Chris Fox - Launch to Market: Easy Marketing for Authors

Copyright 2016 Chris Fox.

All rights reserved.

To Indies. Do this writing thing, and stand proud.

Write Faster, Write Smarter Series

5,000 Words Per Hour

Lifelong Writing Habit

Write to Market

Launch to Market

Reader Psychology

Introduction

If you are anything like me you hate long introductions. I dont care about the authors trophies, and I dont need a lengthy overview of what Im about to learn. Just tell me what problem youre going to solve, and then teach me how to do it.

Youre about to learn a set of marketing tools that will help you launch (or re-launch) your book in a way that will help it sell. Some of these tools require capital, either money or time. Selling books in todays digital world is difficult. It requires work, patience, diligence, and most importantly testing.

Before you buy Launch to Market, ask yourself the following tough questions. Are you willing to do a brutal self-assessment, and then do the work required to take your author business to the next level? If the answer to both questions is yes, then by all means click that buy button so I can purchase my next cup of coffee.

Wait a minute, though. The tagline for this book is EASY marketing for authors. Brutal self-assessment doesnt sound easy.

Theres a huge difference between easy and effortless . If you want your sales to improve youll need to implement the steps given throughout the book. It contains exercises, and the book is only valuable if you do them. If youre not ready to do them at the time you read them, thats okay. Ive gathered them into a chapter at the end, so you can do them after finishing if you prefer.

It doesnt matter so much when you do them, just that you do them. If youre not willing, Id suggest saving yourself three bucks and not purchasing this book. It wont be useful.

Why Should You Listen to Me?

Because I sell a LOT of books.

When you use titles like 5,000 Words Per Hour and Write to Market you tend to attract a lot of skeptics. Many people claimed that it was impossible to write as quickly as I do, and that even if you could , whatever you produced would be crap. This despite the fact that Im not the first, or even the hundredth writer to crank out books this quickly.

In February of 2016 I very publicly tested the methods I teach in this series. I wrote and edited my novel Destroyer in 21 days, and I documented the entire thing on video (you can watch those at chrisfoxwrites.com ). Whats more, I boldly proclaimed that I could launch that book into the Amazon top #1,000, and that it would stay in the top #10,000 for the first 30 days.

I knew I could write the book in the time Id allotted, but I had no idea how it would sell. If Destroyer flopped it would have crushed my credibility in the author community, and the chances of you buying this book would be nil. I put my money where my mouth is. I described exactly what I hoped to achieve, and then documented every tactic, step, and setback. I wanted to prove that I knew what I was talking about in a way that skeptics couldnt pick apart.

Spoilers, Destroyer sailed up to #198 in the entire store, selling 542 copies its first day. It stayed in the top #1,000 for the entire first month, and the book paid for its $2,300 in production costs within the first five days.

Launch to Market shows you everything I did, and more importantly explains why I did it. Not every tactic worked, and Ill talk about my failures as well. I encourage you to adopt the principles, not the tactics. By that, I mean you should adapt this material to your own launch. Dont just use it wholesale.

Okay, enough of the intro crap. Lets launch your book.

Chapter 1- Destroyer Case Study

Before we dive into the meat of launching your book, I want to take a minute to talk about the novel Destroyer . Its referenced throughout this book, and for good reason. Launch to Market wouldnt exist without Destroyer .

So how are they linked? As I mentioned briefly in the intro, I wrote Destroyer publicly, using the principles I teach in the Write Faster, Write Smarter series. Its success was linked to the validity of my methods. If it failed, then Id failed. If it succeeded, I had real proof that my system works.

Either way, I planned to take the exact same action. I would study the crap out of every facet of Destroyer s launch, and then Id optimize my process based on what I learned. Thats exactly what I ended up doing, and here are some key take aways.

The Challenge

In February of 2016 I released a book called Write to Market . In that book, I explained that new authors can make a living writing in genres where they know there are a ton of readers. Whatever genre you picked, it still needed to be one that you loved.

In my case, I chose space opera. I love science fiction. Love. It. So writing about giant spaceships, my house cats thinly disguised as aliens, and brain eating slugs wasnt much of a stretch. Unfortunately, the people who disagreed with this methodology often ignored the second part. They assume that you need to write romance or erotica if you want to make the big dollars. You need to, in their words, sell your soul.

I published Destroyer to prove them wrong. I wanted to show that I could publish a book in a brand new genre where I had no fans, but still achieve success by writing a good book I knew readers would love.

Im already known as the 5,000 Words Per Hour Guy, so I figured why not add a time limit? 21 days sounded good, so I pledged to write and edit the book in that time frame. People thought it sounded insane, but for me it was just the continuation of a process Id been refining for three years. I knew I could write and edit a good book in three weeks. But would it sell?

That was the real question. I pledged to film daily videos for the writing process, then record the launch. I made good on both those promises, and you can see those video series at chrisfoxwrites.com , or on YouTube. The Launch to Market videos will be extremely useful, as they show how I implemented everything youre about to learn.

Sales Data

Fortunately for me, my system worked. Destroyer landed around #200 in the Amazon store on release day, selling over 500 copies. I kept it on sale for 99 cents for the first five days, then killed the sale early when the book settled in around #400 rank. Raising the price pushed the settling point down to about #700 in the entire store.

Destroyer is still around there at the time of this writing. Its sold 5,500 copies, and had a million pages read. That means the book earned 5 figures in its very first month, and I expect similar performance for the sequel.

I wrote Destroyer to market, and the market loves it. The book has a 4.6 star average with 97 reviews after only 30 days.

Where are the Videos?

Youll find the videos tracking the launch of Destroyer at chrisfoxwrites.com/challenge . Theyre free, and Id encourage you to use them as a companion resource. I wont keep linking them, as I know many of you are reading on Kindles and dont want to hassle with video. Just know that theyre there, and that if things are not clear in the book you may find more help in the videos.

The Dangers of Fast Publishing

My favorite part of the challenge were the things I learned the hard way. Those lessons will stick with me forever, because Ive rarely been that embarrassed.