Hi, everyone. We're glad you're here. This is the Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. Get ready to have your world rocked. As we dive into the wild and sometimes wacky world of self-publishing. We are three fabulous bestselling authors. I'm your host, Kimberly Todd with my best friends.

K. C. Luck

and Jamey Moody. 

Join us as we discuss the joys of writing, challenges of self-publishing, and anything else that tickles our fancy. 

Hey there, and welcome to Episode 36 of the Three Lesbians and a Pen podcast. I'm Kimberly Todd, and I'm here with my fabulous friends, KC Luck and Jamey Moody. Today we're talking about launching your book on a budget. But before we start, KC, how was your week?

Another great week. I went hiking actually to this state park called Silver Falls. I'm very lucky. I live very close to it and my girlfriend and I went and there's seven different falls you can look at on a five-mile hike. And so...

Oh wow.

It's just really gorgeous. Everything was in bloom, wildflowers, in bloom. The river was flowing fast, so it was just, breathtaking at times, so I really had a good time.

That's great. I watched a bunch of softball this weekend. The, NCAA tournaments were going on for the conference and, I am a big Texas A&M fan, and so the Aggies are actually ranked number one over everybody right now. I know. I'm just so excited. It's first time in history and so they had bad weather, so A&M and Oklahoma share the SEC conference title and then yesterday evening. They did the selection show, you know, for the 60 14 tournament, and the Aggies are number one in that. So, we're going to start the, tournament. And as long as they keep winning, what they do is they take the top eight teams from these regionals and they go to Oklahoma City, and that's where they have the, women's College World Series.

I've been, several years ago when A&M was there, but they've got a good chance of going back. So hopefully I'll get to go to Oklahoma City in a couple weeks to watch them play again. So that was exciting. I actually did a little writing too. I'm getting so close to the end of this book three, and I'm at a really fun place where they're having their first date and it's a lot is going on, so I'll just put it that way. So, it's really fun.

Yeah. That writing thing, I occasionally do that too.

Did you do some of that too?

Yeah, a tiny bit.

Well, I am exhausted today. You guys know about my bedtime, but we had friends come in from New Mexico and we were just out every single night this weekend. So, I'm resting now and I didn't get any writing, talking about writing. I got zilch writing done, so that's gonna be on the forecast for this week. But pretty much that's it for me. I'm happy to be alive. 

It is okay to take a weekend off.

Yeah. Right.

Yeah. 

So anyways, KC, do we have any texts this week? 

Yeah, we had one from Jules and she is actually getting ready to launch a book. Yay. Good for Jules.

Yay.

It's very exciting time.

Yeah, Jules, this podcast is for you.

But they did ask that, for one piece of advice to a new author launching their debut novel. So, we will of course hit all of that in our podcast.

We did have an email from Manishka. She said, sorry, it's been a while. 'cause she had to catch up on the podcast, but she was answering our question on blurbs and she said she didn't put too much stock in blurbs, but then after she got the thinking about it, she does. So, the blurb is important. First, she looks at the cover. That kind of catches her attention, but then she reads the blurb and sometimes we'll read a sample. So, folks, those blurbs are important.

Yeah. And then one thing that she also mentioned was, there's a new show on Netflix called Nonna's.

Mm-hmm. 

I had already watched it and I agree, it's fabulous. And now my wife and I wanna go to Staten Island to actually go to the restaurant 'cause we're so curious. So, we're gonna try that.

Oh fun. 

For Instagram, Katie wrote in and she said that she's just catching up on the pod and that she loved the episode on character development. So, thank you Katie. 

Okay. So today we're talking about launching your book on a budget, and specifically the last month leading up to your launch. And KC, you wanna start us off?

Yeah, so basically as you prepare for that last month, you're gonna wanna create a checklist. Now, the veterans on this call all have very long, detailed checklists that we were comparing before the show, but I'm not expecting, the newer authors to have everything. Of course, if you wanna see one of those checklists, feel free to email any of us. And I'm personally willing to share it. With anyone who wants to see the very long list from when I finished the book to when I actually released the damn book. But for this episode, we're talking about just this last month. And even for that, you're gonna need at least a smaller checklist so that you can keep yourself organized, you can hit all your marks before you actually go live. And also, it's a good idea to kind of keep track of your budget so you don't break the bank trying to get your book out.

