How to Write a Book: The Second Marathon

In part one of How to Write a Book, we shared the idea that writing a book is like running two marathons: the first is writing the book, and the second is marketing the book so that it reaches audiences who might find it helpful or interesting. The second marathon is often referred to as building an author platform or promoting the book. 

How to Market A Book

A few weeks ago, we finished the first marathon and sent our manuscript to the printer. We immediately had to decide how many books to print in the first run. This felt like a really consequential decision for us and we did not have a solid basis for choosing a number – 2000, 5000, 10,000? We did not want to have stacks of unsold books that would gather dust in a California warehouse. Nor did we want to print too few books and not be able to fulfill orders if sales exceeded our expectations.

We gathered as much intel as possible from our editor, the sales team and our own research and assumptions and put our best guess on paper. That decision positioned us on the starting line of our second marathon, introducing Wonder Year to the world and activating channels to sell our book.  

Whoa, where to begin? Should we start slow with a jog or hit it hard from the beginning? According to book marketing wiz, Naren Aryal, “to be a writer today is to be a marketer.” Looks like marathon #2 would be just as important as marathon #1. He argues that authors should start building their platform yesterday. Oops. 

We’d have to establish Wonder Year as a brand and the three of us as authors. We’d have to associate Wonder Year with long-term family travel and worldschooling. And then, connect with people who are curious about family travel to the book. 5-4-3-2-1: let’s go! 

Miles 1-3:

Establish a Website. For many authors, the website is the foundation of their platform, and this was certainly the case for us. We launched a fairly basic website in March 2022 and built out many more features over the following year. Our site had a book landing page, pre-order buttons, a blog, contact page, newsletter sign-up form, photos, and branded artwork. We wanted to be sure the

website did more than promote the book. It was important that it was also a valuable resource for current and prospective traveling families.

Miles 4-10:

Consistent Quality Content. With the website launched, the next order of business was to load it with helpful information about relevant topics. We are writing about topics like making the decision to travel, funding long-term family adventure, closing up home life, working on the road, and what it feels like to be a long-term traveling family in motion. We brainstormed topics of interest, like destination inspirations, a discussion on how to choose destinations and created a schedule to publish blogs, with a goal of posting at least one per week.  

Miles 10-14:

Social Media Platforms. The matter of social media was definitely a hard nut for us to crack. Each of us maintained a blog during our respective travels, but none of us was particularly active on social media anymore. We did not have thousands of followers. We had some moments of doubt and insecurity about putting ourselves out there so publicly, seemingly self-promoting, which felt antithetical to our purpose with Wonder Year. Yet, we knew it was imperative and we understood how effective it is to share information and build community through social platforms. 

We pushed on and picked up our pace a bit. We found joy in sharing tips, tricks and wisdom, knowing that our content was designed to inform others rather than spotlight ourselves. We diversified our posts with videos, photos, motivation Mondays, Tips Tuesdays, Where in the World Wednesdays. Later, we learned how to effectively present information in a variety of formats on different platforms.Now, we have started to see steady, organic growth across several months of concerted effort. 

Miles 14-18:

Strategic Partnerships. Wonderwell, our publisher, provided us with a framework to organize our partner outreach campaign. We brainstormed a long list of organizations, nonprofits, and influencers. We looked for those who share an interest in one or more of the Wonder Year themes–travel, education, family, inclusivity, global community, outdoor adventure and sustainability–and began reaching out. The process of building partnerships is a bit improvisational, more art than science. Our goal and hope is to find shared purpose with a set of public, private, nonprofit, and individual partners and appeal to their customers, stakeholders and members together.

Miles 18-22:

Media and Publications. Many authors, including us, use a public relations professional to assist with outreach to traditional media. Publicists know the ropes and how to pitch a story. However, because we are family travel and worldschooling experts, we expanded the media/publications list by identifying specialty outlets in these sectors. We are thinking broadly about local and national outlets including magazines, podcasts, radio shows, news sources and other print or digital media sources that connect with the Wonder Year journey. 

Miles 22-26:

Pre-launch. The six weeks before book launch are going to be dizzying. Testing our endurance, we’ll have to dig deep and keep running toward our goal of bringing a book to the world that will inspire and help families to get on the road together. We’ll be calling on partners, followers, and our personal connections to help spread the word about Wonder Year. We’ll ask folks to follow, like, repost, refer a friend, tag, pre-order and otherwise put good Wonder Year juju out there.

On September 5, 2023 Wonder Year: A Guide to Long-Term Family Travel and Worldschooling will hit the shelves. We appreciate your cheering from the sidelines and your encouragement along the way. We just have one more question for you: Have you ordered your copy? If not, you can right here!