Launch Your Book Like a Pro.
Author Impact
You’ve spent months (or years) creating the perfect book. Now it’s time for the fun part.
Our Author Impact pros will help you build and execute the marketing plan your book deserves, so you can share your message, make an impact, and build credibility as a professional author.
What’s Included in the Author Impact Service?
After running 500+ book launches (including scores of NYT and WSJ bestsellers), we’ve developed a proven process to ensure your book doesn’t end up collecting dust on a shelf.
Media Coverage
- A detailed review of your book to create a Key Ideas Doc and Custom Media Kit.
- Pre-launch media pitching to open doors and create early momentum
- Outreach to our 3k+ media relationships to secure opportunities for your book
- Research and outreach leveraging The Footprint Technique, a process designed to find the highest value outlets for you to gain exposure
- Your own Personal CRM in Airtable to track the status of all of our media conversations
Amazon Bestseller Promotion
- Amazon category research and selection to maximize the chances of bestseller status
- Management of $0.99 price promotion to spur early sales and reviews
- Custom email copy to use to drive sales within your network
- Email service provider setup and management to efficiently email your contacts
- Social media visual graphics and copy to use to promote the book during launch week
- Exclusive access to the Scribe podcast masterclass & deliverables in a podcast starter kit
- Promotion of the book to our Scribe Insider’s List, who receive free books and provide Amazon reviews for their favorites
Network Playbook
- A complete customized strategy to leverage your network to drive sales, reviews, and larger forms of support
- A bespoke one-by-one gameplan for how to best leverage each of your relationships
- Customized email scripts to use for outreach to drive results
- Coordination of galley giveaways (advanced reader copies) to your highest-value relationships
Content Publication
- Fifteen articles excerpted and edited from your book manuscript
- Weekly articles published on your LinkedIn profile and promoted to engage your network
- Articles submitted to major media outlets to be featured as op-eds
- Quote images and other visual graphics published on your LinkedIn to engage your network
Paid Promotions
- Complete research and setup of Amazon ads
- Consistent audits and optimization of Amazon ads to ensure positive ROI
- Goodreads account setup and Goodreads Giveaway promotion
- Submission and coordination with BookBub and other paid promotion newsletters for discounted books
Long Term Roadmap
- Complete analysis of your Author Impact results to determine long-term plan
- The ability to work with us for ongoing support with this plan, or for us to provide guidance to your team on execution
- Full handover of all assets (including successful pitches and media conversations) so your team can continue to achieve results
- Handover of Amazon ads so you can continue to generate a positive ROI
Who Should Use Scribe Author Impact?
WHO SHOULD
- Authors who are publishing a non-fiction book
- Authors who care about ensuring their message reaches as many people as possible
- Authors who are looking for a comprehensive strategy to reach readers
- Authors who want to collaborate with a team of professionals to ensure everything goes smoothly, and they are willing to pay for expertise
- Authors who are willing to do their part to ensure their book is a success
WHO SHOULD NOT
- Authors who are publishing a fiction book (or aren’t publishing a book at all!)
- Authors who wrote their book simply for the credibility of having written a book, not with the goal of actually sharing their message
- Authors who aren’t willing to spend the time on interviews and other aspects of the launch that require their time
- Authors who would rather do it themselves
Frequently Asked Questions
Talking about results can be tricky, because results mean different things to different people.
For example, in 2018, we did a book about marketing for lawyers. It was pretty niche, and only sold a few hundred copies during the book launch. But because the author ran a large legal marketing company and did a lot with the attention we generated, he attributes over $2mm directly to the Book Launch Process.
On the other hand, for some authors, reach and book sales are more important. Typically, we see at least 1 media hit per week over time working together. We also aim our book sales targets at ensuring authors are on track to sell 1,000 copies in their first year, which usually means selling 500+ over the course of our time working together.
