Lauren: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Publish & Prosper. Today we're going to be…I don't really know what we're doing, honestly. We’re going - I’ve completely lost the plot. 

Matt: Wait, hold on a second. What do you mean you don't know what we're going to be doing? 

Lauren: Today. I totally just blanked on what we were doing today. I've been so distracted. 

Matt: We're recording a podcast. 

Lauren: Are we? 

Matt: Yes. And - 

Lauren: Whoa. What's the podcast? 

Matt: We're talking about developing your own go-to-market strategy for your book. 

Lauren: That's absolutely right. We are. 

Matt: Thank you for the validation. 

Lauren: Thank you so much for the assist. Today we're talking about how you're going to prep your book for launch, but not necessarily the marketing side of it, which we have talked a lot about. But some of the other things that you might want to think about when you're determining your go to market strategy for your next project. 

Matt: Yeah, I wouldn't even say might want to think about. A go to market strategy is something that's critical for successful book launches and post launch sales and marketing efforts. 

Lauren: Yeah, I think that's actually a really good point. There's no ‘might want to’ about this -

Matt: Are you drinking a Coke Zero? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: What happened to your Monsters? 

Lauren: I’ve already had two today. 

Matt: Wow. And did you find a Coke can that's tall enough to fit in your little thing? 

Lauren: No. So this is - this is great audio content. If only we were currently testing out video. So this is a koozie that's Monster-can sized. But it has, it comes with a lift that you can put in it to make it can sized.

Matt: Wow. So was this designed by the same people that designed Governor DeSantis' cowboy boots? 

Lauren: Hopefully not, because I'll be really sad that I've supported them. 

Matt: It's got a lift inside it for the short cans. 

Lauren: Okay. Anyway. 

Matt: Go to market strategy. 

Lauren: Yeah, if you are a Brumate and you're going to market with launching a new can koozie, this strategy might not work for you. But - 

Matt: Is that who makes that, Brumate? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Ah, okay. 

Lauren: Yeah, I love them. 

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: But yeah, anyway, this particular strategy that we're about to outline -  

Matt: God, I wish we had video right now. 

Lauren: We're working on it. We're working on it. I know. We're literally like I'm looking at a camera right now. We just don't quite have it set up yet. But, this particular strategy that we're going to talk to you right now is specific for books whether it's your first book or your fifteenth book. Like Matt already said, it is essential. I don't know what I was... like, what kind of brain energy I had when I was outlining this on Friday, but I just looked down at my outline and saw the phrase, ‘if you're lackadaisical about launching your book whenever.’ Lackadaisical. 

Matt: Yeah, I saw that and just was like, okay, whatever. 

Lauren: I think that's completely understandable. Oh, I had a very important update. I totally forgot about this. I finished Masters of Death.

Matt: And?

Lauren: It was very good. 

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: I really liked it. 

Matt: Good. 

Lauren: I gave it five stars, which I don't actually - 

Matt: Five out of five?

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: I am actually not. I give out a few - if I have ten five-star books at the end of every year, that's a good year. It's also worth noting that I usually read between 75 and a hundred books in a year. So ten five stars is pretty decent. 

Matt: So somewhere in the 7 to 10% range - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Actually make your five-star cut. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Yeah. So recommend it if you were interested in the book that we described in the last episode. I liked it. Check it out.

[3:53]

Lauren: Anyway, more importantly, talking about your book. We're going to go through, kind of, the different steps of launching your book. You're going to look at details - or we are going to look at details like picking a launch date and when you're going to launch, what products you'll launch with, how and where you're going to sell your book, and kind of planning out a pre-launch and post-launch strategy. 

But we're not necessarily talking about marketing because if you're listening to this and you're like, this sounds very familiar to an episode that you guys already did. First of all, kudos to you for remembering our episodes because that makes one of us. 

But we did absolutely, if you are recalling that, we did do an episode a while back that was on pre-launch, at-launch, and post-launch book marketing, which I would definitely recommend listening to if you haven't or if you're interested in this particular topic. But this is - we're not looking at the marketing side of things. 

Matt: No. And in fact, there are several episodes that would blanket under this one or would fall under this blanket. A go-to-market strategy is more of a combination of your marketing plan, but also your sales plan, and some of the other things that go into it. And outside of the book world, you use a go to market strategy for when you're going to launch a new product or feature set for your platform or something like that. And it's a little bit of everything. It's literally how you're going to take a product to market. 

So it does include the marketing component, but it also very importantly includes the sales and distribution components, as well as anything else that might need to be outlined in that document. Which could include development and some other things too. But go-to-market strategies are usually pretty much put together, again, once you've decided on a product market fit for something you're doing. 

And in this case, you know, once an author decides on what kind of book they're going to write, or if it's, you know, another in a series or what genre or, you know, all those things. Yeah. Then the work really begins of… not actually writing the book, the work begins on planning how you're going to take that book to market outside of just the standard marketing plan tactics. 

You need to understand how does your marketing fit with your sales plan? What is your sales plan? What's your distribution plan? All of those things. So the go-to-market strategy is kind of the umbrella strategy that the marketing plan, the sales plan, and some of the other stuff tucked neatly underneath. Production plan, all of that stuff. 

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. And I am going to be linking in the show notes a handful of the episodes that we think are going to be cross relevant to this one. So if you're curious, you can always check out the show notes. We're also going to shout out a couple of them throughout the episode. 

