Happy Tuesday, lovelies! *winces* I am so sorry I haven’t posted in a month regarding my Checklist to Release. Time got away from me. We were on vacation for a week in AZ (it was wonderful!) and then I had to play catch up on other things when I got back. But I’m here now, so let’s do this!
The next three items on the list…
✔️ Update on Author Central
If you don’t even know what I mean what this is, then let’s start with that. This only pertains to Amazon. You should claim your author profile on Amazon and you use Author Central to do so. Usually you add your book to your profile for each release. Sometimes they automatically do it for you, but other times you need to do it. You can manage your author profile HERE. This is a great place to manage all your books for various reasons. These are things that pop up on your book page on the Amazon site. So like your author bio, this is where you’d add it or update it. You can add editorial reviews. You can update your book’s blurb here as well, but I caution doing that here. If you update your book in Kindle Direct Publishing (where you originally uploaded your book), the blurb you have there will be the one that appears again…unless you update there as well. KDP overrides this area. You can also add what they call “From the Author” area as well. I like to put a description of all the books in the series, listing all the books as well. Any kind of series information is what I put in this From the Author part. There are a few more things you can add from this area. I encourage you to check it out and see for yourself. You can also see how many Amazon followers you have, see your ranks for your books, and a few other bookish reports. This is on my checklist to release so I remember to either add my book and/or update the other books in the series under the “From the Author” area. Because, like I said, I like to put series information there.
✔️ Make Teasers
This one seems pretty self explanatory. lol Here’s how I have it listed on my checklist:
- Countdown Teasers _____
- Regular Teasers _____
- Now Live Teasers _____
I like to do a countdown to release. Usually a 2 week one, a 1 week one, and then a five day countdown to release day. Of course, it’s nice to have regular teasers to share throughout the preorder period and after release. On release day, I like Now Live or Now Available teasers as well. Like my covers, I make all my teasers. I use Photoshop and get my images from Deposit Photos (or Shutterstock in the past). Be careful for any free site offering photos. You can’t be sure they are for commercial use or that someone else didn’t steal it and upload it as their own. You don’t want to be hit with a cease and desist order and maybe a lawsuit for using an image that wasn’t authorized to be used. You can also hire someone to make your teasers. Can’t give you any recommendations for that. Sorry. I know a lot of people love Canva to make teasers, so that’s another option if you don’t know or feel comfortable with Photoshop.
✔️Send ARCs
This is a fun one! It’s full of nerves and excitement! lol Sending your book baby out into the world before it releases, hoping people love your book and will help hype it up. ARC stands for Advance Review Copy or I’ve seen it labeled as Advance Reader Copy. Technically you are giving a copy in advance in the hopes they will leave a review. It can’t be forced or mandated. It is up to the reader to leave a review or not. I don’t know the exact percentage or numbers, but if generally, let’s say you send out 100 copies, only like a 1/4 or so will actually leave a review. This is normal. This is nothing to panic about. It happens to every single author. Badgering or threatening a reader to leave the review just makes you look like a jerk and extremely unprofessional. Reader’s know the expectation when receiving an ARC, but hey, life happens. Not everyone can follow through. This is not something you should stress about.
How to send an ARC…well, there are several ways. The one way you should absolutely NOT do is via email. Do not send a PDF or Word doc or even an ePub to a reader’s email. That’s just an easy way to have your book pirated. So I implore you not to do it! You can use services like BookSprout or BookFunnel. Ugh, there’s another one that I can’t think of at the moment. But you upload your book to their site and they do all the sending for you. It’s pretty easy and painless. I have a small group of readers that read ARCs for me every release. I do send straight to their kindle. That is another way to do it. You need their kindle address. So thisismyaddress@ Kindle . com or whatever it might be. They do NEED to have your email address in their approved senders list. Or have like @yahoo or @gmail and whatever in the approved senders list. You email the ePub straight to their kindle device and it will appear.
There you have it. The next three items on the list. As always, if you have any questions, please let me know in the comments! If you missed the other posts, you can find them here: more info #3, more info #2, more info #1, and first post. For the entire Checklist to Release list, you can grab it HERE!