Avoid the Trap of Overthinking Your Book Marketing & Book Launch Decisions

Bound for Bestseller: Book Marketing & Book Launch Strategy for Authors

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Transcript:

So, today's topic is one that's very near and dear to my heart, largely because it's a feeling that, and it's a topic that I've experienced myself, but it's also one of those things that a lot of my clients have experienced, whether they recognize it or not. It's one of those things that I see in people a lot, I, that I witness them experiencing whether, yeah, whether they realize it or not.

So, it, it's ultimately overthinking. I think overthinking is one of the things that holds people back so much when it comes to launching a book. And, you know, it's, it's not one of those things that we're gonna solve in this podcast episode. Like, we're not gonna solve this problem right now. But my hope is that we can each walk away with like, Okay, am I overthinking something right now?

What am I overthinking that is paralyzing me and preventing me from actually making some forward progress on my project? So, for me, overthinking looked like a few things. It honestly showed up before I even wrote the book. And it came up in the form of not knowing Which route to go for publishing? Do I go the self publishing route?

Do I look into getting a literary agent and going after a traditional publishing deal? Do I look into a hybrid publisher to help me through the process? I felt like I needed to do the research to figure out exactly how best to go after the process. Once I made that decision, then I was able to pursue the next steps.

So like for me, I had a, an outline and, you know, I, that's about as far as I got for a long time. Once I decided and gave myself the permission to move forward with the self publishing route, I felt like I had a game plan and knew what to do. Then I could write the rest of my manuscript. But until I had that permission almost, I felt a little strange about, Doing too much work that might just get ripped to shreds and not ever see the light of day.

And at the time, like, I just wanted to be smart with my time and make sure I was investing my efforts in things that were gonna work. So, once I went the self publishing route, then it was like I was off to the races. But there's other points in the process where I see people get stuck as well. Um, another big spot where I see people get stuck is figuring out their book title.

Now, don't get me wrong, coming up with a book title is extremely difficult in my opinion. Sometimes you get an idea that hits you and it's like gold and you know that it's good. And then sometimes you struggle. And if you're, if you're struggling, um, You know, if you've got a few good ideas, like, ultimately, sometimes you might get down to having, you know, two or three really good ideas, and you just have to choose.

I've been part of some teams where, like, there were almost too many voices in the mix giving opinions, and ultimately the choice comes down to the authors. You know, um, if you like a certain topic over somebody else, or a certain title, you're not going to please everyone. You know, so pick a title that obviously has some thought put into it, but you don't have to please everyone, and you will not please everyone with the title you choose.

Same goes for the book cover. That's another spot where I see people kind of falter. Is by not, um, maybe thinking about the book cover soon enough. Um, also kind of maybe getting too much, uh, feedback. Too many people voting on what to do for the book cover. And when it comes to design, that is, you know, you can have some people that are really, really opinionated that, you know, there's certain things that are, you know, just bad design.

And sure, there's like some basic design principles, but when it comes to book covers, it's, it's a design. And that's one of those things that's going to be subjective. It's not a definitive thing. So, when you get down to a few good book cover options, um, you weigh the pros and cons. But you're probably going to have a bunch of people who don't like the, the choice you chose and that's okay.

But again, and you know, we, you know, we, we all cover, we all judge books by their cover. So it is something that you want to think through, but at the same time you have to move forward. You have to make a decision on what your, your book is going to be about, what the cover is going to be. Like you need to make that, that movement because...

You know, if you're marketing your book, the colors, the fonts, the style, if you have any sort of imagery, like you want to start using that in your marketing materials around the book. Start teasing things out so it starts to feel like it's a natural progression. Like you're, you're teasing out the colors and the, the fonts and everything.

Like You can start marketing your book well before it's ever done. And if you have an idea of what the cover is going to look like, what color, what your color scheme is, what your fonts are, like all that stuff you can start incorporating into other things. In the meantime, while you're promoting things, while you're using that cover art, you could be making social media content, making cover photos for websites, for, for email headers.

All the, the pieces. They can go into marketing your book, that you can be dripping out to your network to let them know you have a book coming. I know many people who have their book cover designed. Before they've even written them the whole manuscript like they have that done first to me that feels a little difficult largely because My book title ideas don't always come to me at the start It's more of a process once I've written the manuscript then I feel like I have a better idea for the title But if you know, you have a good title you want to use you could start your book design at any point Okay, and then you can be promoting that book as you get moving through the process and there can be a ton of behind the scenes work happening While you're promoting your book.

So needless to say those are a few spots where I see people getting paralyzed You can get paralyzed around the concept of like, you know, which format should I publish and when? You can get paralyzed and overthink like, what day should I launch my book? And again, with all of these decisions, there are some guidelines to help you make a good decision.

Don't get me wrong, there are ways you can be smart and strategic and make a good decision. But there are often a lot of good decisions. that you could be making. There is not always just one direct path. That is the only right, good decision. And I just want to give you freedom to embrace that. That you don't have to have the absolute perfect title.

You don't have to have the absolute perfect cover photo. You don't have to have the absolute perfect, uh, you know, plan of which formats you're putting out there. Like, you can do things differently. You also can move forward and later down the road, you can adjust some things. You can decide to add that audio book in later.

You might be scrambling a little bit if you're cutting, cutting the time quick. But, you know, there's a lot of things that you can make just forward motion on. And you need to make decisions. I think that's one of the biggest things that as an author you're going to have to make are decisions. And then from there, once you know what your plan is, once you know what your decision is, you can map out the next steps accordingly.

But when you wait to make those decisions and you prolong them, you're only adding extra stress to your life. And the more you overthink things, the more you overwork things, honestly you're just adding a lot of cost and time to the process. And then the more that you are late or procrastinating or you're like just working on things at the last minute, whether, you know, when I reference you, it's like you and your team, whoever's helping you with some of those things, if you can't decide on a book title, That is going to ultimately slow down the process for final formatting, for uploading and getting everything published.

And all of those things take time. So, if you don't make decisions fast enough, you are potentially cutting it, like, down to the wire to know, like, okay, if I'm planning to launch on January 1st, I need to have XYZ done by a certain date. And if it's not, then you're sweating a little bit to see. Does everything get approved?

Does everything get uploaded when it needs to? You don't want to be in a position where you're stressed more than necessary. And one of the best things you can do to combat that is to focus on making smart, Educated decisions with thought, but give yourself grace to know that those decisions don't have to be the end all be all.

There's a very good chance that you may look at your book a year later and say, I wish I would have done something different. I look at my book all the time and say that. There's a lot of things that I will do differently on my next book, but at the same time, I got a book out. And so I did not allow perfection to get in the way of the excellent.

Okay. I did not let perfection get in the way of done. I was able to publish a book and a large part of it was because I made decisions about how I wanted things to go, how I was going to do things. And obviously, you learn along the way. But there are a lot of people who have book manuscripts sitting on their, their cloud drive, or written out in chicken scratch in a journal.

Those books will never see the light of day. Because a lot of people are overthinking some of these very tactical things. That can help them just move forward. And so my big challenge for you today is one, recognize, are, am I sitting in a position where I have something that I'm just overthinking and I really just need to make some decisions and move forward knowing that it might be perfect?

It might not. And that's okay. The other thing I would ask you is. What is it that you're working on that you need to really put forth some energy on? Are you holding back on anything? And if so, what would be at risk if you just continue to overthink things for that project? What book would never see the light of day?

Simply because you are overthinking the process, you are getting in your head, you're letting imposter syndrome creep in. What is it that's holding you back? Figure that out, and then you'll be able to maybe attack it and approach it head on.