The last thing I'm going to say real quick up the top here is that we're going to kind of present these more or less in the order that we think you should consider them in. You know, some of them, it's probably going to be a little variable where you can kind of move things around. But this is the, the order that I would recommend kind of making these plans and figuring out your specific strategy details. 

Matt: Yeah, I mean, the order that we're going to talk about them in probably is the easiest and most obvious order. Technically you can kind of sort of work on these in different, I guess, variations or setups. 

Lauren: Sure.

Matt: It doesn't necessarily have to be this way, but this is probably the easiest way. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Doing things in as much chronological order as possible. 

Lauren: Well, and you're going to see too, how some of them kind of like, feed into each other.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Maybe we should just jump in. 

Matt: Yeah, why not. 

Lauren: And stop building it up. 

[7:05]

Lauren: Okay. So, uh, first up, we've talked about this before: picking a launch date. Your book needs a launch date. You need - you need a launch date. Even if it's just one that you're setting in your head for yourself, you need to know when you're going to publish your book. You need a deadline. You need something to market when you're advertising it in your pre-launch marketing strategy. 

Matt: Why are you looking at me like you're expecting an argument? 

Lauren: Because you do usually argue with me on this one. 

Matt: Well, to a degree. I think that, yes, you should have a launch date, obviously, but... I think that sometimes you can be a little more purposeful or you can have a better reason for a launch date than just, oh, I want to get this done in ten months. Or I think I can get this done in six months and then you end up moving the goalpost and moving the goalpost. 

Sometimes I like the idea of attaching your launch date to something else of significance, whether it's, you know, an event that's happening where you could probably get maximum exposure for launching that book. And maybe the event ties in with the content you're writing or not, whatever, it doesn't matter. 

Maybe you can tie your launch date to a significant date in history, something that gives a little more significance to a launch date typically will help you hit that date more effectively and efficiently than just kind of picking a date for picking the date sake. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But…

Lauren: And there's different ways that you can approach that too. Like Matt said, you know, planning your launch around a specific event. There are different ways that you can approach that if you want to handle it in a different way. You know, you can say like, I have an event, like I'm gonna be speaking at an event in eight months and I want the book to come out before the event so that I can make sure that I have it for sale and available at the event. 

Or maybe you say, I wanna have it done in time for the event, but it doesn't launch until after the event, except it's going to be an exclusive event-only purchase for people at the event, they get exclusive early access to it. And maybe that's, you know, a fun little way to motivate people to buy this book. 

So whatever you think, whatever you can think of, you know, whatever kind of clever, fun ways, you know, maybe even something as simple as I'm writing a… a cookbook that is holiday cookie recipes. I want to have it ready to go by September so that people can be buying it throughout the holiday season. You're not going to launch a Christmas cookie book in March. 

Matt: Yeah, or if you are writing, you know, we'll stick with your cookbook thing. What if you're doing a cookbook that is all very native recipes to somewhere in Mexico? You would probably want to try and launch that thing right before Cinco de Mayo so people could get the cookbook and make some of the recipes before Cinco de Mayo, so. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Having a purpose for the date you choose, I think ultimately just helps keep you accountable for hitting that date.

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. Which I would say that accountability is important. You want - whether it's accountability to yourself or once you go public with the date. It’s not really a great look to have to reschedule your launch date once you've started advertising it. I mean, it definitely happens. I'm not saying that it doesn't happen traditionally or in indie publishing. It absolutely happens. We see it happen all the time. But you don't really want to have to do that if you can avoid it. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: It's a good way to hold yourself accountable - 

Matt: That’s right. 

Lauren: To specific deadlines. 

Matt: You don't want to have to do it, but it's not the end of the world. 

Lauren: Right.

Matt: I think that's partially where people like you and I might differ too, though. Create a plan. Fine. Have fun with that. But you're going to have to change it at some point or another. 

Lauren: Oh, absolutely. 

Matt: I don't - I don’t know. 

Lauren: Yeah. Flexibility is important. I mean, we see it all the time in the music industry where you see artists - or in movies where they'll shuffle around release dates of things because they don't want them. Taylor Swift announces a new album and everyone suddenly reschedules the album that they had planned to go out that weekend. 

Matt: And there it is. 

Lauren: Look, I'm just saying. 

Matt: There it is folks. 

Lauren: It's true.

Matt: Taylor Swift, alright. 

Lauren: It's been a minute since I've referenced her.

Matt: Tip your bartenders on the way out please.

Lauren: Fair enough. One last thing just for the funsies of it - obviously you can release a book whenever you want, that's entirely up to you, but historically, in the industry, traditionally, books are released on Tuesdays. 

Matt: In the world of publishing and retail bookstores, yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. So, you know the same way that new albums always come out on Fridays when it comes to music -

Matt: Which used to be Tuesdays, by the way.

Lauren: Really?

Matt: For music, yeah. 

Lauren: Oh. 

Matt: I think they didn't want to compete anymore with books.

Lauren: I guess that makes sense. 

Matt: Yeah. What is it for movies?

Lauren: I think it's also Fridays, but because of the way we've rolled back the midnight premiere, it's now usually like, you know, the first showing of a movie will be like seven o'clock on Thursday night. But if you look at the release date, the specific release date announced is usually a Friday.

