P.J. Murphy's Writer Site

As I write this, just over a week remains before my fourth novel, Six Steps to Salvation, is released. I’ll be posting on the big day (22nd April) about writing the book itself, but today, I want to share a little about the preparation for publication.

Those of you who’ve followed this blog for a few years will know that one of my goals is to share my publishing journey. I’ll try not to repeat here the themes of earlier posts (such as this one and this one!), but instead will focus on why I allowed so much time between announcing publication and the date itself. In point of fact, it was only 3 months, which is an extremely short run-in time when compared with traditional publishing, but it’s felt like an age. So, why the need for this timeline? There were several reasons:

Production of an audiobook version

Six Steps to Salvation will be the second of my novels to be available as an audiobook. I write about my audiobook journey in these posts, and *spoiler alert* although I have no regrets about taking those steps for Dead Letters, it hasn’t been an astounding commercial success. Part of the reason for this is the paucity of dedicated audiobook listener networks through which to promote. The marketing landscape specifically for audiobooks just isn’t as developed as that for paperback and ebooks. So, I decided this time to launch the different versions of my books together, to maximise the return from my marketing efforts.

ACX (the platform I use to commission and publish audiobooks to Audible and other platforms) insists on the book being available on Amazon before it can be added. So one of the reasons for making my Six Stepsavailable for pre-order in advance was to have it available online but allow time for the audiobook version to be completed. I’m expecting to have access to the recording in a few days’ time, and my next task will be to listen to it in its entirety before I can approve it for release.

Reviews

I’ve commented before that one of the keys to a novel’s success is having good reviews. Short of the cover, they’re probably the thing that readers pay the most attention to when deciding whether to purchase. But getting reviews takes time. You’ve got to give reviewers time to read the novel (obviously) and get their review ready.

My editorial review from LoveReading is now ready, and you can read it here. I’ve also tried out the BookSirens site, which offers Advance Reader Copies to potential reviewers. I’ve not had much luck in having people pick it up, to be honest (I hope it’s not a sign of things to come), but it has been a useful tool to share my files with those I’ve approached directly.

Preparing the promotion

I’ve learnt a lot from promoting my previous books, and I’ll be using some of the same methods, but this time, I’m trying a couple of new things:

• Working with a marketing firm – Another author at a writing retreat I attended last year recommended Cameron Publicity & Marketing, so I thought I’d give them a go! They prepare and run a marketing plan in the weeks ahead of a book’s publication and send out advance copies to radio stations and other media outlets. I’ve already had a couple of takers, and will be doing a radio interview and hopefully having an article featured. All this takes run-in time.
• Attending a book fair – On 3^rd May, I’ll be at the Indie Author Book Fair in Huntingdon. I had hoped to have a stand last year, but it was all booked out before I contacted them. I’ve timed the release date for Six Steps to be just before the event, so I can use it as a sort of launch. Which leads me to…
• Launch event – Okay, so I haven’t advanced on this as much as I had hoped, but I intend to set a date soon. Watch this space!

Hopefully all of this gives you a glimpse of how much work goes into launching a novel – and justifies why I allowed myself plenty of time for it. And this is all without taking into account what it took to actually write, format a book and get a book cover made up. Fortunately, to help retain my sanity, I have managed to fit in some writing and am quite advanced on the first draft of my next novel. But with all the lead-in time for publication, I think we can expect it to release some time around 2030.

I’ll post again around launch day. Until, then, have a good Easter.