It's A Truth Universally Acknowledged...
...that a creative writer in possession of an unfinished book must be in need of a baseball cap.
Everyone has a little custom that makes them unique. Mine is every time I publish a book, I reward myself with a new baseball cap.
Which gave me an idea...
Why not have merch? But to have merch one needs a brand, and to have a brand, one needs a product or service.
Enter Laurie Wright.
We met last autumn through a mutual client. Laurie’s also an author, her Mindful Mantra series for children are international bestsellers. But Laurie has something I don’t have. Marketing strategy experience, in particular book marketing strategy experience.
We talked about many things, being indie authors, writing, trying to fit creating around the demands of life, and then…it happened. The idea.
What if we pooled our collective knowledge and experience and offered an interactive tool packed with resources for writers to DIY their writing, publishing, marketing, launching, and list growing for themselves? What if we gave them that and a timeline, and turned it into a checklist?
We realized pretty fast we had to create an in-depth product, and that meant work for both of us. A lot of work. But we dug in, took it step by step, and over the months our idea took shape, and developed into something amazing.
Something we are both really proud of.
And something we wish we’d had when we were tackling the steep learning curve of writing and publishing our own books - not to mention all the money it would have saved us from making the mistakes we made.
And then we discovered something else - we had created a resource writers want. How do we know? We launched it inside Write Publish Profit 6.0, a writing and self-publishing bundle alongside 40 other resources for one week. We knew that against so many other stellar resources (there’s a masterclass with an absolute literary titan, Dave Farland, mentor of Brandon Sanderson and Stephenie Meyer) we might be lucky to get a handful of redemptions.
We were wrong.
As I write, we are on day 5 of 7 and are closing in on 60 redemptions of The Complete Indie Author’s Guide to Writing, Self-Publishing, & Book Launches. The redemptions started within hours of the bundle going live, and haven’t stopped. We have writers all over the world redeeming it, from Israel to New Zealand to Slovakia to USA.
Which means we must be doing something right. But we are indie authors ourselves, and we are passionate about helping others succeed. We are also pretty good at learning from our mistakes, and improving our systems.
When I published my debut novel The Lost Valor of Love in 2017, I spent almost $7,000 USD to bring it to life. The last book I published, I, Cassandra cost me $197 for a graphic artist’s services. The publication of The Lost Letters into print a year and half later cost me nothing.
And now I share how other writers can do the same, while Laurie sorts out the messiness of getting your ducks in a row so you can have both a successful book launch and grow your reading list via your website. We think we are a kind of dream team, plus this is the funnest thing we’ve ever done, so everything is pretty awesome right now.
But LitLaunch is more than just one resource, it’s a white-glove service that does it all. The Indie Author’s Guide came after. We decided we wanted to serve all writers, both those who wanted an exclusive first-class service over 12 months and those who wanted to do it all on their own. And I am so glad we did. Because we’re already reaping that feel-good factor of hearing back from writers how much they love our guide.
But let’s get back to the baseball caps. I couldn’t resist. LitLaunch had become an actual thing, a name, a brand. I had to see how it would look on a cap - and it is glorious. The organic cotton caps come in 5 colors and will be available to buy soon once I figure out a few more technical details (ok international tax), but trust me, I’m all over it. There shall be caps, and mugs, and tote bags, and t-shirts, hoodies, and more. Watch this space. I intend to have a lot of fun with the product descriptions like the one below…
Exciting times are coming. I have a lot more writing resources I will be adding to the Shop soon and of course, there will be merch.
And for those who decide to take the white-glove service, there’s an elegant collection of LitLaunch merch included as a welcome gift.
We treat our clients the way we want to be treated ourselves.
But the truth is, we made this because we didn’t have anything like this when we were struggling to not only get our book written but published and out there in the hands of readers.
It doesn’t have to be hard. It can be fun, and exciting.
When you LitLaunch.