Matt: Yeah. But knowing that you might want to not - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Release your book on a Tuesday. 

Lauren: Yeah. These are also, you know, these are all things that you can consider. We're not always saying that there's something that you want to make your launch coincide with something. You might want to plan around avoiding a specific date or avoiding, like - I think a lot of people are going to be launching a book around the same time of this event. And I don't want to compete with this same overlapping audience of people. So I'm going to release my book at a different time. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So. 

Matt: You might get further along in this too and get to the part where you're developing your sales and distribution plan and realize, oh, there's something more important to me in my sales and distribution strategy that means I need to go back and change my release date.

Again, don't get too married to all this stuff in the beginning. When you're able to step back from this go-to-market plan and really take a look at it holistically, you might see some areas where you need to go back in and change a few things so that everything kind of works seamlessly and harmoniously together. 

Lauren: Do you want to make a Disney reference now to balance out the Taylor Swift reference?

Matt: No. 

Lauren: Okay. We don't have to talk about Harmonious, the EPCOT fireworks show that was mediocre at best. 

Matt: I'm not taking the bait. 

Lauren: Too late. 

Matt: Why would you say mediocre at best? I took the bait, by the way. 

Lauren: I don't know. I wasn't... I feel like... I loved Illuminations, for whatever reason. I don't know if it was just because like, childhood nostalgia or if it was actually a good show or whatever.

Matt: Probably a little of both. 

Lauren: A little of both. But I just feel like they've kind of dropped the ball on every single EPCOT show since then. 

Matt: Gosh, I don't feel that way. But I... yeah, that's fine. I'm not going to take the bait anymore. All right. 

Lauren: Are you… I don't know. I don't think we've really ever talked about this. Like, are you into like the fireworks shows and stuff? 

Matt: Yeah, probably not as much as you, which is partially why I don't want to - 

Lauren: That’s fair, okay. 

Matt: Continue down this path. But I do like the shows. Yes. I don't know that I'm as opinionated and nuanced about it as you are from park to park and the different variations of the shows that they, they have, although, you know, certainly some more than others. I think the only thing we'll probably agree on really is the excitement for the upcoming new drone shows.

Lauren: Oh yeah.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: If they phase out fireworks completely at the Disney Parks, will you miss that? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: In favor of the drone shows?

Lauren: Oh absolutely.

Matt: Really? 

Lauren: I'll be very upset by that, yeah. 

Matt: I don’t know if I will or not. 

Lauren: That's like - a staple of -

Matt: No I get it - 

Lauren: Disney, like, the Disney experience to me. Is like ending the day with the fireworks show. 

Matt: But see, for me, it was more just ending the day with a show. So whether it's pretty cool fireworks that, let's be real, all of them were pretty cool. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Versus like these drone shows they're practicing and working on that are, I mean, amazing. I mean, I don't know. I kind of feel like I'm going to end up like in the drone shows. 

Lauren: I - I think - I mean, to be fair, my favorite show at Disney - we’re so, so, so far off topic, I swear I'll wrap this up. My favorite show at Disney is Fantasmic. Which is of all of the shows, it's like the most minimal amount of fireworks. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Like there's some pyrotechnics in the show, but it's primarily a show. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And not. And also my second favorite is probably the Main Street Electrical Parade, so. Nighttime spectaculars, to me, are not necessarily a fireworks show. 

Matt: Well, one of the parks is doing the original main street parade in drone version. 

Lauren: Stop.

Matt: I'm telling you. I think it's either Japan or Paris, I don't remember, but one of them they have their drone show programmed - it's the actual old school Main Street Parade. Yeah, see? 

Lauren: The music, the Baroque Hoedown from Main Street Electrical Parade is my alarm, is my phone alarm. I love that. Oh, man, I'm so, okay. 

Matt: See, don't sleep on these drone shows, man. 

Lauren: All right, all right. 

Matt: Better - 

Lauren: Maybe you're going to sell me on it. 

Matt: We'll see. 

Lauren: It’s all right. We'll keep an eye out for that. Anyway. Go-to-market strategies. 

[15:14]

Matt: So let's get into the next… 

Lauren: Yes

Matt: So, you know, we've talked about launch day. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: You're starting to figure out, okay, when you're going to try and go into the market, right? We're not going to be talking about the writing of the book - let's just again be clear about that - but let's talk about the production component of this go-to-market plan, right? So we're gonna talk about the product itself that you're gonna put in the market. 

Are you going to release this book in the full array of formats, print, ebook, audio? Within print, are you gonna do paperback and hardcover, all those things, or are you going to limit it to one format in the beginning? And then in six months time drop another format, which starts to bring you over into the sales and distribution planning part of this too. But it starts here in the production planning. This is what we're going to talk about now for the next few minutes is kind of the production planning. 

Lauren: Yes. So, Matt kind of ran through a whole bunch of questions in there that are all questions that you have to answer. Just to parse it out a little bit:yeah, first you want to answer the question of what formats in general do I want, whether it's one, some, all, whatever. You're also going to want to answer the question then - assuming that you are releasing your book in more than one format - you're going to want to answer the question of, am I releasing all of the formats at once? Or am I releasing them in stages? 

So a few things to consider, a few things that you want to ask yourself. You might have to do some research considering your options. I would say that there's benefits to both options. I was trying to work through this as I was outlining it, which one I think makes more sense, whether it's launching with all formats or staggering the release of your different formats. And I really couldn't land one way or another on which one I thought was a better option. 

