A Fiction Release Playbook: Building Lists, Reviews, And Momentum

Many authors publish their books only to find them languishing on Amazon without a single sale. Juliet Dillon Clark shares her exact, proven Fiction Release Playbook to help you build list momentum and secure early reviews. You’ll learn how she leveraged targeted Facebook ads, book funnels, and advanced reader groups to launch her latest mystery novel successfully. She reveals why traditional marketing often fails and how a dedicated launch budget makes all the difference. Stop wasting money on platforms that don’t convert and start building a reciprocal reader community that drives actual sales.

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A Fiction Release Playbook: Building Lists, Reviews, And Momentum

Finding Your Perfect Reader Niche

Welcome to the show. I am going to talk about myself, but it is going to help you. Hopefully, I can give you some insight into what we are doing. It is the release date for Bad Lie (Lindsay and Boyd). Bad Lie is a golf techno thriller. It is a little bit different, still part of the Lindsay and Boyd series. We used to do a lot of different things because the audience shifted a little from my normal audience. Now, what do I mean by that?

Most of the time, I have a lot of female readers, a lot, I mean, I do have male readers, but they tend to be just regular murder mysteries. This one was a little bit of a different angle, and I am bringing in golfers because I found that there really are not any good golf mysteries out there. Any of you who follow this podcast know I love golf. I play every minute I can. I had to appeal to a slightly different audience. Luckily, since this is the fourth fiction release, I have got a little bit more experience under my belt as to what works and what does not work.

Building Email Lists With Book Funnels

First thing we did, obviously, was change up the brand guide a little bit and really evaluate. I used the Perfect Reader Playbook to really get in there and figure out who my audience is for this one, and how to get to golfers. That was really the crux of it because, as I said, I was going for a little bit different audience. I could easily write this as a book because of my experience with golf, but also because Jeff Rogers, Lindsay Carter’s husband, in the book is a sports agent. Naturally, we would have some sports things come in here and there.

The first thing we did was define that reader. Of course, we wanted to capture our regular readers that we have been doing all along. We have been doing that in a couple of different ways. I use book funnels a lot, and then we run Facebook ads. I have consistently built my list over the last four months. I have also used book funnels to do promo swaps, which have been extremely helpful.

I have gotten quite a few good, built my list pretty well from those swaps as well. Now, let us talk about those swaps and how they can help you. If you’re a nonfiction author, it’s probably not going to be a huge help unless you want to do it and bring in the people that are on your list through the ads. When it comes to the swaps, there are a lot of mysteries, a lot of children’s, a lot of different genres over there that you can partake in. Now, here is the caveat.

You need to have something to leverage to share. It is not just a one-way street where you go to an author, and you say, “I would like to swap this.” You have to have a readership as well. You have to have a list, at least a little bit of a list. The one thing I will say is that many of the authors over there are very forgiving. They do not really look at it and go, “Not you.” I had one author do it. For the most part, the rest of them have swapped with me. Of course, I offer my newsletter. I have an exclusive place in my breakthrough author newsletter now that I offer to them as a swap for positioning.

I have done quite a bit that way. I also used book funnels for the monthly promos. You can put your book in the monthly promos now. Here is the caveat. You have to be willing to get out there and promote those other books as well. Again, I put them in a position in my newsletter so that people can go and see what else is new on the market. Again, I am a beginner. They have been very forgiving, but they do keep score on that side of it. You cannot just be a slouch and go in and use.

Creating Your Own Advanced Reader Group

You have to be a very reciprocal player in that sense. For me, it is not about the buys, it is about the list built right now, because I have been building the list with these other books, just for Bad Lie, and then the other four books that are scheduled to come out after that. It is not like we have just been all of a sudden doing things, and things are. This has been coming out. The other thing that we did for those launch goals, this time I did a little bit differently, is that I created my own advanced reader group.

I reached out to men mainly because that is the part of my audience that I thought would enjoy Bad Lie the most, since it is golf-related. If you’re not a golfer, Bad Lie has a double entendre there because a Bad Lie in golf means you’re in the weeds or in the rough. For me, it is in the weeds and the rough or the lake, which obviously is not a lie. It is a penalty. That is where I spend a lot of my time.

What I did with it is I created my own advanced reader group. I went over to a Facebook group with golfers, and I asked, “I have ten spots for advanced readers. If you’re someone who is interested in golf, interested in the mystery that has a best-time art and another tournament right after that, then this might be your book. You might really enjoy it.” I took those people and got feedback. That was my initial group. I wanted feedback on the group.

