book up there front and center everywhere you can. 

Lauren: For sure. 

Matt: This also means any of the email campaigns that you had lined up ready to launch and everything else is all firing today. Everybody's getting inundated with the fact that you published your book and it's available today.

Lauren: Yeah. It's a big deal. I mean, technically once in a lifetime, even if you put out a new book every six months, you only get one launch day for this specific book. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: So make a big deal out of it. Make sure everyone knows. And again, this is one of those reasons why you'd want to pick a launch day early and commit to that date, because you're going to plan to do a lot of stuff. If not exactly the day of launch, certainly like the two or three days immediately after it. Give yourself the time to plan specifically for that date, which would also include if you are interested in having a book launch of any kind. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Signing event, speaking event, party, whatever. 

Matt: What's important about this section too, for actual launch day marketing is that if you've done all of the pre-launch marketing that you should, the best practices and the things that we talk about, launch day is infinitely easier. But if you don't do any pre-launch marketing, I mean, at this point, if you're still listening, you can imagine how complicated launch day marketing is going to be, how hectic and chaotic. And I'd say halfway through the day, you're balled up in the corner of your house, crying those big ugly tears. So do all the pre-launch marketing stuff and launch day marketing becomes infinitely easier. 

Lauren: Yeah. That's exactly why the pre-launch marketing is so important and is so robust is that you're setting yourself up for this launch week, just being that much easier for you and having everything all set in place and ready to go so that day of week of all you have to do is hit start on those automated processes that you've already set up in advance. You've already done all the work to set it up. Now it's just executing those preset plans. 

Matt: Yeah. 

[39:44]

Lauren: If there was anybody that you reached out to during that pre-launch stage that said come back to us when the book is published, especially when it comes to earned media and professional reviews, it's always a good idea to reach out to those outlets in advance, because you want to make sure that you understand what their guidelines are, whether it's for earned media opportunities or review opportunities. And these are reviewers like professional reviews platforms, like Publishers Weekly or Kirkus Reviews, something like that, not the average consumer that is leaving you an Amazon review because they bought your book.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: They have very different guidelines for different types of books. Sometimes that can be just fiction versus nonfiction. Sometimes that can be a distinction between traditionally published books versus self-published books. Some of them have, they will not accept an ebook version of a book. So if you're only publishing an ebook, you will still need to get a couple of print manuscripts to send…whatever the case may be, like different review outlets have different guidelines. Some of those will include, we will only review books before they're published. Some of them will say we will only review books after they've been published. So if you've reached out to any, if you've done any that have said to you, like, you know, let us know when the book is published, or submit it when the book is published, or their guidelines say that make sure that now is the time that you go back through that spreadsheet that we talked about earlier and just go through and anyone that said follow up with us after the book is published, now is your time to do so. 

Matt: Really important. 

Lauren: Not later, now. 

Matt: Agreed. 

[41:09]

Lauren: All right, so. Your launch day is going to go really fast. Launch week is going to go really fast. Big whirlwind exciting week. But now we're in this literally endless window of time where it's post launch. Now you've just…your book will exist forever. What do you do with it now? 

Matt: Just let it market itself. Go on and be its thing. I'm going to go onto something else. 

Lauren: That's definitely how that works.

Matt: I guess that's sarcasm. 

Lauren: Yeah. Books sell themselves. Don't you know? 

Matt: Well, that's what most people think. 

Lauren: Yes. Yes, it is.

Matt: You just put it online or on the bookshelf and it sells itself, right? I did my pre-launch marketing. I did my launch day marketing. Like give me a break, Lauren. Can I rest now? 

Lauren: Sure. Did you actually want to sell any copies of your book though, or did you just want it to die in obscurity on the internet? 

Matt: But I just did all that other stuff that should be selling on its own, right? 

Lauren: Yeah. Until it isn't. Now you just want to fade into obscurity? 

Matt: No, I don't. 

Lauren: Alright. Well then let's talk about post-launch book marketing. 

Matt: Alright. If we must. 

Lauren: One of my favorite tips for post-launch book marketing is to periodically reach out to all of those people that you reached out to that bought copies of your book and say, ‘hey, thank you for buying a copy of my book. Can you please leave a product review wherever you bought it,’ whether that is on your website, from a book distributor, whatever the case may be, you know, you want to give people enough time to have actually, like, received the book, and hopefully read it. Hopefully, hopefully read it, occasionally guilty myself of that. So that's fine. So, you know, you don't need to bother people the week after, but maybe set yourself a reminder for one month from launch day, three months from launch day, six months from launch day, just send out a quick note to your email subscriber, a social post, something like that. And just say, ‘hey, if you had the opportunity to buy and read my book and you haven't left me a review, it would be really great, it's really helpful if you could do that.’

Matt: Yeah, or even just tell them to reply to you with what they hated about it. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I mean, any engagement is good engagement for the most part, but it's really important, as Lauren stated, to circle back again when, you know, we talk a lot about circling back or following up. It's really important and people really value consistency and that's how they come to like you even more as an author and a creator is when they see that you're actively engaged in the content that you're putting out. I mean, they're really going to come to respect that and that's how you build lifelong fans.

