Ten Tips as You Wait to Launch Your Book

By Marilyn Nutter

The moment has arrived (almost). You’ve worked on a project for years. A publishing house accepted it, and the edits are done. Now you’re waiting to hold a copy in your hands and see your words in print. What do you do with the months as you wait and prepare for launch day?

Maybe, to use energy and take a break, you’ll tackle what you’ve put off for months—purging closets or clearing junk drawers. Your taste buds may crave that new recipe you filed in a folder and now you have time to make it. A stack of photos from last year’s vacation—or the hundreds on your phone—call for a home in an album or frame. Any of those may be a healthy respite—and they are great ideas we need to restore in fresh ways—but once completed, there are several areas to look at as you wait to launch your book.

1. Pray for efficiency and harmony for those behind the scenes at your publishing company. Pray that work is done quickly with no glitches and that an excellent product will be the outcome.
2. Pray for the marketing team as they look at creative ways to promote your topic.
3. Pray that your book will fall into the right outlets and into the hands of readers who can benefit. Look at the angles your readers are coming from: ministry, encouragement, information, enriched by a great story.
4. Pray about selecting your launch team—discernment to ask the people who will best serve this message, that they are people who are committed to participating and can embrace the message of your book with confidence.
5. Pray to determine if you need to hire a launch manager and/or virtual assistant, and research options.
6. Pray about assembling a prayer team—prayer warriors who will pray for the details of publication and release, the readers who will benefit, and opportunities to make appearances at book signings and events.
7. Pray for creativity in designing lead magnets for your website and ideas for blogs that that will complement the message of your book.
8. Pray for opportunities to guest blog and to become a member of groups that will relate to your topic, those who might not otherwise have heard about it.
9. Pray about writing newsletters and posts on social media.
10. Pray and research influencers and podcast opportunities.

I’ve heard from many published authors that writing the book was the easy part. The launch and marketing work that follows is the hard stuff. Waiting rooms are not places where you do nothing and wait for your box of books to arrive. Waiting can be an important something. It may not feel as productive or as tangible as moving from writing 10,000 words to 40,000 words and finally seeing a finished manuscript, but there's much to be said for how we use our waiting to yield fruit. Someone’s waiting for your book to show up on a shelf or an online site. The best waiting room to use is a waiting room for prayer. It’s there we find direction to proceed and be fruitful.

What’s your experience while waiting until your book is published?

 

Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net and Stuart Miles.

Photo by Fa Barboza on Unsplash

 

Marilyn Nutter is the co-author with April White of Destination Hope: A Travel Companion When Life Falls Apart. She contributes to compilations and on-line sites and maintains a blog and website. She is currently waiting for Hope for Widows: Reflections on Loss, Life and Change to be released on January 2, by Our Daily Bread Publishing. Connect with her on Facebook MarilynMNutterAuthor, Instagram Marilynnutterwriter, and MarilynNutter.com.