Book Launch Teams: Why I Don't Recommend Them for Self Publishing

An author friend and I were chatting via email about upcoming book projects for the New Year. She quizzed me about book launch teams and whether I had found them to be a valuable book marketing tactic.

Before I launched into a full blown rant, I told her I would collect my thoughts about them into a new post.

Let’s delve into why I now decline requests to join book launch teams and don't recommend them for self published authors.

A book launch team is a group of readers that an author or publisher recruits to read a new book manuscript prior to official publication. Then, as soon as the book is officially published, the team is encouraged to post a review on the book on Amazon or other sites that host book reviews and ratings. It is also hoped that the team will share both the book and their reviews on social media and blogs.

In theory this all makes some sense. But there are some significant flaws with the tactic.

The author should select connections for the launch team that have some familiarity with the book’s topic or genre, and have appropriate critical thinking skills to evaluate what they’re reading. Ideally, they should also have some influence with potential readers for the book.

What I’ve observed, though, is that self published authors recruit personal friends for these teams. Nothing wrong with that, except when the friends don’t fit the ideal reader profile. They’re just people who like the author, not necessarily the book or the topic, which ends up skewing the reviews. Reviews from these friends tend to be blatantly positive, sometimes so blatant that it’s obvious they were staged.

Book Launch Teams are Not Beta Readers

Just to clarify, while the people who might be candidates for your book launch team could also be candidates as beta readers, the two functions are completely different. Beta readers are used to give feedback on an unpublished manuscript. This feedback can help authors make necessary changes to their work prior to publication. Book launch teams are engaged after the book is completed. Their function is to help promote the book by offering an “I like it/don’t like it” type of review online or in the media.

Guilt Driven

One of the other things about book launch team invitations is that when I receive them, I feel bad about declining. In the past, I’d just go along so that the author wouldn’t feel that I wasn't being supportive. Now, I’d rather be honest, decline the invite, and buy and review the book later on and only if it truly is of interest to me.

Not only are these launch team member reviews overly positive, their timing is impeccable (*sarcasm*). They appear almost as soon as the book goes live on Amazon. This happens because the author will send an alert when the book is live so that team can hop on and review ASAP. The hope is that the team’s early reviews will signal to Amazon’s algorithm bots that this book is worthwhile of featuring higher in search results or elsewhere on the site. Unfortunately, all it signals to potential readers is that some people probably got the book early and for free.

Aside from the blatant staging of these reviews in an attempt to game the Amazon algorithm, these empty reviews will also not show as verified purchases since the reviewer didn’t buy the book. A verified purchase review can carry more weight with a potential buyer.

Plus, Amazon has a policy that says family members of the author's household or close friends are not allowed to submit "customer" reviews. They are allowed to participate in customer discussions, as well as submit editorial reviews that the author can post via Author Central. See Amazon and Author Central documentation for specifics on both customer discussions and editorial reviews.

I shouldn’t have to even say this, but don’t ever, EVER play the game of making your potential reviewers or book launch team buy the book and then pay them outside of Amazon in order to get that important verified purchase status. That’s not just game playing. That’s downright unethical and violates Amazon policy.

I’ve talked elsewhere about how many people could potentially buy your book. It’s usually not a huge fan base for self published authors. So if this precious small base of early readers is given the book to review, what would encourage them to actually buy the book when it’s officially available for sale? Nothing.

The author could easily blow through his immediate potential reader/buyer audience with a book launch team, thereby losing all those potential sales. When I participated on these teams in the past, I didn’t buy the official book after being on the team. Why should I? I already got it and read it.

But it gets worse. Because the book is just getting finalized for sale, authors give their book launch teams a PDF copy of the book or a portion of it. Mostly I’ve seen authors give the whole book. So not only will the author lose out on the sales from this cohort of friends, he could lose even more if team members share the manuscript with everyone on their email contact lists or on social media. Even more lost sales and profits.

Recruit Only Selected Reviewers

As opposed to recruiting a team of readers to review your book, carefully select a few key influencers for your market and reach out to them individually. You still have the risk of the book being shared by the reviewer without limitation. So only invite those that you genuinely trust.

Note, also, that I said they should be “influencers for your market.” It’s tempting for authors to reach out to people who they feel will give a positive review. An empty positive review is worth less than a less glowing one from a prominent and relevant influencer.

Offer at a Deep Discount After the Book Publishes

One of the tactics that I like better than a book launch team is offering the new book at a deep discount after it publishes. This can cost effectively be done with either a very limited time free eBook promotion or Kindle Countdown Deal if you use Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to publish your eBook and you enroll the title in KDP Select. If people are really interested in your book, they will wander over to take advantage of the offer and create verified purchase review possibilities.

Note that to take advantage of your introductory discounted offer, the reader has to do something. They have to go and log in to Amazon, have a Kindle reading device or app, and respond to the offer in a timely manner. This also helps prevent unlimited sharing of the whole book manuscript PDF.

Recently, a couple of author friends in an authors Facebook group used this tactic. Their books were of interest to me and I was glad to either respond quickly or pay the low $0.99 price to check out the books and support them with a review after reading.

Here’s the key to this working. The author has to do some promotion of the discounted offer. That’s where having an established author platform or fan base on social media, email marketing, etc. is so critical. If you have loyal fans that appreciate your work, they’ll be glad to get and share your latest work. Your true fans are your best book launch team.