There are benefits to both like, you know, if you're if you're launching with all your formats you're making your books accessible to a broader audience of readers because readers might say I don't know if I can afford to buy a $30 hardcover right now but yeah, I'll go ahead and buy the $4 ebook just so that I can read it. You also might wind up discouraging readers from buying more expensive editions if you have cheaper options available. There's pros and cons. 

Matt: Yeah, and again, there's lots of different ways to approach that, right? So we start to teeter from your production plan into your sales and distribution plan. But many authors do utilize an ebook-first strategy. Then they drop a quote-unquote special edition hardcover about six to eight months out. 

There's a sales cycle for each book that you release, and it's different for everybody but basically your book has about a year of shelf life, if that. If that, if you're lucky and that's if, if you push a pretty strong and spread out annual sales strategy by dropping different versions of the book at  different points in the sales cycle. 

I think the better strategy,or one of the better strategies I've seen, that people use a lot is they'll release in a certain format, usually print first - and the traditional publishing companies do this, by the way. I mean everybody listening to this has probably at one point or another been excited to go get the new book from their favorite author. They go to the bookstore and the only thing that's available is the $40 hardcover -

Lauren: Yep.

Matt: That's the size of a college textbook. And you're like, man, are you effing kidding me right now? And you got to wait six months for the paperback. If you're lucky. 

Lauren: Six months if you're lucky.

Matt: Exactly.

Lauren: It's usually a minimum of a year. 

Matt: But, as an indie author, you can kind of do the same thing, just not to the disappointing levels that the traditional publishing companies do. And it makes sense. So drop your paperback first. Sell through that as hard and as fast as you can. And when you start to see the sales cycle drop, so the sales start to taper off, that's when you go into the market with the ebook. Because that means all the ones who didn't want to spend the $12.99 to get your print copy and they're waiting on that ebook, they're ready to pounce. 

So when the sales start to drop for your paperback, that's when you drop your ebook and then you'll pick up that new cycle or that new wave of sales. Well, when that one starts to taper off, that's when it's time to start looking at the last of the three going into market with your special edition hardcover or something or an audiobook version. 

Lauren: It's also, it's a good reason to remarket. So, you know, maybe you did have that, you released that paperback first and there were some people on your mailing list that looked at it and were like, oh, that's, that's great. I'm totally gonna remember to do that. And then completely forgot about it as soon as it left their brain, much like me. Or maybe said, like I just bought five new books. I'm not going to buy a new one right now, but I will come back around to this. 

And they didn't get a chance to buy your paperback when it first went on sale and they kind of forgot about it. And then when you turn around three months later and say, hey, I'm launching the ebook now. If you were waiting for an ebook copy of it, here it is. And also, hey, by the way, if you didn't get your hands on a paperback, this paperback is still available here. You now, you've revitalized sales by adding a new product line, but you're also remarketing the existing one and it's a good reason to just reach out to people again and be like hey by the way 

Matt: Yeah, a lot of people release their ebook and audiobook at the same time, by the way, so you hit what's known as your digital crowd. So drop your paperback first, then sales taper off, you hit your digital crowd. When those sales taper off, that's when you come out with a special edition for all your true fans that love the book so much that they want something for their bookshelves.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And this is something that I would say I would plan. And like, to Matt's point earlier, you do want to be flexible with your planning. A plan should be a guideline, a suggestion. It shouldn't be something that you stick hard and fast to. But I would say that if you are going to stagger your release dates for your different formats, you kind of want to have a plan in place of like, okay, I'm going to release a format once every month until all the formats are out, or whatever timeline you choose. 

But then also decide how you're going to be advertising it. There's two different games that you can play here. One game is that you release the paperback and you don't tell anybody there's an audiobook coming in a month. And then when the audiobook comes out, people that might have preferred the audiobook that already bought the paperback now have to wrestle with the decision of am I going to get the audiobook too? Which is one tactic for doing it. 

Or the alternative is you go right out up front and you release the paperback and you say, hey, if you're an audiobook listener, don't worry. It's coming soon for you to keep an eye on this space. Sign up for my mailing list so that you can be the first to know when the audiobook’s available. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: However you want to do it. But I would go into that with a plan. Kind of shifting gears a little bit within the same topic, but something else that you might want to consider while you're figuring out like how you're staggering your release, what formats you're releasing, et cetera, is if you're setting any kind of limitations on the product types that you're releasing. 

So, you know, maybe let's say you're going to do a paperback release and then you're going to say, we're going to do a limited print run of hardcovers. They're special edition hardcovers. We're only selling a hundred of them. So once those are sold out, they're sold out, get your hands on them now. 

Or maybe you're not doing a quantity limitation, but like a window of time where you're saying, you know, I'm doing this exclusive print edition of an ebook that I've done previously, and we're only going to be selling print copies of this for a month. If you don't get it in this month, you're never going to be able to get it in print ever again. 

Matt: This is an example of where several of these areas start to get a little gray or blurry. So right now we're technically talking about your production plan. And so understanding what formats you need to create your book in. Again, if you're going to do, like Lauren just talked about, a limited quantity of a certain variation or format, then you need to begin getting quotes on those, is it something you're going to have to have printed by an offset printer because of the special features? Or is it POD where you don't necessarily have to get the books ordered well ahead in advance because they're being run on a POD press? 

