The twelve-week runway

Ask an author when they started marketing and the honest answer is usually "about a week before." The common guidance is closer to ten or twelve weeks, and the gap between those two numbers explains a lot of disappointing launches.

The reason is not that marketing takes twelve weeks of labour. It is that the things which matter on launch day — reviews, a list to email, a reason for anyone to care — all take weeks to accumulate and cannot be bought in a hurry.

Weeks twelve to nine: build the container

Everything in this phase exists to catch attention you have not earned yet. A page where readers can land. A way to collect an email address. A single free thing worth trading an address for — a first chapter, a companion guide, a short story in the same world.

Finish your metadata now, while there is no pressure and no ego attached to the outcome.

Weeks eight to five: put the book in hands

Advance copies go out in this window, not the week before. Reviewers need time to read, and reviews posted in the first days after release are the ones that make later readers comfortable buying.

Approach reviewers and book bloggers who cover your specific corner. A pitch to someone who reads your genre is a favour. A pitch to someone who does not is spam, and they can tell the difference instantly.

This is also when you ask book clubs. Clubs book out in advance and their members are heavy readers actively hunting for the next thing — which is exactly why we run this one the way we do.

Weeks four to one: warm the room

Email your list. Not once, at the end — several times, with something worth opening each time. The list is the only audience you own outright. A platform can change its algorithm overnight and take your reach with it. Nobody can change your inbox access except the reader.

Line up whatever conversations you can: a podcast, a guest post, a panel, a club session. Each one is small. Together they are the reason launch week has anything in it.

Launch week: harvest, don't scramble

If the previous eleven weeks happened, launch week is mostly showing up and saying thank you. If they did not, launch week is an expensive scramble to manufacture interest in four days, which is the thing most authors are actually describing when they say marketing did not work for them.

And then week thirteen

The week after launch is where most books go quiet and most authors stop. Do not. The book has a backlist life that is longer than its launch by several orders of magnitude, and the reader who finds it in month nine spends the same money as the one who pre-ordered.