“Do men like it?” Also, those are my advanced readers. I asked them, as advanced readers, along with the group of friends that I had read it with, “I will give you this book in advance.” I actually gave them copies of the book, hard copies. “In exchange, I would like you to buy my Kindle on day one, cheap, $4.99. I would like you to leave a review since you’ve already read the book.”

Budgeting For Facebook Ads And Promos

That is how I got where I am getting my first reviews on the book. We had that. I also put it in the Fussy Librarian. The Fussy Librarian you have to work up to. They do not just take every single book. I had to go get a number of five-star reviews for another book. That was the first book that I put in there. I put in Dark Granny after I went through that review process. I got that one in. I believe they look at the quality of the book. It was easy to get my other books in after that.

The Fussy Librarian is really priced well, too. I did not feel like I spent a lot of money. Fortunately, with the book funnels, I am just going to say fortunately. You need to have a good budget if you’re going to do this anyway. I think that is probably one of the big things I see is that people do not plan on the budget, the platform-building budget or the promo budget for this. When I went and built the funnels, the book funnels, I think it is $29 a month. It is not a heavy lift. It might even be a little bit less than that.

Where the money was spent was on the Facebook ads. I spent about $400 to get 250 leads. Not bad at all. I actually used a video for the Facebook ads and had it down to about nine cents a click, I think. I got a lot of impressions, but of course, the only people who took it were the really hardcore people who wanted a free book. It really got a lot of exposure. I must say, I was really happy with it.

Leveraging NetGalley And Amazon Presales

That was the list built for Bad Lie. That is how that came out. The other thing that I did was the cover route. I almost forgot. Also NetGalley. If you’re not familiar with NetGalley, it is well worth your time to do it. This is where you can get advanced reader copies. It goes out, and it goes out to librarians, booksellers, and different people who can review the book in advance for you as well. I thought that was particularly good as well because I wanted it to break through and get some early coverage for everything that was going on.

That was the bulk of what I did. Believe me, through the three books before, I have been doing a lot of trial and error. The biggest thing that I learned is that a free book is the way to go to fill your list. Fill your list. I actually did an episode a couple of episodes ago about if it is your first book, write a novella and give it away. Maybe a prequel to the characters you have now. Now I was lucky. I had full books that I was willing to give away in expectation of these new books that are coming out, but not everybody has that.

I will tell you that I am getting tons of people on my calendar, and it is not so much for publishing these days because people are not buying and using hybrid publishers as much as they used to. They’re self-publishing. If you’re going to do that, those people who are on my calendar did it without building a platform and without promo. Their books are just languishing there. I am going to tell you a little secret, and I do not mean to say it as a snob.

Every single person who has gotten on my calendar for that, when they send me a copy of the book, or I look for it, the preview on Amazon, I can tell within about five seconds that they self-published. All I have to do is open it to the copyright page, and I know that they are self-published. I want everybody to be aware of that because I am in a lot of groups on Facebook for self-publishing. I do not ever post, I do not ever promote. I do get a kick out of the problems there because they’re asking questions that just indicate they have no idea what they’re doing. That is going to show in your work.

Preparing Launch Assets In Advance

People try to help them, but let us just say there are a lot of bad books or poorly formatted books out there right now. Let us see what else I did. I had my cover reveal materials early. My cover actually was done at the same time that the books were published, or not published, but written because I needed the back cover copy. I needed some other things to sign up for the promo.

A lot of the things that I am doing, you need to book in advance because things like the Fussy Librarian, let us see, what else did I do? There is another one that I have to go take a look at, which I did for advanced reader reviews. They’re 2 or 3 months out. Do not wait until the last minute. I actually booked it, booked for a Bad Lie as soon as the book was finished, knowing that I still had publishing, I still had presale, I still had these things.

With NetGalley, it is a good idea to have that book on presale, at least on Kindle on Amazon, so that you can book your NetGalley because you want a good three months in presale to optimize your results on there. Let us see what else. Website and landing pages. I have had my website up for quite a while before we even built the website for all of the books. We put a brand guide together. These are the colors that the site is going to be. These are what all the covers are going to look like. They’re connected.