Those are the types of things that are considered part of your production plan and understanding from a production standpoint, you know, and an inventory standpoint, what you're going to have to carry, what will be fulfilled automatically through POD, some of those other things. Then when you start talking about the other stuff, that really gets you back over into the area of sales and distribution planning. 

So again, are you going to release formats in a staggered way, print, then ebook and audio, then special editions or whatever, however, or the reverse of that, however you decide you want to do it. Or are you just going to throw everything out at once? Or again, which platforms are you going to put it on? So right now, talking about production planning, again, just understanding what formats do you want to do? What fit, you know, your style, your genre, your brand? Some authors don't do print at all. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Some authors don't do digital at all. I mean, everybody's different. You know, and then there's other products to consider that might go along with that particular series that you're writing or that particular book or that particular project. So, you know, understanding those products too and how they play a role in your sales and distribution strategy. Maybe you're planning on releasing the book launching in February or March, and then you know you want to do a calendar late that same year for people, you know what I mean? So again, understanding that's another product that you have to think about you have to source where that's going to be created, is it going to be print on demand, is it going to be something where it's offset you've got to order a thousand copies up front which means you do need to limit sales to a thousand copies, or…

It's just how intricate each of these areas are and how much they play off of each other so that, like I said at the top of this, when you're all done with your go-to-market strategy, you're going to need to take a step back and look at it all and make sure it all still makes sense as each of the components play with each other, so. 

Lauren: Yeah, even if you're thinking about something like, do I want to crowdfund my book? 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: That's something that, you know, you might have thought at the beginning of this, I don't feel like that's necessary. Maybe you listened to our episode that we did about crowdfunding your book and you thought to yourself, like oh, I don't really see the benefit of doing that, whatever. I'm going to do it on my own. 

And then you reach that point where you say, oh, actually, I do want to do a limited print run of special editions that are really cool that I'm getting from an offset printer. But that means that I have to fund that ahead of time because I can't afford - 

Matt: Well. 

Lauren: - to buy this by myself, especially if I know there's not - or I don't know for sure there's going to be interest in it. 

Matt: That's right. That's what production planning is for though. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So again, understanding during production planning is when you're also getting pricing, and understanding what the costs are going to be associated for each of these formats, and the different things you want to do, which would then again, carry you back over into your sales and distribution plan. 

Understanding, okay, if these costs are going to be associated - for the limited edition hardcover, I'm going to want to run a Kickstarter on that one. For the paperback that’ll launch first, no need to worry about that, I'm going to do all that POD. I've got the cost covered for my editing up front, those types of things. So in that production planning is where you pull a lot of that pricing down and starting to understand the costs associated. 

Lauren: Yeah, for sure. 

Matt: Yeah. This is also where you can start thinking about what type of retail price points you're going to want to set for each of your formats as well. Paperback, ebook, audiobook, all those things. It looks like you've got a note here… oh yeah, episode 27 is all about retail pricing, so you can go back and check that one out too if you need a little refresher on pricing. 

Lauren: Yeah, and like I said earlier, I'll link all these in the show notes too, so. If you're like, because we're going to drop, literally the next bullet down on my outline is another three episodes that I recommend listening to. So if you're like, you said a lot of numbers and I can't remember them all, definitely check our show notes. 

[26:11]

Lauren: We kind of started alluding to this already within that production setup and planning. But you're going to also have to figure out what your sales and distribution platforms are going to be. This is our weekly reminder that you should be selling direct. But also, you know, if you're still on the fence about that, or if you still - if we somehow have not managed to convince you yet why it's a good idea to be selling direct. 

First of all, I've got at least two episodes you can listen to about it. Including episode number 16, The Indie Author's Guide to Thriving Without Amazon. And the third episode we ever did is Reasons Creators Don't Sell Direct and Why You Should. So go check those out. If you need help building your online bookstore, episode 31 was a whole seven-step process for doing that. 

But we've done entire episodes on this. I'm not going to sit here and try to convince you why you should be selling direct. So instead I'm going to say, this is where you decide whether or not you're going to. And if you are going to - or actually whether or not you're going to. If you are going to choose to sell direct or if you're going to choose, I'm not ready to start doing it that way, you still have to choose what other options, like what your other sales options are going to be.

Are you going to be selling through the Lulu bookstore? Are you going to be selling through another publisher's bookstore? Are you going to be doing retail distribution? Are you going to be selling on Amazon? These are all questions that you have to ask yourself and answer now. 

Matt: Yes, and timing is also important for some of them. Like we talked about before, there may be one or two events for the year that you plan on being at where you're going to want to sell copies of your book. So you may want to also factor in if you're going to be in an event, a large author event or reader event, where you plan on selling a bunch of copies of your books, it may not be a wise idea to drop the first version of it three days prior to that on some large retail distribution channel. Because most of your fans will probably buy it then. 

If you could wait three more days, give your in-person fans the exclusivity of buying it first directly from you at that event, then have it timed out where your paperback drops a few days later on the retail distribution chains. You know, and then maybe after that, if you're going to sell direct, then time that out, right? 

