Combating Release Day Stress Part One

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I read an interesting article lately that really made me think.  It was by Sweta Vikram and was titled, “How Mindfulness Can Help You Enjoy Your Book Release Day.”  In it, Vikram offered suggestions for better launch days.

I’m horrible at mindfulness, although I’ve definitely given it a go.  I’ve set timers and reminders for myself.  My mind always swims off to something I should be doing.  Clearly, I need to work harder at making it work.

But Vikram gives other tips for making a release day better.  I especially liked her reminders to continue building relationships with family and friends, to be grateful (she specifically mentions trad pub here, but it is the same for self-pub…we have a lot of folks to acknowledge on our road to publication), and to pay it forward.

All of these are excellent ideas.  The biggest thing that I got from the article was this…release days frequently aren’t fun.  This probably sounds odd to anyone who hasn’t yet published, but it’s the truth.  I was extremely stressed out on launch days for my books with Penguin RH (there were decided promo expectations there) and am still stressed during my self-pub releases (where I’m the sole person responsible for everything going right…or everything going wrong, as the case may be).

This is a problem for many of us.  I have several releases in a year.  Some writers have a good deal more.

Keeping the article in mind, I have come up with additional suggestions for combating release day stress. I’ll cover the first couple today and the rest on Friday.

Do as much in advance as possible.  This is a tip that I’ve used for nearly every aspect of my life for the last twenty years or so.  It works for avoiding vacation stress, for the (enjoyable) disruption of holidays, and for busy mornings herding young children off to school.

In terms of a book release, this means that we should:

Load our books onto each retail/distribution platform prior to the release day.  We can either set up the book as a preorder and do all the set-up work before the release, or we can simply have all the metadata and files loaded and wait for the launch to hit publish.

Create our reader newsletter announcing the release before release day and either schedule its release on launch day or hit publish that day.

Schedule a social media announcement (through a program like HootSuite or Buffer).

Set up a giveaway if that’s part of our marketing plan.  Or set up a previous book in the series to price for free.  If you’re doing a blog tour, make sure the posts are written ahead of time.

Keep a checklist handy. 

There’s a lot to remember for release day.  I found that I frequently forgot things if I had to rely on my memory.  I use this checklist (and I’ve added a couple of things to it…like ordering print copies for myself and updating my list of books in print).

Otherwise, I will forget to make sure the print edition and ebook are connected on my product page. Or that I’ll forget to make sure they are linked to my Author Central page.

These are just a couple of things that I do to make sure everything goes smoothly (and are less stressful) on launch day.  I’ll cover the rest on Friday.

Do you find releases stressful?  How do you reduce the stress of launches?

Photo credit: ToniVC on Visual hunt / CC BY-NC-ND