[43:19]

Matt: One of my favorite things in the post-launch marketing bucket is the fact that now you can really start leaning into a lot of those opportunities that you were hopefully lining up in your pre-launch marketing, like interviews on podcasts or signings at your local bookstore at schools, depending on what your content is and all of those things. And so hopefully some of those things are starting to pan out. But if not, don't get upset. Now that you are a quote unquote published author, it can be a little bit easier now to reach back out to people or even newer podcasts and blogs and other things that you might have found in doing more research and say, hey, I just recently published a book. It's doing well. You know, include some of those testimonials we talked about or things like that, and just let people know, you know, I'm available for interviews or to come on your show or talk to your school or whatever that might be. Again, all topic based or genre based. But this to me is a lot of the fun, exciting stuff where you actually get to go out and talk about your book. And hopefully you're doing that for months and months after the launch. But again, a lot of that pre-launch marketing work is to get you to the point where, after you actually launch it, then you can start following up and doing these interviews and doing these fun things and going to author events and other types of things where you can talk about your book. 

Lauren: One of my favorite webinars that we've done, we had Stephanie Chandler from the Nonfiction Authors Association. And she gave this just phenomenal presentation on booking speaking engagements and how to use public speaking opportunities to grow your brand and your book sales. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And it really, it's one of those rare opportunities that doesn't actually run out. You know, like there's - books are a very weird thing, because they're both evergreen and yet have a very short shelf life. Like, they're only new for so long, you know, and depending on the content, they're only relevant for so long. So it's very much a strike while the iron's hot, which is why we focus so much on pre-launch and week of launch. But speaking engagements are like one of those few things in post-launch marketing that having a book published at all opens those doors for you. It doesn't matter if your book came out ten years ago. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Just having that as your key to open the door is something that never really goes away. So I will definitely link to the recording of that webinar episode in the show notes. But that to me, like as somebody who is so unbelievably terrified of public speaking that I almost said no to this job when Matt was like, do you want to start a podcast? And this doesn't even really count as public speaking. Like, Stephanie had me convinced by the end of that webinar, like, oh, maybe I should get into public speaking, which is incredible. No one has ever convinced me, ever, that I should try to get into public speaking. So shout out to Stephanie for even making me consider it for a second. 

[45:56]

Matt: Good. Yeah. This is also a good time to start thinking about potentially supplemental things. Merch, other things that could go along with your book if you hadn't thought of those things already. So, judging and based on some of the feedback you might be getting or engagement, you might realize, oh, I should do a workbook to go along with this book. Or we've seen a lot of really cool side projects spin off of a published book before, you know, somebody comes back to market a few months later with a cool map book of all the worlds that are in their latest release, you know, maybe it's a sci-fi or fantasy. So there's a lot of different things you could do to help keep the hype around your book alive for months and months after it launches, including, but not limited to, you know, supplemental products like bundles and workbooks and guided journals and map books and depending on what your genre is, or even merch like shirts and calendars and other cool things that you can do that are related to your book is a great way to keep that hype going and bring in some extra passive revenue. 

Lauren: Yeah. This is especially easy to do if you're selling direct. Look at that, it's me plugging selling direct this time instead of Matt. If you have your own store set up on your own website, it's a lot easier to plug additional products into that that are not books. So t-shirts, stickers, art, something like that, or to add additional books, whether that's the workbook, guided journal, or something like that. So, you know, another point in favor of selling direct from your own website. But you might also want to consider, even if it's not creating new content like that, something like a special edition or different formats. If you're taking a leaf out of traditional publishing's roadmap, they don't release all the formats of a book at once. Usually it'll be a hardcover copy first, and then - usually it's a year after the publication date. Unless either the hardcover is selling really poorly, then they might push up the paperback release date, or if it's selling really well, they might prolong the hardcover edition for an extended period of time, but they usually don't release the paperback and hardcover at the same time. So if you've released one format of your book and you'd like to, you know, at the three months, six month mark release an alternative format, that's a great way to do it.

If you want to do a special edition with maybe an exclusive cover on it, like so a different cover design, or maybe you've written a bonus chapter somewhere, whether it's you're writing fiction, you've written a bonus chapter from another character's point of view. Or if you're writing nonfiction, something new has happened that is relevant to the information that you've provided in the book, or you've had a lot of people ask you questions about something in the book that you wanna like, add a little more detail to it or something like that, and you've created additional content without writing a whole new book, but it's enough of a reason to put a new version of it up on your website and say like, hey, even if you already have that other one, you don't have this one, because it doesn't have these exact things in it. 