Mm-hmm. Can I just add, write it down. I'm not kidding you. I do have a little Excel sheet, but really do write it down and make the list. Mine's even in chronological order.Which once you start doing that, you'll get the idea of it. But write it down, please.

Yeah. My mistake when I first started off is I thought I would remember it, but you don't. There are so many little pieces you just won't remember it.

Write it down. 

Yeah. And so, talking about that, one of the first things you wanna do is make sure that you have an audience. So, when you're a newer author, you want to try to build your mailing list if you can, so that you have a few people to send out a newsletter to. And usually to get people to join, you can, post things in social media that have, join my mailing list and get a free prequel, or a character bio, or maybe you wanna even include your first chapter of your book as an incentive to get them to join your mailing list. And then once you have that, you can set up or, organize a bunch of scheduled emails.

So, the first one might be something like, Hey, I'm a new author. I'm excited, I have my book coming out. The next one might be a little excerpt from it. Then eventually, as time goes by, you would do, hey, I have a cover reveal. And then finally my book is out and here's the blurb and the whole, shebang and where you can get the book today.

Right. I send out several emails, one a week up until release time. And, and what I'll do in those sometimes too, if I don't do an excerpt, they've got the blurbs so they know a little bit about the book, but I tell them a little bit more about the characters. Or I'll talk about different things that happen in the book, kinda like a little teaser or a little added extra that other people that aren't, you know, newsletter subscribers will get. So it helps 'em feel a little special. They'll know a little bit more about the book and hopefully they'll want to click and either pre-order or buy it.

Exactly. 

Also, during this time when you're sending out those newsletters, there's a couple of places, you can send to get your new release out into the community. For example, I Heart SapphFic every Tuesday they do a new release newsletter. So, if you'll go to their site, they have a spot for authors, you sign up, fill out the form and tell them what the release date is and they'll get it on the schedule so that it'll go out. And strongly encourage you to do that because, a lot of readers read that newsletter. Also, the Lesbian Review has a new release form also now you'll have to pay for that. It's, I think, $25, per release, but it's worth it too because, each month they send out new releases and that way it'll get it in front of more eyes.

Yeah. And TLR also posts on social media. I don't know 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 getting your book out that way. Yeah.

Yeah. They'll link to their website on social media. And also, there's My Queer Sapphic. It comes out on Fridays and they will do new releases. I think it's $15 still to do a new release, I believe. But that just gets it in front of more eyes. And then of course, you're gonna wanna put it on social media. I'm trying to think, is there any other places that they can send them out. 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. people aren't as familiar with BookBub, but you actually can set up a BookBub account and you can list all your books under that account, and they will do a free, new release email to the people that are your followers. Now, kinda like your newsletter. You might not have a lot of followers out the gate, but you know, even if it's just a few people, that always helps.

And, before I forget, speaking of newsletters, you can get a free newsletter account, so we didn't mention that, but since we're on a budget, Mailer Lite allows you to have up to, I don't know how many subscribers, they may know how many subscribers you get for free.

Is it a thousand? 

Yeah. And so, it's gonna take you a little while to get up to a thousand. So you can you use that for free. And everything that Jamey listed is also free except for TLR and maybe My Queer Sapphic. Yeah. But those are cheap. Those are pretty low. So, you can keep your costs down.

Mm-hmm.

So, Jamey touched on a little bit about getting your name out to the world through social media, and before we jump into where you can actually do some of that posting, you're gonna wanna make sure you have good looking graphics. You need to be creative so you can post every day. I had someone actually ask me, how often can I post?

Or they asked in one of the groups and I commented and I said, you could post every day if you want to, as long as you're creative. And to make those look really sharp, you're gonna wanna use some of the different tools. Now Canva is the one I use and it has a free version. It doesn't have as many photographs and backgrounds as you can get on the pro versions.

But you can get you started and you can start building those graphics. And as we talked about the checklist, you're gonna wanna write down, what you've created and when you plan to post it, or you will forget and you'll be like, dang it, I made this great graphic and I forgot to post it.

Exactly. I have a little folder on my computer that has promos for release and I stick them in there because, you'll have to take some time. We are assuming that your book is done. It could be with the editor, I guess, during this time, or you could have it back and you're getting ready to upload it to Amazon. But we're assuming that you've got time right now to do these things. 

