When Does Your Book Come Out?

When Does Your Book Come Out?

From the desk of elite ghostwriter, Tony Horne

As I write this on 1 August, this is the calm before the storm. Once that calendar turns into September, you know exactly what is coming.

Thanksgiving. Black Friday. Christmas.

If you manage to secure a publishing deal – or we do it for you – the likelihood is that your book’s release will be determined by your paymaster, and never lose sight of the fact that as much as they love you and want you to do well, you are slotting into a corporate strategy, planned months in advance, and crucially, that your book is not the only one that they are working at the time!

Even though it has taken over your world.

If you self-publish of course, the corporate strategy is all yours and you can, in theory, upload your book tonight.

But when should you be aiming to have your book reach the market?

I have only two rules on this, and I have yet to see any reason to deviate.

The first thing I say to any client is this:

‘Does your book coincide with a key date? Is it the 20th anniversary of this? or the 50th of that?’ When the hard work starts, looking for airtime and column inches, this can leapfrog you in the publicity queue. Obvious examples are 9/11 but over two decades later, that still remains a crowded marketplace.

A crowded marketplace might not get you the coverage you crave but it is still often worth being there. With the power of ‘Amazon Pairings’ in the biggest bookstore in the world, you will receive emails saying ‘People who bought this also bought that’ or ‘Since you bought this, you might also like this’.  They do the work for you.

If you are in the same genre, you have a chance – and remember, the book market is the most anti-competitive market in the world! Everyone wants you to read theirs, but that doesn’t mean that one purchase is the end of people’s spending. We often buy in genre, so multiple purchases on the same subject are actually very common.

So, if you make an anniversary – or find one of your own if it is not part of a landmark date, then it is a good place to be.

If this moment passes you buy, then there is only one place to go.

Christmas.

And a book is still a beautiful thing of lasting value in a world where much of what we do is disposable.

I treat each of my clients as individuals, but one thing I say to all of them is this:

‘People will buy any old shit at Christmas…and your book ain’t shit’.

We’ve all been there. Kids go to bed, pour a drink, and start browsing on those dark November and December nights. Suddenly, your virtual basket is full of purchases you really might not justify at any other time of year.

I call this the Midnight Shopping Mall.

I can’t stress to you how differently the customer sees the world a week before Christmas to a week after, and as we all know, Christmas gets earlier every year. The best argument I can make for a January release is if you are in the fitness, nutrition, detox market, tapping into that ‘New Year, new me’ mindset, but even then, you are banking on the human race to not get sucked back into the rat race by halfway through the month!

So, for me, these are the rules – celebrate an anniversary or get into the festive spirit, and don’t forget your Black Friday promo codes. When your book comes out, it is vital to reach as many people as possible, and worry about the royalties later. Momentum is key.

Mindful of the fact that people might read this at any time in the future, it is August 2025 when I pen these words.

That is important. If you are right at the start of the journey, remember nothing focusses the mind like a deadline and yours is Christmas 2026. To make that goldrush, you have to be ready by this time next year, spending next August fine-tuning that last 5% of quality checks and revisiting that marketing strategy.

To make a soft launch in the fall with the aim to begin peaking around Black Friday, you are going to have those words written – arguably by late June 2026. If you do nothing this Thanksgiving Week and write off the time between 15 December and the first week in January and then take four weeks holiday in the year, you’ve probably got about 40 weeks from now to be ready and if you are new to this, you will need every single one of them. Trust me, that goes in a flash.

The clock is already ticking…

I will see you in the Midnight Shopping Mall…sometime around November next year!

 We all have incredible events in our lives, and timing is everything. Make your mark and write your story. Now's the time. Speak with our team about your book vision.