So people get first crack at the book might be at that event that you plan on being at. And then right after the event ends, it goes up on your own site for sale. For everybody who missed the event, this is the launch. It's on my site. Buy it directly from me. When those sales kind of start to taper off, then you throw it up onto the retail distribution sites. And then when those sales start to taper off, that's when you drop the ebook across all channels. 

And so when you start to lay all these things out in a full year's calendar, that's when you really start to get an idea of like, the heaviness of what an actual sales and distribution plan is versus what I think a lot of people do, which they just go and throw it up on a third party platform and then walk away and think they're done and, you know, a month later they wonder why they're not selling books anymore and they're back to the drawing board again. 

Having that sales and distribution and strategy laid out and understanding where and when each format and variation of that book is going to be released and sold is really important. And it'll extend the sales lifecycle of that book as long as possible. 

Lauren: I think there's also, it's a good way for you to experiment with the different sales and distribution platforms. Specifically with what Matt just said with like different formats available on different platforms. Maybe you do want to try having an ebook that's only available on Kindle Unlimited or you want your ebook available everywhere, but you're only selling your print book from your website. 

So you can lean into the discoverability element of having an ebook on Kindle Unlimited. But if a fan, hi, like me, reads a book on Kindle Unlimited and then says, oh, my God, I want a print copy of this, they have to come to you. They have to come buy it directly from you. So then you're getting that discoverability, but you're also getting the full control of the print sale and all the customer data and stuff like that. 

Matt: Yeah. I mean, there's literally hundreds of ways you could do this, right? 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: I mean, get yourself a whiteboard in your home or your office or whatever and just start drawing out all the different distribution channels and sales platforms. And you'll start to very quickly figure out when and where you want to release certain things, what time of the year, does this coincide with this event? It all sounds a bit confusing right now, but I promise if you were to actually put it in front of yourself, you know, on a notepad or a whiteboard or figure this out it'll all start to make sense and you'll feel really good about the sales and distribution plan that you end up with after putting some of this thought into it. 

Lauren: Yeah. If it sounds confusing right now, keep in mind too that Matt and I are talking about it very abstractly because we have to be. You have specific details. You know what events you're working towards. You know what book you're promoting in the first place. You know what your calendar looks like. You hopefully know what your audience looks like and who exists within that.

But it's, it's worth considering for sure, it's absolutely - I mean I was literally, this weekend I was uh there's an author that I've had in mind, I like check their website every now and then to see if they've put up print copies of their books one day they will, I know, I know it. Literally this weekend I was on Instagram and I saw an Instagram Story from this author teasing that they are going to be participating in a big author event in like a month or two and that they're ordering print copies of one of their books for that event that will be exclusively available at that event.

And I'm not exaggerating when I said I went and looked up where the event was and whether or not it was feasible for me to go to it. Which is insane, but I did do it. So if you think that that's ridiculous to think that people would actually care that much about getting print copies of your book, I can assure you that I know at least one person who does care that much. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And it's me. 

Matt: More than one person, but yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yes. I’m - Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah, I think people really do underestimate the draw and the value of print books. Which is funny, I mean statistics get released every week, every month, every year on book sales and print remains you know strong. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But especially in the world of fiction I think, we talk to authors all the time that when they finally move into the print space, if they haven't already, they're always surprised at how many of their fans actually buy the print versions of the book, even though they know they've probably already bought and read the ebook versions. 

Or when an author comes and they want to experiment with print, so they pick an older title on their backlist and they re-release it, maybe with a new cover. They're always surprised at how well it does. But maybe one day people will take our word for it. 

Lauren: Hopefully. 

Matt: Probably not. We don't give them a lot of reason to trust us, I don’t think. 

Lauren: Well, we'll just have to keep doing -

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: More podcast episodes. 

Matt: That's fine. 

[32:34]

Lauren: Once you figure out what you're going to be promoting, where you're going to be selling it, what your projects are, what your formats are, blah, blah, blah, everything, you're probably going to want to sell some copies of that stuff. 

Matt: Well, so again, launch date, we've talked about production plan. We've talked a pretty good deal about your sales and distribution plan, although we'll talk a little bit more about that. And then there's the marketing plan component. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So we can finish up on sales, which is my favorite anyways. 

Lauren: All right, then you take it. Go for it. It’s your favorite, you do it. 

Matt: That was the weirdest - man, I wish we had video. How many times do I have to say that?

Lauren: Genuinely, we're getting there. We are set up - we were actually, spoiler alert for anybody listening, we were going to test video on this episode, but we're just not quite set up for it yet, but we're getting there. 

Matt: All right.

Lauren: So any day now. 

Matt: Yeah. Some of the other things you're going to want to think about for your sales and distribution plan/strategy: are you going to do pre-orders? And if so, how are you going to do that? Are you going to do it yourself on your website? Which is possible. It's pretty easy to do. 

Are you going to do it more in the form of, again, potentially crowdfunding? And so, you know, that form of pre-order per se. Are you going to do a pre-order through some other third party distribution site, you know, retail site? 

A lot of authors do it and a lot of them don't. But understanding whether or not that's a tactic you're going to employ, you need to know that. You need to lay out the steps that are required to make that happen. Anything that needs to happen in terms of production needs to be built into your production plan. So understanding if you're going to do pre-orders, what does that take? What are the dates that are going to be involved where you need to have your files ready and uploaded? All of those things. 