Right. Yeah. And from my books, especially with my V.A.M.P. Books, I like to have an intriguing, like curiosity building, sequence. And I create them way in advance and it's like day one, it has a graphic and what will happen. And then day two, this person, what will happen, like that type of thing. Building like kind of excitement, like a story. And so I usually make seven of those the week before you get the blurb and the actual book copy.

For my Darkness series books that came out, the week leading up to it. I did an apocalyptic joke for each day. So I came up with these like dad jokes, you know? They were really, really silly and bad, so you could do something like that and the readers love that. They love it. It's hilarious. The comments were like, oh, I love these. I look for to the next one. I'm like, really? But okay, great. So maybe you'll buy the book. That's fantastic.

Exactly. So, you just need to be creative.

It doesn't always have to be an ad of your book. It can be something more curiosity building.

KC talked about Canva. Kimberly and I used Book Brush. That's just another alternative. When I was first starting out, I don't know why Canva was harder for me to learn. And KC is great at it. So, I think it's just kind of whatever comes to you, but I use Book Brush.

Yeah, I love Book Brush. I just learned how to do reels through them, and it's so easy, like, I don't know why I didn't do them earlier. So, you can do the regular square, 1080 by 1080 ads, but you can also do reels and stuff. too. So... 

And both of them are pretty easy to learn and they have instructions or you can always YouTube it. So yeah, don't be scared and I'm not a creative person. They also have community templates to help you. 

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Those templates are great. Yeah, for 

sure.

And now that you have all those graphics ready to go, there are lots of groups on Facebook and Instagram. You can also post 'em on Instagram on your own profile page.

But go ahead and spread 'em around. Make sure you cover all your different angles, especially with social media 'cause it is a free option. 

Make sure they can see the book and your name too. Especially if you're a new author, they might not know who you are, but then they see that cover in your name on there. Maybe they'll go look for the book.

And if you can, I try to, change the content. So, I might post one visual on Instagram and a different one on Facebook instead of just doing the same thing across. Because like, Jamey said in the past, a lot of our readers are on all platforms. So, if you do the same ad, try to mix it up a little bit. It could be different copy or a tiny bit different visual, but as long as it's different, it helps the algorithms too. 

Or in those Facebook groups, you wanna put a different one in those Facebook groups too, because a lot of those people are in the same groups, so they don't wanna see the same promo you know, in three groups. 

We talk about changing and up, we're not talking about significantly, like Kimberly said, it doesn't have to be a totally different ad and you can have different copy. So, keep in mind that what you put with that graphic, in the different groups, you can just talk about, what more is more applicable to that group. And that kinda helps a lot. Like there's, The Butch Femme Group. I can't remember the total name of it, but Tiffany Taylor runs it, and you can kind of pitch it if you have a Butch femme characters. You can talk specifically about these characters in that group. But one other thing is if you're brand new, play up on that. Don't be afraid to say, Hey, I'm a new author and I really want you to check out my book and here's what it's about. So that's actually not a bad pitch.

And I just wanna throw in one more thing that I learned the hard way is I thought, oh, I'll just, have an idea of the, posts that I wanna do and I'll do, you know, Monday morning I'll just do the Monday ones and then Tuesday I'll work on Tuesday. And I found that that was probably not the best idea to try to come up with the ideas, you know, make the Canva ad, or the Book Brush ad that day, that morning. Like try to make them ahead of time if you can. Because you will screw yourself. You think you can do it, but you don't.

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Being creative on the spot is never fun.

Yeah. That's something you're supposed to do a week or two before. Get those promos 

Yeah. As much as you can get done ahead of time, make sure that you do it takes away your stress too. 

And while you're doing that, you can, tiptoe into ads, right, Kimberly?

You can find a lot of low cost, places to do ads. I do mine on Amazon 'cause I like Amazon ads and other people do Facebook and there's many other places to do it, but you don't have to be afraid of them. You can actually learn how to do it, pretty simple. There's a lot of classes. Kindlepreneuer has one. Bryan Cohen has one. And there's many other ones that you can find on YouTube. But the one thing to remember is that you can decide your own budget. So like my ads that I run are 34 cent ads, and I have a limit. Like they can only go up to $5 budget per day. But you could even say, I only wanna do a $1 budget per day, or whatever you want. Just to start off. 

