Work backwards twelve weeks from publication. Weeks twelve to eight are about the book itself — cover, blurb, sample, metadata. Weeks eight to four are about readers: ARC copies, a list, preorders. The final four weeks are execution. Almost all the value sits in the first eight weeks, which is the opposite of how most launches are run.
How to launch a self-published book
The twelve-week launch checklist
Front-loaded on purpose. If you only have four weeks, do the week-twelve items and publish late — that is a better trade than launching with a weak cover.
- Week 12: final cover, tested at thumbnail size against ten competing books.
- Week 12: blurb written and read aloud to someone who hasn't read the book.
- Week 11: categories and keywords researched properly, from actual competitor listings.
- Week 11: first ten pages read by three people who don't know you.
- Week 10: interior typeset; print proof ordered and read on paper.
- Week 10: author page, bio and a simple website with an email signup.
- Week 9: decide format mix — ebook, paperback, hardback, audio — and the price for each.
- Week 8: recruit 15–30 ARC readers. This is the week that most affects launch reviews.
- Week 7: ARC copies out, with a clear, polite ask and a date.
- Week 6: preorder live if you're using one; announce it once, properly.
- Week 5: write the three launch emails to your list. Not four. Not eleven.
- Week 4: chase ARC readers gently. Expect half to deliver.
- Week 3: line up whatever real coverage exists — local press, a genre newsletter, a podcast.
- Week 2: check every buy link on a phone, from a different account.
- Week 1: publish. Tell your list. Tell the people who helped, individually.
- Week +1: gather reviews. Ask readers who emailed you to post what they said.
- Week +2: only now consider advertising, and only if the sample-to-purchase rate is healthy.
The twelve-week launch checklist
The full week-by-week list as a printable PDF, with the items that matter most marked and the ones to skip crossed out. Free.
Launch week is the least important week
The launch-day spike is mostly vanity. What matters for a self-published book is the slope afterwards, and that is set by whether the cover, blurb, sample and categories are right.
So spend your energy in weeks twelve to eight. An author who delays publication by a month to fix the cover will outsell one who launched on time with a weak one, every time, and the gap widens over the following year.
If you are already inside four weeks and something upstream is wrong, move the date. Nobody is waiting.
ARC readers, and how to ask
Advance review copies go to readers who have agreed to post an honest review at publication. Fifteen to thirty is a sensible target, and expect roughly half to actually deliver.
Where to find them: your mailing list first, then genre communities where the rules permit it, then reader groups on Goodreads and StoryGraph, then a service if you must.
How to ask: be direct that you want an honest review, not a good one. Give a date. Send the format they read in. Do not follow up more than once, and never argue with a review you receive — that is the single fastest way to turn a three-star review into a public incident.
And never offer payment or a gift in exchange. It breaches platform terms and it is the sort of thing that surfaces later.
Preorders: when they help and when they hurt
For a first book, preorders are usually neutral and occasionally harmful. Sales get spread across the preorder period rather than concentrating on release day, which weakens the ranking signal.
They help when you have a list already — a preorder gives you a reason to write to them twice — and for series, where readers are waiting.
If you use one, keep it short: two to four weeks. A three-month preorder for a debut is a long time to sustain attention nobody has yet.
Pricing, briefly and honestly
Ebook: £2.99–£4.99 is the normal range for self-published fiction, and the royalty structure on most platforms rewards staying above £1.99. Non-fiction and specialist books support more.
Paperback: work out your print cost first, then price to the market rather than to your margin. A 300-page paperback priced at £14.99 will not sell against £8.99 competitors regardless of what it cost you to make.
Free first-in-series is a real strategy for series fiction and pointless for a standalone.
And for family and local-interest books, the honest answer is that price barely matters — those readers are buying the subject.
What Your Book Pro does here
Your Book Pro is a British book-writing platform. You bring a book — an idea, a folder of notes, half a draft, or a finished manuscript written somewhere else — and it gives you the editorial process a publisher would run: a plan, structured feedback, a simulated beta read, a line edit, a proofread, a cover, a blurb and a print-ready file. You can type it, upload it or speak it. The tools sit in one place and work on the same manuscript, so the feedback compounds instead of arriving as twelve disconnected opinions.
Marketing Guidance turns this generic twelve-week structure into a plan for your specific book — a local history with 200 potential buyers and a cosy mystery aiming at a genre readership need almost entirely different plans, and most launch advice is written as though they don't.
The two upstream tools matter more: Generate a Cover, tested at thumbnail size, and Back-Cover Blurb, which most authors write in twenty minutes at the end despite it being the most-read page of the whole project.
And if the book is not quite finished, Beta Reader and the Editing Suite are what week twelve should really contain. A launch plan cannot rescue a book that needed another draft — we would rather say so now than sell you a campaign.
Plan your launch
Draft a cover and blurb first
Email me the checklistQuestions people ask
- How long should a book launch take?
- Twelve weeks from finished manuscript to publication is comfortable. Six is possible. Under four means skipping something that matters, usually the cover or the proof copy.
- Do I need a launch team?
- A group of 15–30 ARC readers, yes. An elaborate 'street team' with graphics packs, no — that is a lot of coordination for very little movement.
- Should I publish wide or exclusive to Amazon?
- Exclusivity buys promotional tools and a subscription readership; going wide reaches library and international markets. For a first book, either is defensible — decide once and give it a year rather than switching every quarter.
- When should I start advertising?
- After publication, after twenty reviews, and only once people who see the sample are buying it. Advertising into a poor conversion rate is buying a bigger audience for a no.
- What if the launch is quiet?
- Most are, and it means much less than it feels like. Self-published books frequently build over one to three years through categories, reviews and word of mouth. The second book is also the best marketing for the first.