The book funnel pages, the emails, all of that, social graphics, blurbs, taglines, we had it all done 3 to 4 months in advance. That is so we could build that advanced reader and get all those people in there for this book, as well as for those other books. Recruiting advanced readers, I want to caution people on how to do that. Get readers that are, I would say, not your sister, not your mother, not your friends. Really objective people who read the book, because I tend to find that when you go to people you know, they’re a little bit uncomfortable about telling you the truth about your book.

As much as you want to hear how wonderful it is, and I know a lot of people do because I see these book club scabs that are really like, “Tell me how wonderful my book is.” “Yes, I’ll hire you to do things.” You really do need to hear good, bad, where things stand in progress, and how people are really liking it. You do really need that. Also, the list warms up. I mentioned we have been giving the Fortune Teller’s Daughter away for a while, away for free. We’ve been running some other things for list builds.

Now, the list build is super important because those are the people that you’re going to announce your new books to. If they like your free giveaway and they have purchased your other books, then chances are they will want to see your book and your next book in the series as well. It really is important to do all of this in advance. I know people want to get their book out there quickly, but you would be amazed by the Facebook group I talked to about a minute ago, how many people I see in there that say, do not understand why my books are not selling. I do not understand. People told me, I see this especially with children’s books.

There are a lot of people out there right now saying, “You can make a living. You can work from home. You can do this or that.” Selling books is hard. I mentioned in a previous episode that I was listening to a podcast, and Buck Sexton was on there talking about how hard it is to sell books. If you do not know who he is, I think he took over the Rush Limbaugh show. The point is, whether he is conservative or not, I am not going to discuss politics here.

What I am saying is he has millions of followers, and he is still saying book-selling is hard. Imagine if you build your list with ten people, it is going to be even harder. The next thing we did was to have the number of times on launch emails. We sent out Dark Granny. I did not have a really good list at that time, but I still got an okay number of buys. I had 160 in the first month, and it is building. The Fortune Teller’s Daughter, we gave away for free. Farmhouse Forgotten came out at the end of June, and I was able to get even more people to buy that. I did not do as much promotion, but what I did was work with companies that had reviews. Now, I am going to caution you here on this part. Because I am in the industry, I want honest reviews. I know where to go to get those. They are a pay-to-play, but they’re not a pay-to-play to get a bunch of really good stuff.

You have to go with people who are verified purchases, meaning they’re going to buy the book. Number two, you want honest reviews. I will tell you on Dark Granny, I got a four-star. I was not unhappy about it because, again, I want to hear what people are saying about the book honestly. I do not want people blowing smoke up my butt. That I did with Dark Granny, with The Fortune Teller’s Daughter, and Farmhouse Forgotten. I have not decided if I am going to do it with a Bad Lie.

I have enough momentum now that I can probably get it from that arc team I built. When I first started out, I did not have an arc team. That is something that you really need to look at. Budget-wise, you need a good budget to do this. I even found at times, because I was promoting three books and getting another release at the same time, that sometimes I was a little stressed about the budget.

You need to try what works. This is why we do this in advance. See what works for you, see what does not, and then roll it into your next books. That novella that I was talking about, there is no reason you cannot put it on Amazon. There is no reason it cannot go on book funnels. There is no reason you cannot develop a tester budget for that novella in advance to see what works and then go big with what works and let go of what does not work.

I’ve had a few things. I tried Amazon ads, but they did not work at all. I did not like it. I did the best job targeting, and it still did not work. Now, the good part about that was that I learned it did not work. I did not waste any more money, but I talked to other authors about it, and they said the same thing, getting no traction on Amazon whatsoever. Look at those promos, definitely sign up if your book is eligible for those Kindle promos, and get your A-plus content done.

That is really important too. It just lets people tell us a little story about the book. That is essential as well. If you were published by a hybrid or by Ingram, you’re not going to be able to do it. What I did was I put the Kindle straight into Amazon. At this point, I have goals that are other than Ingram. I was very comfortable doing that. I do that for my own authors in the publishing company as well, so that they have access to change their own pricing.

A lot of my nonfiction authors will go to events, and they’ll reduce the price of the book. I have a couple who cater to high school students, economics books, study guides, things like that. They will actually Zoom the price down themselves before the event to sell more because, of course, that audience does not have a lot of money, but the books are great for them. When we talk about it, they say, “I’ll price it for the parents.” Your teenager is not going to read a book that your parents give them.