And also, Amazon has an auto ad, so you could just make an auto ad and one category ad if you don't know what you're doing, and then that is just something to start with. If it's a brand-new book, I'll do one ad the first day, another ad the second day, and Jamey will talk about how she does hers. But I pretty much try to keep ads going for the first month or so. I try to keep up, three to five ads a week. I do, and that really helps, especially if you're a new author, get your book out in front of people.

Yeah, and if you have trouble writing ad copy, you don't have to even do that. You can do an auto thing on that too, as far as the ad copy goes. Cause sometimes, man, I mean I always put ad copy in there, but sometimes it's hard, to be creative, like you said, on the spot. 

I am in the middle of a book launch right now, so this is very applicable to me. But I'm in the middle of a series. What I'm about to release is book two, and most of the places I've seen tell you, you need to run all the ads to book one because you want the people to read book one, and then they'll go on through the series. So, when I get ready to release this book on May the 29th, I'm just gonna set up one ad to this book two, and I'm gonna set up two or three new ads to the book one.

And hopefully that will work. But I just wanted our new authors to realize that you don't necessarily have to put ads on every book. Especially in a series, they, strongly recommend that you shoot the ads to the first book. 

And also, I know that both of you use Amazon ads, which as we've talked about before, I do not do. So… 

You did. You did for a little bit.

I did try it, for like two weeks and I was just like, there's nothing going on here. So... 

I went back to BookBub ads and I find those more effective. You can also set your limit, your daily limit. You can set how much you want per click, and I just find those more effective. So, you know, don't be afraid to dabble in the different areas. 

And Facebook ads. Those are a little more tricky. Those are a little harder from what I understand. I tried them years ago and had minutiae amount of success, but I've heard they're even more complicated, so I skipped those.

And I've also heard that sometimes it spends so much more than expected. So make sure you're watching out what you do. If you do a Facebook ad. Pay attention. 

 Well, all of 'em put limits on 'em because Amazon can do the same thing. 

One thing we haven't talked about, I know Jules is working on constructing an ARC team because that's something I do. Kimberly and KC don't, but we thought we would talk about that for just a second. You can go to these Facebook groups, uh, go on all the socials, not just Facebook and say, Hey, I'm a new author. This is my genre. This is kind of what the book's about. Are you interested? And people will help you out. They will. And so during, these newsletters that you're getting ready to send out, that's one of mine send to the ARC team and I give them enough time to hopefully come back with their typos and corrections and things like that. So that's just another thing to consider and another part of your checklist for launches.

And I just wanna say, I just realized, I forgot I had made a note Happy Birthday, Jules, when this comes out, it will be her birthday!

Oh 

Wow. Yeah, we could sing.

Or not. 

We could, we could, yeah. Happy birthday. This has turned into the Jules podcast, so hey.

All about Jules today, but that's okay because she's a,

she's a 

die-hard follower, 

I loyal. Yeah, a loyal listener. Say that three times.

Yeah. Oh, a little bit about the ARC team, though. I don't use an ARC team, but I know it is good for helping get reviews right outta the gate. So if you have an ARC team, kind of, that's the deal, right? Jamey you say, Hey, you can read my book for free if you're willing to give me an honest review afterwards. 

Right.

That's not what I do. I get reviews kind of using the pre-order. So we haven't talked about pre-orders much and we should, have an episode just on pre-orders. But, I use pre-orders that way because I've noticed that if you get a high number of pre-orders, that means those people are eager to read it. And if they read it right away, usually they'll leave a review or at least a rating. So, you don't have to use an ARC team to get reviews, but that is one strategy.

No, that's true. I've seen that too. 

Yeah. 

Yep. Well, but you send to a proofreader. See, I use my ARC team as a proofreader.

Yeah, that's true. Just a little strategy.

That's, you know, yeah. It's just a kind of a different way to get to the end, isn't it? going another route. 

Next week we're talking about dropping the measuring stick or don't compare yourself to others. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for listening, everybody. We'll talk to you next week.

Thanks. And just a reminder, since we were talking about book launches, mine comes out May 29th, so thank you. We love you and thank you for listening. Bye. 

Thanks for listening. If you'd like to reach out to us, you can contact us by email at contact@threelesbiansandapen.com with the number three spelled out or on Instagram, Facebook and X at Three Lesbians and a Pen using the number three. And finally on our website, at threelesbiansandapen.com, we look forward to hearing from you, see you next week.