The Pre-Publishing Plan: Art of Selling Your Story Early

When you finally finish your book, it can be easy to feel like it is already time to get into the publishing phase. You’ve worked hard to get here, now it’s time to reap the rewards right? Wrong. While you have done a lot of work, and deserve a pat on the back for getting this far, if you want your story to succeed on the market you’ll need to plan out your pre-publishing steps.

Pre-Publishing plans are easier for self-publishing, as you have more control over your story than you do in traditional publishing. If this is your first book, it may even be easier to do this as a start of your writing career. I personally believe self-publishing is the better route, it isn’t for everyone though- You have to be able to market, market, market your book all the way. Which is why the Pre-Publishing plan is so crucial for self-publishing authors.

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The Pre-Publishing Plan:

To start your plan, you’ll want to finalize any book details. Make sure you’ve edited and revised your story, and polished it to its best. It can be expensive to hire editors if this is your first story, but I would at least consider paying for a developmental edit and a beta read.

Why are these important? A developmental editor can help you recognize any slow points, inconsistencies, and character or point of view errors and suggest anything that can be fixed. While beta readers can give general feedback on their thoughts of the story. Both are crucial before even considering publishing, as it helps improve the overall readability of your story. If your readers get confused quickly and lose interest, they won’t be telling anyone about your story.

If you’re looking for either of these, I’d recommend checking out Fiverr and Upwork. With both, always be sure to see reviews of the people you hire, or make sure they have a good background. These sites are more affordable to find work on for first time authors, and still can have some quality level workers on there.

Other final book details include making a cover, crafting your book description, and formatting. Again, if you want to do these things yourselves there are a few things to remember.

For a cover, you can find commercial use images on Pexels and Unsplash and editing them for a cover format can be done on Canva.

When writing your book description, research keywords that are highly searched within your story genre. This will help people find it via these keywords.

As for formatting, if you want to do it yourself and save money, Reedsy does have a writing program on site that allows you to export your story in an eBook format or paperback format ready for publishing.

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Next is marketing. Yes you will want to start with this once you’ve finished book finalization. Even before you finish finalization on the book. Start drawing attention to your book. From posting about the editing phases, or as mile-stones are met, to preparing an author page on amazon and Facebook. You might be thinking it is too early to start this, but you need to start drumming up business before you release your book, otherwise release day will flop.

1. Make videos on TikTok, you can show your face and talk about your book, or only use text and edit videos on Canva. Either way as long as you use well searched hashtags and post at least two to three videos a day you’ll start to see feedback and views going up.

2. Make posts about the writing process, cover art, etc. For socials such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. If you have a release day set already, start posting on that too. As always, ensure good use of hashtags to build up viewership.

3. Build a website. I recommend Wix, as it is easy to start with, but if you are better with technology than me, Wordpress is good as well. Set up the site, advertising yourself as an author, your upcoming novel, and make sure to start an email newsletter to announce the launch. With an email newsletter you can offer freebies such as early access to the first chapter to entice people (And consider asking for a review through a google form), launch news, and future marketing for your next book.

4. On Amazon, set up your story so it is available for pre-order. This can allow you to get early reviews. Also it allows your story to begin to be seen, and people can save it to their wish-lists.

Finally, getting reviews. Yes, getting reviews during the pre-publishing phase. This is probably the most crucial phase of the plan. Most readers buy stories that have already been reviewed, so they know they have a reason to purchase it. So putting in the work to get these reviews could be the difference between gaining and losing a new reader.

Starting with pre-order. You can put your book up on amazon for pre-order. This allows people to leave reviews, but more importantly- It allows you to add your book to Goodreads. You can order copies of your story on amazon, and using this can start a book giveaway. This creates buzz for your book, everyone loves freebies. Just choose the number of books for the giveaway, and Goodreads will select the winners and give you the addresses for shipping.

Consider gifting the book to family and friends so they can leave reviews on amazon, or ask them to post on social media of them with your book. This shouldn’t be your main source of reviews, as you want some depth to the review beyond someone saying “I like it,” but if you have avid readers in your social groups, definitely ask.

Email and ask. From “booktok” users to Goodreads reviewers, simply ask top reviewers and users if they would be interested in reading and reviewing your book. Make it enticing by offering a free copy, and be sure to include why their review in particular would be meaningful to you.

Photo by Laura Kapfer on Unsplash

In conclusion, it’s a lot of work. It will cost you a bit, and take some time before you can say “I’m an author!” Here’s the thing, if it were so simple everyone would be doing it. Putting in this work lays the ground for your story to have a chance at success, and even if it doesn’t become a bestseller, you now have work to show traditional publishers, something to put on your resume, and a sense of accomplishment. In the end it is important to remember that you get what you put into it. So if you put your absolute all into the pre-publishing phase, publishing your story will do well.