Matt: Yeah, I would suggest - along those lines -  I would flip the model that the traditional publishers do though, because I hate the way they do it and I think a lot of people do too. Their model is based on maximizing revenue and sales, and so by putting that hard copy out there first, obviously that's drawing financially more money in and then releasing the paperback a year later. Sometimes, like you said, six months later depending on sales are waning off. But for your audience, I would suggest not taking a ‘let's get every dollar we can’ approach like the traditional publishers do. I would flip that and I would put out, if you're doing a paperback, I would put the paperback out first, right? And I would gauge response to that paperback edition. If you want to offer a hardcover at the same time, fine. But otherwise I would reserve a hardcover for a special edition, like Lauren was referring to. And I also would not release an ebook until later. And I know I'm going to get a lot of boo and hate for that too, but put that paperback out first, have everybody buy it directly from you, maximize your sales, collect all that customer data you can, and then when you absolutely feel like you have to, release that ebook to all the cheapos out there and get all the freebies that are going to come in and deal with that ebook stuff. 

And then start looking at your long term or your long-tail plan for that book, which could include six to eight months out, maybe a year out, as interest starts to wane and sales start to wane, that's when you look at, okay, maybe I should do a limited edition now and get somebody you know, or hire a designer, do a really cool like new cover, maybe add some bonus stuff like Lauren referred to, and then put out a limited edition hardcover. And so you keep sort of regenerating sales and regenerating that book, repackaging or repurposing that content, I think is probably the way to go. But traditional publishers putting that hard copy out first, that's just a cash grab, I would flip that and you know, they got the idea right, like let's release formats in phases, but I would flip it and not take the cash grab model. I would take the audience grab model and really try to do right by your audience. Again, having a long-tail plan six, eight, twelve months out and knowing, okay, I'm going to drop the paperback first. Then I'm going to do ebook, and then I'm going to release hardcover as a limited edition for all the true diehard fans. By the way, anybody's gonna come back and buy a hardcover from you after they've already read the paperback, which people will. 

Lauren: Oh yeah. 

Matt: They will also pay whatever you want. 

Lauren: Mmhmm. 

Matt: So if I'm coming back and I'm gonna buy a special edition hardcover from some of my favorite authors, like Grady Hendrix or somebody like that, I don't care if it's $50. If I've already read the paperback a year ago and I loved it and he releases a special edition, I'm gonna buy it. So keep that in mind too, and do something really fun and cool with it. 

Lauren: Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with that actually. The format of hardcover to paperback kind of varies by genre. But as somebody who's primarily a romance reader, romance tends to be paperback first. And I - 

Matt: Or ebook first. 

Lauren: Well, yeah, depending on whether it's what specific genre of romance it is. But I have absolutely bought, multiple times now, where I'll buy the paperback version when it comes out originally. And then, you know, sure enough, a book does well enough that it hits the New York Times bestseller list and they wind up putting out a limited edition hardcover version of it. And I am absolutely right there buying it. And I've got it right next to the paperback on my bookshelf. Unless they're different colors, in which case they will not even be on the same shelf because my bookshelves are in rainbow order. 

Matt: Oh wow. 

Lauren: Look, it's fine. 

[51:50]

Matt: Alright. Well, I think the last sort of thing we'll touch on with post-launch marketing, and I mentioned this earlier, but again, is consistency. So the thing to remember is don't lose steam. You've got to keep that frequency. You've got to keep that cadence. The minute you stop talking about your book, everybody else will too. So try to keep that cadence. You know, obviously it might die a little bit and that's okay. Especially as you move on to working onto other projects - and spoiler alert, you should, you know, there's that time-addled classic of like, I just wrote my first book, what do I do now? And that's: you write the next one. So move on to the next one, but don't lose frequency. Don't lose steam. Don't stop talking about it completely. 

Lauren: And here I thought the adage was ‘I'm going to Disney World.’

Matt: For you and I, it is. That's always the answer. But for everybody else, we should tell them, start the next book. 

Lauren: Yes. Regardless of what kind of content your book is, you should be thinking about that next one. 

Matt: Or, you know, if you're asking yourself, I just got to the end of this podcast. What should I do next? It's listen to the next one. 

Lauren: Exactly. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Unless you're listening to this today comes out in which case the next one isn't out yet.

Matt: That's fair. Go listen to the older ones. 

Lauren: Yeah. Just go back and listen again. 

Matt: And then go to Disney World. 

Lauren: Always. I mean, if you're me, chances are you've listened to, or I definitely have listened to a podcast while at Disney, or at least on my way to Disney.

Matt: For sure. 

Lauren: So kill two birds with one stone. 

Matt: Yeah. You know, I think that's really probably the note to end it on. 

Lauren: Honestly, we're going to turn into the Ouroboros and we're just going to keep that cycle going right back at the beginning or right back where we started again. Just cycle right back into the part where you're writing a new book, you're working on new content, you're getting that pre-launch going again, and you're just going to keep going.

Matt: Yeah. And you'll get better with it each time. 

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. It becomes easier each time because you've done some of this stuff already. So you might as well keep the steam going and keep it going. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Well, thanks for joining us everybody. And tune in next time where we'll be talking about something cool, I'm sure, or at least something Disney-related. 

Lauren: Well, there's always a guarantee of that, especially because we'll both have been coming back from Orlando - 

Matt: Once again. 

Lauren: - by the time we next record an episode. Once again. Thanks for listening, everyone.