Some stores have pre-order features, some don't. Some platforms like Lulu have really easy tools where you can just bring a spreadsheet full of orders and upload it into your account. And then we just print and ship all of those line items separately. So that's another easy way to do pre-orders. Or basically take orders from any platform for the most part and then have those fulfilled when you're ready. 

Lauren: Yeah, which is also, I mean, if that's something that you could take advantage of if you want to, try to create some sense of exclusivity with your book or something like that. You know, let's say you wanted to do an exclusive pre-order campaign only to your mailing list and say, you can, you can pre-order my book. You can be the first one to get your hands on it. Or maybe you can pre-order and it's going to be a special edition for the pre-orders, or something like that. Some kind of incentive to pre-order it. And it's going to be exclusively to your mailing list. 

And then all you have to do is include a capture form in your newsletter to your mailing list that says hey, fill it out with the information here, and you're gonna export that spreadsheet, upload it to the Lulu Order Import tool, and be able to release your book immediately. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: To that specific pre-order campaign.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So there are definitely ways to like, get fun and clever with your pre-orders. 

Matt: That one in particular that you just touched on is a great one. It's also really important if you have been following along with us and you are in the stage of building your own audience, and you are utilizing things like direct sales and newsletters to sort of build up an audience that - for lack of a better word - that you own, that is not owned by Facebook or Instagram or any of these other platforms. 

And so thinking about that every time you release a new book and understanding that, yeah, you might want to do something for all those who are really sticking by you, and have given you their email address, and they're on your mailing list, or they've already bought from you and you have that customer data. Sending them first rights at getting that book, I think, is a great way to continue building your own community and building your own audience. 

And so that way they know every time you have something new coming out, they're always going to get first rights at it - 

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: Before everybody else. That's a great sort of exclusivity feature to build into your brand, your community that you're building around your work so that's great too. And then you have pre-orders that could get fulfilled if you want to do that. Crowdfunding if you want to do that through Kickstarter or, you know, a subscription platform that you might be working with. 

Lauren: There are all different kinds of incentives that you can offer your audience too, if you're trying to lean into that like audience relationship and exclusivity. And, you know, we've talked a lot about this in terms of building true fans and building connections with your audience base and whatever, however you want to try to do that. 

But even something like, if you are on my mailing list and you pre-order for my mailing list exclusive, you'll get a 10% discount on this book. Or if you use this pre-order campaign right now to pre-order my book, I'm going to send you a free ebook of one of my other titles from my website that, you know, you'll get that immediately. And that'll be something that'll hold you over until the actual book itself comes out. 

There's all kinds of different ways that you can incentivize people. And that's still something that you'd want to think about ahead of time, because that's something that you'd want to consider. Like, let's say you're going to do a pre-order discount to try to incentivize sales. You want to factor that into the retail price of your book when you're determining what your retail price is. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: It's something that you want to think about ahead of time because you want to plan all the steps afterwards. 

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. And again, you can work back from that. And we've talked about this before. If you've already calculated your production costs on things, you're already going to have that number in your head and know that, okay, to cover my production costs on this particular format, I need to sell whatever, 100 copies at $10.99. After that, once I've hit that mark, I can discount these all I want because I've already covered my production costs and now I'm only cutting into pure profit for the most part, or things like that. 

I wouldn't, me personally, go out with any big incentives from a discounting standpoint until you, you've covered - 

Lauren: Same. 

Matt: Your production costs. But nonetheless, for ebooks, that's a different story, right? Because, I mean, it’s - your production costs are minimal for the most part. But print specifically, I would be careful with discounts. But there are lots of other incentives that we've talked about in the past. Again, exclusivity is a big one that people don't give enough credit to. Like, being first to get something is extremely motivating for most people in the world, so -

Lauren: Absolutely it is. 

Matt: Never underestimate the power of that. And discounting shouldn't always be your first go-to strategy. It's not a bad one at all, but it has a time and place, you know, especially as you get closer to the end of that sales cycle, that life cycle of your book. You know, you're getting closer to that one year mark where it's been on, on the shelf for a little while and discounting is good when you get around that time, and you've already definitely cleared your production costs and things, but… Yeah, there's lots of really cool incentives to be had out there.

Lauren: I wonder if there's enough there for a full episode. 10 ways to incentivize people to buy your book that don't include discounting your book, something like that?

Matt: Why 10?

Lauren: Well, as many as we can think of, I don't know. Or maybe a Lulu U or blog post. I don't know. We'll take that one offline and workshop that. Or - 

Matt: Yeah, if anybody cares about incentivizing that much -

Lauren: Hey, yeah, let me know. 

Matt: Then shoot us an email, podcast@lulu, and we'll do a whole episode on that. 

Lauren: Yeah, let us know if that's something you'd want to hear. And if you do want to dive into figuring out the retail price for your book and discounting and all that stuff, we did do a whole episode on that as well. It's episode number 27. 

Matt: Yeah, and I guess if we're going to chock this episode full of these little retro mentions, we did an episode on crowdfunding. You know, that was episode 19. And if you'll notice, we're not talking a lot about the actual marketing stuff in this episode. That's because we've done plenty of it. The bulk of it you'll find in episode 10. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: But there are several other episodes that we've done that cover a lot of the pre- and post-launch marketing and some of those other things, so. I don't think we need to fill this episode up full of marketing stuff - 

[39:51]

Lauren: No, probably not. But there are a couple of things that you do want to keep in mind for a post-launch sales strategy. Not necessarily a marketing strategy, but a sales strategy, so let's close it out with some of those ideas.

