Everything I'm doing to promote my book, 2 weeks from launch day

So, Highland Getaway comes out two weeks today (Two weeks! Today!), and even though I’ve been literally counting down to this moment for over a year now, I still feel like it’s somehow managed to creep up on me … which is horrifying, really, because I had ALL THAT TIME to promote this book, but lol, here I am with two weeks to go, thinking, ‘Wait, I wonder if I should be doing something right now?’

headdesk

(Also, people keep asking me if I’m excited, and I can’t say ‘no, I’m absolutely terrified, Sandra, because what if everyone hates it?” so I just say ‘yes, of course!’…)

It would be fair to say that I’ve never been very good at marketing. In fact, once a book is written, it’s basically dead to me (sorry, books…), and all I can think about is the next one, and to hell with everything else. So, with all of my previous books, I’ve mostly just waited until the book’s out, then done a few social media posts, which I’ve quickly given up on when none of them took off.

This is probably at least one of the reasons why none of my books have ever become bestsellers, now I come to think of it. But the fact is, I’m a writer, not a marketer — which is why it’s always seemed particularly cruel to me that, a lot of the time, a book's success depends solely on how well it’s marketed, rather than how well it’s written.

Highland Getaway, of course, is no different. Yes, it’s traditionally published rather than self-published, like my previous books, but when I signed my contract, I was under no illusions. I knew perfectly well that my publisher would be unlikely to pull out all the stops with marketing, and this, it seems, is true. My publisher dealt with the cover, the ARC copies, and getting the book into actual stores, but the rest of the marketing efforts will come down to yours truly… which is a bit scary really, because I feel a bit like I’ve come this far, and am about to fall at the last hurdle because of the whole Not a Marketer thing.

Or not!

Because there are two ways to look at this, obviously. I can either think, “oh shit, there’s only two weeks to go, and I have no idea how to do book marketing properly”… or, I can take these next two weeks, and basically just throw everything I have at them, in the hope that something works.

Naturally, I’m going for option two.

(I mean, I’m also going to do a bit of option one, too, because the fact is, I don’t have any idea how to do book marketing, and I am vaguely panicking about it. But I’m going to do my best to promote the book while panicking, because that would appear to be my only option, as well as being how I do most things in life...)

I know the first week’s sales are crucial in both the book’s success and in helping persuade my publisher to buy more books from me in future, so my current focus is on getting as many pre-orders as I can: not just so I can hopefully have a decent launch week, but also because, realistically I know there’s only so long I can keep on cranking out promotional content before I either die of The Cringe or just run out of steam and give up. So the plan is to go hard for the next two weeks and then… um, go home? Probably?

In my case, all of my marketing is being done online, because … well, because I’m anxious and socially awkward, and I don’t know any other way to do it. I know some authors swear by organising book tours and other in-person events, but not only do I have no idea where to even start with things like that, I have no budget for them (and by that I mean literally no budget: as in, I have no spare cash at all…), and I feel like in-person stuff would be counter-productive for me anyway, because I’m so painfully awkward I’d most likely persuade people NOT to buy the book. Yes.

With that said, I have had some success with Instagram lately, and have been slowly growing my follower numbers there, so that’s going to be my main focus for the next couple of weeks, and I’m going to be creating most of my content for there, with the aim of then cross-posting it to my other platforms. (In an ideal world I’d make different content for each, because they’re all subtly different, but alas this is not an ideal world, and there’s only one of me, so cross-posting it is…)

I’ve had most success on Instagram with Carousel Posts like the one below, which has had over 17,000 views, and brought me a few hundred new followers:

These are really time-consuming to create, though, and so far the ones that have done best for me have been ones that aren’t specifically promoting my book… which is nice, of course, but not particularly helpful right now, because I’m glad you liked my Instagram post, but would you guys please just buy my books already?!

Sheesh.

So, while I’m aiming to continue creating as many of these as I can, in terms of promoting Highland Getaway, I’m mostly going to be concentrating on Instagram Trial Reels — which, for the uninitiated are Reels Instagram shows only to non-followers. I like these because they basically allow you to be as cringe as you want, and to repeat yourself over and over, without having to worry about annoying your existing followers, and this makes them particularly useful for marketing, because they allow you to test different hooks and formats, and (hopefully) figure out what works and what doesn’t.

From what I’ve read (on Threads, naturally, which is NOT part of my marketing strategy on account of people being completely unhinged over there…), the current wisdom states that you should post exactly 9 Trial Reels per day — NINE — to get the most of this system. This, needless to say, is completely unrealistic for most of us, so I’m aiming to just do as many as I can each day without losing the quality (She says as if her Trial Reels are ‘quality’…), and then cross-posting them to:

• TikTok

• Facebook

• YouTube Shorts

And then just crossing my fingers and hoping at least one of those works, basically. (Although, I mean, even if each video ‘only’ gets 200 views — which is what happens to most of them — that’s still 200 extra people who now know about my book, right?)

Some other things I’m doing…

• Facebook advertising

This is actually where we’ve had most success with my other books, and we’ve set aside a small amount of money to run some Facebook ads for Highland Getaway. Although this has worked well for us at times in the past, though, it’s incredibly inconsistent, and we’ve never had much luck with promoting pre-orders (I’m not sure if that’s been an issue with the ads themselves, or if it’s just that people prefer to wait until a book’s out before buying it…) so most of those ads will run once the book has released, with just a few going out over the next two weeks.

• Email marketing…

… via this very newsletter. Don’t worry, though, though, nothing’s going to change, and I’m not going to suddenly start spamming you with multiple salesy emails every week. I know everyone says a mailing list is the most powerful thing in an author’s toolkit, but I lose subscribers every time I send outa newsletter, so I figure mine’s probably doing more harm than good at this point. If you’re reading this, though, please consider yourselves marketed to!

Once the book’s actually out, meanwhile, I have a few other things planned which I may or may not be able to pull off, but for now, that’s pretty much it — although if anyone has any other suggestions I haven’t thought of (and which don’t involve me having to speak in front of an audience), I’d love to hear them.

Two weeks to go, folks!

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