There are many things that authors can do when they have submitted their books for publication, depending on where the process has reached. There are many things authors can do to make their books more successful before the books become available for sale.
Gather reviews
When you have finished and edited your book, start gathering people who agree to review your book. Send them a review copy and give them adequate time to read the book. When the book is finally published, these people can post their reviews about your book on Goodreads, Amazon, and other websites. You can also send people copies of your book when it is published in order to review it.
What you need for the book sales page
The first thing to do is to choose categories in which your book will appear on the online bookseller’s website. For Amazon, you should select two categories. It is a good idea to choose one popular and broad category and another less competitive one. When you choose such categories, your book will get a lot of exposure because of the popular category and it will also rank up quickly on the bestseller list for the category that is not very competitive. You should also write a book description before its launch to make the publishing process quicker.
Preparing marketing materials
A lot of marketing is needed when you publish a book. You should prepare as much of this material as possible before the book is published. You should prepare material for online marketing and wait for the book to be published, then put links to the book sales page on the marketing material and start using it.
Plan your marketing calendar
You should make the marketing calendar for a book long before it is released. This calendar is unlikely to stay the same way so preparing it in advance will enable you to make changes to it so that it will be perfect when the book is launched. You can make a calendar for any duration but 1-2 months is a great start. It is very important to plan for book marketing ahead of time. Such a plan increases the chance for success when you finally launch the book.
Consider a virtual book tour
People used to organize tours around the country, helped by their publishers, but a new type of tour was developed by authors. A virtual book tour is a blog tour where you are invited by people who have popular blogs in your niche. One of the ways you participate is to write guest posts. You can add a link to your book or website with permission from the owner of the blog. A virtual book tour increases your exposure to potential readers who follow the blogs that you visit. Book tours are not as easy to organize as they seem because it is hard to find blog hosts that will allow you to post on their blogs.
Keep writing
When you have just finished a book and are waiting for it to be published, you should start your next book as soon as possible. Some of the greatest authors have been known to publish multiple books. They couldn’t have done this if they stopped writing while waiting for their other books to get published.