If your teenagers were anything like mine, not going to happen. Let them hear that inspirational speaker and go buy it themselves for $2.99 or $3.99. The other thing that I did too is the series integration and the backlist. Everything I’m doing with the launch, I’m also letting people know that I am seeing this for the first time, that I have a backlist. They can see, “I liked this. I can go back to the Farmhouse Forgotten.”

That was probably the one thing that I learned in 2010, which was that when my big book came out, which sold over 25,000 copies, I did a lot of that on a free Kindle promo. I got tremendous traction on it. When the five-day promo ended, it zoomed with people buying it because back then, they had combined lists, and I ended up between Sue Grafton and Janet Evanovich.

They no longer have those combined lists, which is unfortunate, but I got a lot of traction, and that translated into sales and reviews at a later date. What I did notice was when that happened, people went back, and they bought my other two books that had been published before that. Really keep in mind this whole time that if you have a backlist, you need to be promoting that constantly as well.

That’s basically what I’m in the process of doing now. I’ve gotten my reviews for the first three books. I am going to tell you the review sweet spot from my understanding is that you have at least 30 verified reviews. Make sure that you work hard to get those. I am going to tell you a little secret about why it is important. It is actually harder to get the reviews than it is to get people to buy the book, because if you’re just on Amazon and you do not have a funnel, you do not know who bought the book.

That is one of the beautiful things about some of the new platforms coming out. The Praxis AI that we talked about, it was a couple of episodes ago. You can actually buy the book over there and not only make more money, but you know who bought the book, which is ideal. When we go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble or anything through Ingram or Amazon, you never know who bought the book.

The top three things that worked best for me were book funnels and Facebook ads, followed by the Fussy Librarian, which is putting that out at a discount. The other one, the name of it, is just right out of my head. Those were the top two things. How is that? What underperformed? Amazon ads underperformed. They underperformed big time. We did some really targeted work. I used AI, and it really did.

Also, the other thing that worked really well was The Perfect Reader Playbook and understanding my layering. What does that mean? Now, of course, I wrote The Perfect Reader Playbook, but if you have not bought it, you should because it talks about the layering that you do in your marketing. For most of us, nobody knows who you are. When you put a book out, you look like you’re begging people on social media. You do not want to do that. If you layer that marketing, that does not happen.

Biggest surprise. My biggest surprise about what worked well was the list. Combining and getting that list going was much more effective than social media. There are tons of books on social media right now, and it is a great way to get people into your funnel. I did not feel it was as effective as the Facebook ads, but building that list was much, much more effective than just posting about your books. I hope that is really helpful. Here is what I would absolutely repeat as well.

Building Credibility Through Book Awards

The other thing that I did was I put my books into book awards. Why did I do that? Number one, because I am very proud of the work I’ve done. Number two, unlike everybody else out there, I have a little bit of imposter syndrome going on. I worried about it, but I put them in, and I let them go. I have a fantastic vendor for book awards, actually two of them. I entered two of them in Indiegold.

I do not know what is going to happen. Actually, this is coming out after the date, so maybe I can do an update. The other ones I will be putting in the Bookfest Awards. Now, what does that do? Credibility. There are a lot of things over on Amazon you can cheat, but you cannot cheat with that sticker on the front of the book. Since Amazon has all-new criteria about how they rank books and what’s going on, that bestseller campaign does not work so well anymore because they do not give it the weight they used to.

It has not always worked well within the fiction genre because there are so many books in that genre. It has always worked well for nonfiction. Definitely have all of that in place. For those of you who want to know more about this, I have a couple of calls to action where you can go and actually look at what’s going on. The Perfect Reader Playbook, I give that away for free. You can go to PerfectReaderPlaybook.com and grab your free copy of it, download it, and read it.

That is how confident I am about that. I’ve used it with nonfiction authors for years, and it works. It is a lot of work. All of this is a lot of work. You really have to put the work in. Nonfiction authors, go over and check out my website, JulietDillonClark.com. Check out the free download there on how to position it. That is it. I hope you guys will go buy Bad Lie. If you’re a golfer, I think you’re going to love it. If you want a tech thriller, I think you will love it because there is some weird tech that I made up that could happen. Thanks for stopping by, and we’ll see you guys next week.

Important Links

• Bad Lie (Lindsay and Boyd)
• Dark Granny
• The Fortune Teller’s Daughter
• Farmhouse Forgotten
• The Perfect Reader Playbook
• Perfect Reader Playbook.com
• Juliet Dillon Clark

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