How the pros launch books (and how, umm, I don’t)
Writing The SPEED Book was easy; but promoting it ...
David Pogue is one of the best tech writers alive, and he just launched a 600-page book about Apple’s first fifty years. If you want to see what a proper book launch looks like - the interviews, the Amazon rank-refreshing, the sell-out event at the Computer History Museum - go read his newsletter post about it.
It’s a fun read. He’s a good guy.
I am not David Pogue!
I’ve published six books now, and my approach to launching them has been, to put it generously, relaxed.
When Rolling Rocks Downhill came out over ten years ago, I pushed publish and more or less wandered off. The book did rather well despite me - possibly because I’d been sharing chunks of it on my blog for years, and possibly because the Agile world was kind to it. Either way, I didn’t exactly hustle.
A couple of months later, Ali, my friend and boss - who appears, cunningly disguised, as Alfonso in two of my other books - asked if I was going to have a little celebration. I said no. He said he thought we should. So we went for dinner, a dozen or so of us, and it was warm and genuinely lovely. Not commercial at all. Just: you finished a thing, let’s mark it. (Truthfully: it was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.)
Then a while later, visiting my wife’s family in Ireland, we were sitting down to a huge roast lunch when my brother-in-law said, “By the way, congraulations to Clarke - he’s just finished writing a book.” I had completely forgotten to mention it. They did a little toast.
Those two moments are the ones I still remember. Both accidental. Neither engineered.
There was one proper launch event, when I moved back to New Zealand.
About a hundred people came to an Agile Wellington evening, and I gave everyone a free copy of The Bottleneck Rules. T
hen I sat at the front and signed all eighty-odd of them, one by one, while the queue snaked around the room. I’d planned it that way deliberately - a live bottleneck demonstration, right there in the room. I was the bottleneck, everyone could see it, and there was absolutely nothing to be done about it except wait.
I loved every minute of it tbh. Giving things away and talking about ideas in a room full of people - that part I’m genuinely good at.
Promotion in the David Pogue sense? Not so much. I admire him enormously. We’re wired differently.
(checks notes … where were we?)
Anyway. The SPEED Book is out.
If you’d like a copy, you can get the Kindle, paperback, or hardback here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQHKN5XZ
Or just hit reply and I’ll send you the PDF version.
If you do read it and like it and felt like doing me a favour - a review on Amazon would really help. People don’t leave as many reviews as they used to 10 years ago and they matter more than most people realise. Especially to the author.
Hope you are doing well. I enjoyed writing this. I’ve just decided I’m going to copy David Pogue’s email strategy and post on the same topics he does. Yesterday he wrote about the cover. Next up, I’m going to write about my cover (and why I had to rewrite the book after I saw it 🤦.)
Clarke
