Welcome to The Perfect Year. A FREE marketing course for authors. Just to make things simple, this page has all the videos in one place for you to watch
VIDEO ONE
VIDEO TWO
(NOTE: Since the website has been redone the examples are no longer available)
This week’s video is about planning a cover reveal. Some of this might be new to you, some might be old. But the reason I’m spending a whole video on it is because it’s part of the 6-part process of planning the perfect year. So I figure it’s a good idea to get everyone on the same page as to what it, and what isn’t a cover reveal.
One thing I will caution you about – Don’t just copy me. I realize most media kits are the same, but you’re only cheating yourself if you think you can copy everything I do and that’s it. You can’t. You know why? Because it’s got my personality all over it. So don’t copy my tweets, or my newsletter, or my Facebook posts. I know it’s very tempting, but you need to find fans who respond to your personality. What I do might not be in your best interest. So take the concepts I’m talking about and then find your own unique way to use it to help you grow your audience. In other words – your audience might not appreciate my style. Get it? So be yourself.
One more thing I’ll say about cover reveals. If I’m releasing a series I often do the cover reveal with the release of the next book in the series. I (sorta) looked for cover reveals for the Mister Series on here to show you but I’m pretty sure most of them were either combined into the release day post or I just didn’t have time to do a blog post. But I always do some sort of cover reveal that involves a coordinated blog promo effort. Even if I don’t post them on the blog here. Sometimes I’m just way too busy to think about blogging, especially if the cover reveal coincides with the release. I try not to overwhelm people who follow this blog by email with a lot of repetitive posts.
VIDEO THREE
PART ONE
PART TWO
Welcome back to The Perfect year. This week’s video is about planning a pre-order. I have have it broken down into two parts this week because I had a had a lot to say. The first video deals with conventional pros and cons for why you may or may not want to use the pre-order as part of your release strategy. The second video is new insights I’ve gathered over the past year and has the most current data for my newest book. Just something to think about as we go forward because once we get to the end of the series you’re going to have to make a lot of decisions about what you want, what your goal is for your next book, and the best way to go about achieving your goal.
VIDEO FOUR
This week’s post is all about running giveaways and takeovers. Please keep in mind that what I’m saying in this video mostly pertains to romance. But if you’re in another genre you can still take most of the same concepts and apply it in a way that is best for you.
VIDEO FIVE
The Advanced Reader Copy List might just be the one thing you do that will make a huge difference the very first time you add it to your release. I had to add an extra video to this one because I forgot to talk about negative reviews and I thought it was too important to leave out or throw into a future video.
VIDEO SIX
This week is all about building momentum for your new release using all the other stuff I’ve already talked about. Next week we will discuss one more aspect to The Perfect Year – how to run a sale or box up a series. And then the last video in the series will show you how to plan an entire year using these steps to get to build your career over the long term.
I talk about a few things in the video that needed to have a link or example here.
TEASER GRAPHICS BY MICHELLE NEW (Tease Me Designs – Mich New on Facebook now!)
VIDEO TRAILER EXAMPLES
GUNS (Last Rook & Ronin book)
321 (I have two versions. The first one was the one I used for release in January 2015. The second one I used to help push the audiobook that released in mid 2016)
THIS ONE HAS TWO VERSIONS
This was for Meet Me In The Dark
This is the Mister Series.
This is the Turning Series.
If you want to check out the campaign I ran on Twitter, just do a general Twitter search for @jahuss to pull up every post that has my name in it. I put my name in every “Tweet This” Giveaway so I can see the results (and you can to, just do the search). You will get tired of scrolling through all my results long before you get to the end. That’s how you use the fuck out of Twitter for a new release.
If you want to see how I used review and excerpt quotes to run FREE Facebook campaigns, just go to my author page here and scroll down until you get to early January posts.
VIDEO SEVEN
This is the last step in the Perfect year process and covers running discounts and box sets. It also deals with a long-term strategy for how to use discounts and box sets (and all kinds of other stuff) in a way that helps you grow in the future and doesn’t hurt you in the short-term.
Next week we will put all six steps together and discuss how every author who releases at least two books a year can use this plan to help them achieve stable sales and income on a sustainable level.
VIDEO EIGHT
We made it to the end! I hope you guys got something useful out of these videos and I hope this last one helps you plan the next year of releases and marketing. I have been doing this for several years now and It’s really helped me with the whole desire for “stability”.
