Hello, Dale Beaumont here host of getpublishedTV. This is the only dedicated show on the internet. To help you to write publish and market your own best selling book. Now if you have been watching other episodes of get publish TV, you’ve probably noticing that I’m sounding my usual self.
I actually got a bit of a cold at the moment and my voice isn’t work should be. But I really want to get this message out there today, so I’m pushing through it anyway and thanks for your patience as we get through today’s video. I got my trusty water bottle here so we should be fine.
Today’s episode is about creating or doing this successful book launch. Before we talk about the topic I want to share with you and to congratulate this amazing woman. Her name is Michelle Balan, this is her brand new book hard off the press and it’s called “Don’t Picture Me Naked”. The reason why it’s called that is because that Michelle is actually a public speaking skills trainer. And if you faint to it and the courses before when you reads some sort of old books, one of the techniques that they say in order to get over of your fear of public speaking, is to actually picture you all is naked.
I don’t know about you but that has never worked for me. And it’s a bit a kind of old lifestyle so this is a book saying the quotes call don’t picture me naked and of course it could be another shot title to grab people’s interest to them. The subtitle, which is How to present your ideas, influences others by using techniques that actually work. On what using this technique but other techniques that of course the topic for the book, so I think the book is very well designed, I like to use of the wide space that really stands out on the bookshelf. You got this bright red writing here which is again very bold and also the listening posing so that you can probably hear that there which means that it actually grabs the light, which makes the title stand out even more lovely photo there.
And also the name and a great quote as well as from another high profile person in her industry. So I think all in all it’s a very well designed book. And it’s because it’s designed so well, she’s already secured distribution to get this book out into the other bookstores as well. And I’m very proud to say that I’m being involved in the creation of this book helping with the packaging and the promotion. So it’s actually a my name is mentioned in that thank you section.
I very really appreciate it, much appreciate Michelle. And if you will ever like it to put me, in your acknowledgement sections for your books, same dale from get publish TV and I really appreciate that also. That’s if you’ve taken some ideas and use them tell to get your book published.
All right let’s move on, let’s talk about creating a successful book launch, because I’m attending Michelle’s book launch in the next few days. And so that’s a top of mind right now and let’s talk about that particular .subject. So first thing you need to do is to make clear on what’s your reason as to why that you are doing a book launch. Because with some people it’s a good thing to do from other people I found it’s not actually a good thing to do. So you go to someway and doing it, is it because you’re celebrating your book enlisted and if so that’s great because it’s a huge cheap and an accomplishment. It’s a great excuse to get the family together and make extended family of all of your close friends because it really is a time you should celebrate. And it capture some photos and some videos, it’s a wonderful thing.
Other people do book launches because they want to try and attract some local Medias. And people maybe from newspapers or some magazines that they write stories about them. And other people do it because that they want to invite people and then they can sell their books actually at the event. So there’s sort of the main reasons why people do book launches, I think that they can be good thing to do. But my biggest piece of advice around this is do it low budget. I’ve seen a lot people go out there and spend five six 7,000 dollars in hiring out a lovely venue and having a beautiful dinner for all the people and putting a tab on the bar and all those type of things.
And when they look at the sales that they made from the books that they sold to be more than ten, they may be already sold around a thousand or $2,000.00 worth of books. So they actually run the whole event a loss and at least you made a bird. I never recommend you ever doing anything at a loss. You always want to make sure you at least covered your cost and your time involved to actually put it on. If not you should actually try to make some time on your profit.
So my biggest recommendation is to keep low budget. So how can you keep a low budget? Well you can do it either in your house or maybe your friends’ house or you can do it on a local club. That maybe very inexpensive or you can maybe try to get a sponsor so there’s a couple of different ways in which you can get a venue at very low cost. Then of course you got the consider down food. Now with regards to food, it’s good if you can kind of provide people too few some snacks. Don’t go all out and in fact on your book launch the invitation that you may want to put on there finger only so people know that they don’t be going to get a free course meal. And so they may eat before or they may go out to eat afterwards. So you can get that finger food very inexpensively, if you got a venue you can bring your own catering that helps dramatically. Because you can heat things up there or you can bring your own in, some venues out there unfortunately will not allow you to bring your own food. You have to use their food and sometimes you paying either $10.00 or $15.00 per head, which can become very expensive.
