Millions of books are being published every year, but not all will sell, much less discovered by the readers. If you are an aspiring author, you need to do something about this and one of the best ways to promote your book online is to showcase your content through various digital medias. Fortunately, there’s a simple and cost-effective tool to help you out.
What Is Booklaunch?
Booklaunch is a dedicated software that creates a professional looking launch page for book promotion. Something like a landing page if you will, except that it’s a bit ‘bookish’. It also comes with other features to help you do some marketing on your own.
How Does It Work?
Firstly, you need to create a user account, after which you’ll be directed immediately to the page editor. The launch page is primarily divided into some basic sections as you can see in the image below.
The editing process is very intuitive. You just need to click and add text or images where it is prompted and you can move or delete the sections according to your preference. When creating images, I highly recommend that you use Canva for designing book covers since it’s free and easy to use.
Additional sections that you can add to boost more engagement are video clips, enhanced social sharing and endorsement by other people.
Once you are done with that, move onto the page settings to give this page a title and a unique page URL. By default, Booklaunch will automatically create a URL that looks something like this;
https://booklaunch.io/586803748141827/57ca59e5f9bc6c20200
This URL consists of mostly numbers and I am sure you’ll find it very difficult to remember. There are two ways to fix this.
1) You can change the last part of the URL to make it read like this;
https://booklaunch.io/586803748141827/this-is-my-first-book
2) OR, you can buy a custom domain pointing to the launch page. Frankly, custom domain names offer more advantages because;
- They are easier to remember.
- They belong to you forever.
- You can use it to create a webpage (like what you are doing with a launch page right now), a website or a blog.
- It provides more branding power without other default wordings in between.
To search for domain availability, you need a registrar service and I usually go to SiteRubix for this. For the price of $13.99, the fee INCLUDES privacy protection, email forwarding and great technical support. I find this reasonably priced as compared to other domain registrars out there.
Read this page to learn other features about the SiteRubix hosting platform.
Other settings that you need to include in the launch page are SEO (Search Engine Optimization) metadata such as page title, page description and keywords. This will help the search engines to understand what your page is all about and make it more visible to the readers when it appears on the search result page.
When that’s all done, you can then use the page link to share on social media, post on emails or include it on your website. Now here comes the nifty part. Within the page, you can actually invite readers to sign up for your offers – whatever it may be – and from here, you’ll be able to build your own email list. You can also integrate analytic tools to study your audience behaviors and personalized online checkouts to sell directly to your readers.
How Much Does It Cost?
If you are only promoting one book, you can start using Booklaunch for free. Going for the paid plans, however will give you more access to other features.
Is Creating a Sales Page Worthy of Your Time?
Although I am not an author myself, I think that the current time is very exciting for content dissemination especially when it comes to books. This process used to be a tedious one from the standpoint of a contemporary publisher, but now, with the help of a webpage, videos and social media channels, things have gotten a lot easier.
- You are able to create an author platform that offers more professionalism to your career.
- You can engage with your readers directly to get their personal reviews of your work or enlist them to help with future promotion.
- You can create more influence in relevant niches and connect with other aspiring authors.
- You are in better control of your online presence and marketing without having to rely on other people.
- When you grow your own network, you are growing your own online business too.
If you can write a book, creating a sales page will not take you a lot of time. This software is inexpensive and easy to integrate with other online tools that you haven’t even tapped into yet. So whether you already have a book in the stores, or in the process of writing one, it’s never too late to learn how to promote your book online and become that great author you always dream of.
I hope you have found some exciting ideas from this article and if you need any help getting started with an online platform, just leave a message below and I’ll get back to you.
Hi Cathy! Booklaunch sounds interesting. I was a Literary Publicist several years ago and this type of software was not available. I can imagine it streamlines the process of getting different media outlets interested in a publication. Do you know if there are any competitors out there and what they cost as well?
I think the next competitors that you’ll be looking at are premium landing page companies such as Leadpages and Instapage. Their services can be customized for any industry and they are very professional in what they do. Their basic packages start from $25+ per month.
I like the style of your writing Cathy, this was simple and very easy to digest. I’ve been thinking about writing a book for about a year now and did not know that a tool like this even existed! I’m guessing this is perfect for self-publishers? Also what are their success statistics like? Do they have to vet your work or are they only interested in providing a platform? Would love to learn more.
Hi Joshua,
Yes, this is ideal for self-publishers. Booklaunch doesn’t vet your work. At least for now, they are only providing a simple platform for you to create an attractive sales page. Having said that, without any marketing, you can’t do much with a sales page. That’s probably where this platform is lacking. That’s where you might want to move over to a self-hosted WordPress blog, create a landing page (which can also become a sales page) and implement content/social marketing simultaneously.
Hope this helps.
I have toyed with the idea of publishing a book. My wife has been after me for quite some time.
My problem is that I own and operate 3 websites. That is quite a bit of content to maintain on a day to day, week by week basis.
Actually, my idea for a book comes from my 1st website I built out. Naturally, I am only referring to a part of it. Again, the daily grind has kept me from launching out and writing my first book. I do like your suggestions which are tailored to a person working with a very small budget. Thanks.
Hello there! Thank you for sharing the Booklaunch site with us. I have considered writing an E-book many times but the main thing that puts me off doing it, is the problem of getting it in front of people that want to read it.
I like to have a full plan in place before I do something, but after looking at the Booklaunch website I’m still not sure if this is for me. I like the look of the results that are produced with Booklaunch but I think you could quite easily get just as good results by creating your own landing page. As you have pointed out, using SiteRubix could be an excellent choice.
I notice that the paid versions of Booklaunch come with a marketing guidebook, but I wonder just how good that might be? Would I be better off learning to market my own page?
Thanks again!
Hey Andrew. You are right. Booklaunch is something like a landing page, if you will. If someone hasn’t got any experience creating a website, they probably wouldn’t know how to design a landing page either. Booklaunch just makes it easier, but it is by no means automated.
A lot of things go into marketing a self-published book besides just putting it online; getting endorsement, preparing a media kit, doing social media campaign, organizing a book launch party (yup things like that) and etc. I know this because I’ve followed the progress of some of my favorite authors before. So it’s totally doable if you plan things well.
If you are interested, you can check out TheBookDesigner for more marketing resources and expert advice on how to launch a book. Hope this helps.
Thank you Cathy for some great tips here. This is a must read for an aspiring author, especially for their first book.
Booklaunch looks like the way to go, especially as it is free for your first book. That is when you normally need a free way to get your book out there.
I also like your idea of buying a domain name. This will definitely make the address easier to remember for both yourself and your potential customers.