What book formats should you publish when (ebook, print book, audiobook)?

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

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Transcript:

So when it comes to launching your book, a lot of people have questions around what formats of my book should I launch first, second, third? Should I phase things? Should I launch everything all at once? The reality is, it's really great you have these options between having a hard copy, a print version, uh, the e book, and then audio.

And, you know, big picture, I think it's important to probably have all of those different routes as much as you are able to. However, how you pace those and how you launch those is one of those things that's going to be up to you. Now, some authors hate hearing that. For some people, it gives them a little bit of freedom.

To say, you have the choice to decide what you're going to do. Especially if you're going the self publishing route. Now, if you're working with a publisher, they're probably going to dictate to you what you should do and when. Um, and you're going to be probably locked into certain commitments based on that.

But if you are self publishing, or you have the option to delay making certain versions, Ultimately, that choice is up to you, and you can, you can make that however you want. We'll walk through a few things to think about as you're determining, you know, what you, what order you want to do things in, what you would want to do first.

Does it make sense to launch all at once? Um, when I first launched my book, this was in 2019, it wasn't, I'll just say this, audiobooks were becoming more popular, becoming more of the norm. But they weren't there yet. It also was a lot more cumbersome to publish and produce an audio book version of your book.

Today. It's a lot easier. I've seen in just the four to five years from recording this episode from 2019, I have seen a huge difference in how, how much easier it is to publish and produce an audio book. It felt like a bigger lift four or five years ago. So when I launched my book, I only did ebook and paperback.

And even when I launched, my, uh, advice that I was given was to launch with just my ebook. And I'll be honest, I knew that it was going to be a little bit harder. Because, you know, the platforms see the ebook and your hard copy version as two separate products. So, in terms of wanting to get rankings and moving up in the algorithms for going after different accolades, I knew it was going to be a little bit more of a challenge.

However, I knew my audience well enough to know that if I only offered an ebook version, There would be a lot of people who did not buy it, simply because they are purists, and they like the physical feeling of reading a book in their hands. So for me, I had my paperback book available just on the same day as my e book was available.

And I know that it made it a little bit harder to go after some of those things like bestseller, but at the same time, I was able to sell a lot of books. Because I was putting it in the formats that I knew people wanted. To me, paperback is, it's a given. You know, print, whatever. Um, I typically tend to lean more towards paperback books just because they're lighter.

I know some people felt really strongly about, I really want a hardcover copy, a hardcover version of my book, with the book jacket and all of the fancy things. And I will say that that does look very nice and polished. And I love that KDP makes it easy for that to be an option. I'm trying to think back, but I don't think that was even an option when I first published my book.

It was either... You know, it was just a soft cover and that was your only option if you wanted a print version of your book. So, So I've really enjoyed watching that evolution. But yeah, I've worked with some people they're like, they're insistent they want a paperback version and a hard copy and the e book.

Now the audio book is still one of those those pieces where like a lot of people have a little bit of a debate. Some people have felt really strongly about wanting to have everything All at once, which is great. I think having everything all at once can be really, really powerful. It makes you look really polished and set up for success.

But again, you've got a lot of people who are going to buy one version. And then you're spreading out your activity. And so it doesn't, it doesn't concentrate your efforts as much. The other argument for keeping the audio book maybe a delayed Type of a thing is simply the fact that, you know, you, you launch with your ebook, your paperback, or just paperback, or just ebook, regardless of what route you do between ebook and, um, print version, you can decide that, right?

But the audiobook kind of feels like a different animal. And it feels special enough that you could say the audiobook is coming soon. And then, when it does launch... You have another reason to get in front of your audience. And I think that's really important. A lot of times people think about book marketing and book launches in terms of, Okay, I've got the date that everything goes live, and I'm concentrating all my efforts around this one time.

They often miss the lead up and the lead down from a book launch. And so, if you can really space out some of those big milestones and reasons to get in front of people, You can talk about your book time after time after time. So let's say you launch your book today. You launch your ebook, your print version.

It does well. You get a lot of buzz here for a few weeks. Then when you launch your audiobook, say a month or two later, you are able to space out these big announcements. You know? Whereas if you cram them all together, it's definitely a nice polished way to think about things, but at the same time, you're also making it a little bit harder to put some kind of special attention on these different versions.

So just something to think about between like trying to decide how you're going to space things out. Ultimately, I think if you've got the network for it, you can really decide to do things. Whichever way you want. There's, there's not necessarily a right and a wrong way here. I think these are, this is one of those gray areas where this is an opinion, this is a subjective thing, and you can decide what order you want to do things in and how you wanna pro, how you want to produce all of that, how you want to get everything rolling out.

And if you have the creative licensing as a self-published author, ultimately, that that control is all in your hands. So. Get the facts, get some opinions, and weigh out what's going to make the most, most sense for you. You are the author and this is your book. So you need to be making some of these decisions, make them as, as strategic as possible, with as thoughtful as possible.

But again, as I've said in other situations, like don't overthink things too much. There's a right and a wrong way to do some things, but there's also a lot of Gray areas where there's multiple ways to do it, and I think the types of formats you launch at one time, that is one of those gray areas that ultimately you're in control of, you can decide what you want to do, and ultimately, like, your book launch is going to be a success either way.

Go after the wins that you can control and don't obsess over trying to meet certain deadlines with getting every single format out just for the sake of having it all there. Think through, how could you leverage what your timing is to your best advantage? And, I'm excited to see how you launch out all of these things.

I've seen every author I've worked with has kind of had a different take on things, and that's the beauty of it. We all have our own opinions, we all have our own scenarios, and no two book launches are exactly the same.