So try to pick a venue that’s low cost and free even and also try to being own food if you can. So that all cover they call it the--basics. Then once people actually arrive you might want to do is actually to feel at a waste you can do a few things that I’ve seen before. People actually get to feel out there name and their email address, they can do that when they register. Because sometime people can bring friends or they bring guest and you might not have all everyone’s email address. And you can out those into your database and you can send them a follow-up message and that follow-up message could actually give them another opportunity to purchase their book if they didn’t actually purchase it on the night. So you get people to register or some people have just like a signing book where they put their name and maybe leave a personal message more as like a keep sake. But if someone writes that something very nice about you, you maybe want to call them up afterwards and ask them you can use that as a testimonial. There are a couple of things that you can do as people arrive when they actually enter, you can also sometimes give people a bookmark as well if you have those bookmarks printed. As you can see Michelle’s had her bookmark printed, by the way she’s this is also her book launch invitation which is said have to people some good idea if you actually have similar branding. And of course, a picture of your book on the front covers of the invitation.
Then you can allow people to mingle for maybe 15, 20 minutes or so—have a bit of a chat but then of course when you come and get people’s attention the way that you have an emcee. Or just someone to get people attention, I think that’s probably good because the last thing you wanting to be doing sitting on the chair and sort of yelling at people so they quiet down and listen to you. Get someone else to do that and when everyone’s quiet, there can then introduce you and talk about what an achievement it is. And maybe if they have personal experience with you, they can share a bit of a testimonial and then you can come up. And you can give a little bit of a talk, so I’ve seen people ado this a number of different ways. I’ve seen people just go straight in to thank you’s, that’s kind of okay. But maybe we’ll leave that a bit later on and you can just talk about your reasons for writing a book. And what are some of the things of the book, what’s been there, the outcome or the result of it. And what’s different about this book I suppose to other books that are out there.
So you just really are showing your story, your motivation and reason for writing. And then showing a bit of about the content of what you make about the book. With regards to some fiction writers, I’ve seen a number of occasions that people actually read pass on their book. Maybe they read a page or maybe two pages, just to get a bit of idea of the use of language that you use. And you can even do that by your self on you can maybe have somebody else to read it for you if you like. I’ve been in to a fiction, a fiction book launch before where they have these two different characters and people actually personally read it. And then these two characters actually entered the room. They were dressed up kind of as the characters were read in the book. And then they act about a little bit of the scene that was just something that’s very impromptu is very fun. And you can think of something like that to add an element of surprise in there and ten kind of also help as well.
The other thing that you can do is that you can get people entering to a sometimes a prize draw. By making putting that business card in the bowl and winning a free book. But the other things that recommend that you should do is to get people an opportunity to buy the book. Yes it is a celebration but you want to keep an opportunity to get the book in their heads. A lot of people feel obligated when people come along to book launches especially when with family and friends to I've a way copies of their book for free. Now if you self publish and you getting the books, they could $2.00 or $3.00 copy then you can maybe afford to do that. But if you purchased book back from a publisher at $12.00, $13.00, $14.00 you can’t afford to give books away. So encourage people to buy it, now if you don’t feel comfortable in asking for people to place orders. Then get your emcee or the person that’s going to be introducing you or following you, to actually talk about and say- this is a great opportunity for you to walk away and own a copy of this great book. It’s going to be signed by the author tonight and then scribe with her a personal message. And there are other forms which are available, get somebody to go around and pass out all the forms have clipboards there. Had pens there this is your opportunity to sell your books so take that opportunity, I’ve seen so many people that have just missed out of it and have spent money and haven’t actually recruit any of their cost. So you’ve really don’t be ashamed or shy about selling your book, this is what the business is about and at the end of the day it’s about getting copies out there and making money. So you can reinvest that money into promoting your book even further or in the future pre-runs.
Now the other big tip about doing book launches is to give people the opportunity to actually purchase multiple books. A lot of people just think sell just one book, well that’s great but what about if you can sell a box of books what about to sell more than 10 or 20 or 30 books in a box. And you can of course also offer massive discounts that have selling the book s for $20.00 maybe if they buy a box of 20 books. You’re going to sell for an average of $8.00 a coy that doesn’t really matter. Because you’re moving value but then you’ve got money making more money. But to then you’re books are getting our there top more and more people so they can get the book as a box and then give that away or I have seen how the people they’ve sold them as a set of five. One for you, four to give away to your friends for maybe $60.00 something like that, and you back them in some nice plastic wrap. And put a nice blow on it or put them in a brown paper bag m or something like that like a tacky bag. But you know maybe if it’s a nice environmentally friendly bag or something like that.
And that can be a good thing as well. And there are just a few tips for running a successful book launch. If you have any other specific questions because I’m running out of time and leave them under to the comment section below. And then about to getting some answers to you and in the future episode of get publish TV, we’re going to talk about something else which is really exciting which is doing a virtual book launch. Not a live book launch but a virtual book launch, so if you’re intrigue by that. Make sure you keep tuning in to get publish TV because that’s what we’re going to talk about coming up soon.
Leave your names and your comments as always thanks for watching see you again next time.
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