No! A lot of authors obsess over pre-sales, and most of them do it only because they see other authors do it. The only people who this makes sense for are those who are trying to hit the NYT Bestseller list, or are trying to impress their publisher so they are taken more seriously.
If you are most concerned with the long term success of the book, it’s much better to focus that attention after launch.
As an example, when was the last time you pre-ordered a book? Probably not recently, if ever, right?
Instead of making an “ask” before launch, losing people, and converting poorly, we’d rather use that time to get people excited and save the ask until after launch when potential readers are more likely to pull the trigger.
We don’t focus on hitting major bestseller lists, as they have become an overpriced game. We find it more effective to focus on marketing that will sell books and increase influence, rather than just trying to get the credential of a bestseller list without real impact.
For more information on how to hit a major bestseller list, you can read this article (written by our 4x NYT bestseller co-founder, Tucker Max).
Categories are an important part of hitting Amazon bestseller. Basically, if you are selling more books than anyone else in your category over a 1-2 day period, you’ll become the #1 book in the category.
To ensure this happens, we wait until the week before launch (when we have a good sense of the competition) and we research all the relevant categories around your topic. We want to make sure they are prominent categories, but you aren’t going head to head with Malcolm Gladwell or anyone who will be impossible to beat.
Once we find the right categories, we add you to them in advance of launch week to maximize your chance of hitting bestseller status during launch week.
You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to do! But consider this…
The long-term success of a book comes from word of mouth, from readers talking about it. So our goal early on in book marketing is to get as many people as possible to read the book, so they can talk about it later.
The $0.99 promotion is powerful because all the people who would regularly be on the fence, or maybe add the book to their “read later” list, decide to take the plunge right away. That gets you more readers early on, and maximizes your chances of bestseller status.
We recommend doing it for all authors, unless book sale revenue is a big factor for them AND they have a big audience that they want to earn that revenue from. Otherwise, the $0.99 discount is a no-brainer to support the book’s long-term success.
This varies by author, because a lot of the advice we give leaves a lot of room to do as much or as little as needed. Most of what we will ask from you has to do with focusing on your relationships and galvanizing them to take action to promote the book. Some authors don’t do this at all, and some dedicate all their time to it leading up to launch.
As estimates for a normal author, you can expect to spend about:
- 60-90 minutes per week leading up to launch
- 60-90 minutes per day during launch week
- 30-60 minutes per week after launch
Like anything that we don’t have complete control over, we can’t make guarantees around media. However, based on the hundreds of authors we’ve worked with in the past, we are confidently able to secure at least twelve media placements over the course of the book launch (often more).
These twelve media hits tend to be a mix of larger Tier 1 outlets (like Inc, Entrepreneur, and Forbes), prestigious book reviewers (like Kirkus or Publishers’ Weekly), book summary sites (like Blinkist and Summary.com), industry publications (like HR.com), as well as a mix of podcasts that speak directly to your target audience.
We do NOT run any bestseller campaigns for major lists.
Getting on a media bestseller list (like the Wall Street Journal or New York Times) is a major endeavor, and from our experience, it usually doesn’t align with the real success of your book.
Each of these lists has their own rules (which we’ve outlined here), but the basic idea is the same: they measure total sales over the course of one week, and they have rules that people use to try to game them.
When authors try to hit the lists, they end up optimizing for these rules—racking up presales to distribute through indie bookstores, for example, or providing bonuses to their audience to bribe them into buying the book.
In our experience, rather than focusing attention on playing games to meet the criteria of a bestseller list, the best thing an author can do is focus on reaching people who genuinely want to read the book. This is a long term activity and not something to try to squeeze into a one-week period.
For more information on how bestseller lists work and why to avoid them, you can read our more in-depth article on the topic.
Give your book the success it deserves.
Too many authors write incredible books, only to fail at getting them in the hands of readers.
If you are serious about your book making an impact, schedule a consult call where we can discuss your goals, lay out a plan for success, and determine if we’re the right fit to help.

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We've worked with over 2,000 authors in 8 years.