Matt: If we must. 

Lauren: We must. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: You know, I know we were just talking about not really discounting unless you have to, or at least until you've recouped any of the money that you've laid out up front to produce your book, market your book, whatever you're doing with your book. But that is something that you might want to consider is doing a post-launch promo. 

You know, maybe you say, I'm going to go really hard in the paint with marketing efforts. And when I see the initial launch sales start to dip down, maybe we see two weeks in a row where it's kind of going down, maybe I'll run a one-week promo then to see if I can boost the sales back up a little bit. And it doesn't have to be an insane discount. No one's saying sell your book 50% off. That would be crazy. 

Matt: Yeah, please don't do that. 

Lauren: Please don't. You might also want to consider working with a third party promo organization like BookBub. 

Matt: Yeah, or Written Word Media, they're great too. Like, I mean, those straddle the line between marketing and sales, but absolutely any of these - well, I won't say any because not all of them are reputable and or efficient and effective. But we do know that, again, some of these entities like Written Word Media, they've got several different options for marketing and selling your book, ebooks especially. BookBub, and there's a few others. You can find them on the resources page on Lulu.com - 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: And some other places, but. Yeah, I mean, many of them are extremely cost-effective too, so - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I definitely wouldn't turn my nose up. I would certainly research which ones probably are most effective for the type of book I'm writing, because some of them focus specifically on certain genres as well. 

Lauren: Some are more relevant for fiction - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Some are more focused on nonfiction, different genres within those specifically. But - 

Matt: And some like BookFunnel will help you also build your list at the same time so you can focus on audience building and sales. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. Which is another thing that you want to keep in mind when you're thinking about your post book launch sales, regardless of whether or not you're selling direct, no matter which sales and distribution platforms you're going to move forward with: customer data is invaluable. Whatever kind of customer data you have access to from these different sales and distribution channels, you're going to want some way to track it. 

You're going to want some way to be able to stay on top of and stay aware of customer purchases, your different marketing efforts, your different sales efforts. You know, if you run a pre-order promo campaign, you want to know how successful it was so that you can know whether or not it will work again on a future project or perhaps it won't. And instead you're going to want - something, you want to do something differently next time around. 

But it is a lot easier to, to collect and track any kind of data like that while something is happening and immediately after the fact - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Than it is to go back like six months later and go, oh yeah, I guess that maybe I should have looked at like how this did and now I've got to go six months back in time, especially if you're collecting this data manually and not using some kind of tool to help you with that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: It's a lot easier to do it when it's like during the fact or immediately after the fact, so. And of course, sometimes you don't know what data you're going to be interested in until you get a little bit into the process, especially if it's your first book, your first book launch, so. 

Obviously there are things that you're going to have to kind of go retroactively and look at and add and whatever. But if you have an idea of what kind of data you're interested in try to set up a way for you to track and retain and review that ahead of time. It'll make your life easier down the road. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Wow is that the end of my outline?

Matt: Looks like it. 

Lauren: Whoa.

Matt: But I mean, you ended on a good note, which is, again, trying to capture and collect as much data as you can from each of these book launches, so that you can make tweaks and changes. And it won't be long before you've got your ultimate sort of go-to-market strategy outline that works each time with your books. 

You know, it's going to be different for everybody. But again, if you're not monitoring and tracking the results of each of those components, it's going to be really hard to come up with a formula that works best for you each and every time. You're going to have to kind of fumble your way through it each time. 

So monitoring that stuff, making sure that you have some way of tracking it, even if it's very manual in a spreadsheet or something like that. But that is critically important to not having to do everything from scratch over again every single time you want to launch a new book or product. 

Lauren: That's a really good point, actually, is this is something that gets easier with every successive book launch. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: It's a strategy that you're building out and it might change over time because you decide like, oh, this wasn't super successful or this is a new feature that I'd like to try or I saw another author doing this and I'd like to try this. But for the most part, this is a strategy that you're designing once and then you're just kind of tweaking the fine details of it over time. It's worth putting in the effort ahead of time because it's something that is going to help you build out and just make it easier and easier for yourself with every future book launch you do after you figure out your initial strategy, so. 

Matt: Agreed. 

Lauren: Hopefully that's helpful. 

Matt: Yeah. I love a good go-to-market strategy. And thankfully that's something I get to do here at Lulu a lot. So, I have fun with it. 

Lauren: It’s true. 

Matt: If you have any further sort of additions, suggestions, questions, anything you want to comment around developing a go-to-market strategy for book launch feel free to email us at podcast@lulu.com. If you want to just send us some nice little encouragement you can send it there too. If you don't like us - or Lauren - you can send an email to we don't care at lulu.com.

Lauren: Thanks.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And, uh… also still, we are taking questions for an AMA mailbag episode. So if you have anything that isn't a whole episode full of questions, but maybe just like a little one-off, or if you really want to know what Matt's favorite nighttime spectacular at Walt Disney World is, shoot us an email podcast@lulu.com and let us know. Also keep an eye on our YouTube channel because telling you like next two weeks, tops, video episodes are coming. Hopefully we'll see you soon. Well, we won't see you, but you'll see us. And until then, thanks for listening.