Looking to host a truly successful virtual book launch?
Launching a book online offers incredible opportunities to connect with readers no matter where they are, generate excitement, and celebrate your achievement with a wider audience than a traditional in-person event might allow.
It’s a modern, powerful way to debut your book!
But planning and executing a successful virtual launch takes more than just scheduling a video call.
You need effective strategies to promote it, keep attendees engaged during the event, and make sure everything runs smoothly, which can feel a bit overwhelming if you’re not experienced with online events and digital marketing.
I understand that navigating the world of online promotion, engagement, and event hosting can seem daunting. That’s why I’ve put together this comprehensive guide.
Drawing on my professional experience as a digital marketer for a decade now, I’ve written this article to show you 9 effective ways to host a virtual book launch that stands out and achieves your goals.
The great news?
I break down the process into actionable strategies you can implement, so you can follow along and host a memorable virtual launch, even if you’re new to online events.
In This Article:
What Is a Virtual Book Launch?
A virtual book launch is a book release event that you can do on the internet. Instead of picking a physical venue to celebrate the release of your new book, you can do everything online.
Using a live stream or chat, you can talk to people about your book, answer questions from fans, invite guest writers, give out prizes, and much more.
As a result, you can save a lot of money while still promoting your new book to many people. That way, it’s a great option for beginners and veterans.
In fact, you can do a virtual launch for your new book if you can do these:
- Since you’re doing everything online, make sure you have a fast and dependable internet connection.
- Make a list of fellow writers, fans, and other people that you can invite to talk with you at your launch party.
- You also need a time and date that works for everyone that you’ve invited. Don’t forget to keep their time zones in mind.
- To create a great first impression, you can select some passages from your book that you can read to your audience.
- Plan everything out at least a month in advance so you have plenty of time to make adjustments if needed.
Once you’ve prepared these, you can start planning your virtual book launch event.
While virtual launches are much easier than physical ones, they can still be intimidating to get started.
The good news? We will help you make your new book a huge success with our tried-and-tested virtual book launch ideas.
Using these, you can immediately start preparing an amazing virtual launch for your book.
Best Virtual Book Launch Ideas
Let’s show you how our proven ideas can help make your virtual book launch a massive success.
1. Organize Viral Giveaways
Giveaways are a simple way to bring in tons of interested people to your virtual book launch.
By giving people a chance to win a reward, you can encourage them to sign up for your event. This way is effective because you’re giving something to your fans instead of just advertising your book.
Since you’re rewarding loyal fans and brand ambassadors, giveaways can also help you grow a dedicated community for your books. Plus, you can keep things cost-effective by giving out free books, gift cards, merchandise, and similar small prizes.
Want an easy way to organize a giveaway? You can try using RafflePress.
RafflePress can make it super easy to run viral giveaways for your online events and bring in tons of new people.
With its drag and drop builder, you can create an engaging giveaway page with a few simple clicks – no need to touch a single line of code.
After that, you can share that giveaway page on social media so people can join your book launch giveaway.
What’s more, RafflePress can automatically select the rules, start your giveaway, block fake entries, choose the winners, and end the giveaway by itself.
RafflePress can also give bonus entries to people who do actions like share your giveaways, join your email list, follow you on social media, and more.
All in all, it’s the best WordPress giveaway plugin in the market with its powerful features and user-friendly design.
To help you get started, we’ve also got this beginner-friendly guide on how to do online giveaways.
2. Create Engaging Graphics
Fun fact: Social media posts with images get 650% more engagement than text posts.
When you’re announcing your virtual book launch, adding a poster can help you get more attention.
That way, you can grab people’s attention and let them know when and where your virtual book launch is taking place.
You can also include your cover and relevant images from your book so fans can immediately recognize your work.
And with the help of free tools like Canva, you can create an eye-catching poster in no time.
After that, you can add the image on your social media posts, marketing emails, website landing page, and more and get more people for your virtual launch party.
Want to get started right away? Then check out this list of the best visual content creation tools you can use.
3. Use Facebook Live
As the biggest social media platform online, Facebook is an amazing place to host your virtual book launch.
Using the Facebook Live service, you can organize a livestream for your launch party and talk to your fans in real time. Plus, you can also talk with guests, answer questions, read parts of your book, and more.
Plus, you can use a Facebook event to remind everyone when it’s time for your book launch.
If you want to host your virtual book launch on Facebook successfully, there’s a fantastic tool to help you out: Facebook Feed Pro.
With the help of this plugin, you can easily embed Facebook posts, photos, videos, Facebook albums, events, and more on your WordPress site.
That means you can directly show your Facebook livestream on your website and turn your website traffic into viewers.
As the best Facebook feed plugin, Facebook Feed Pro makes it super easy to create, customize, and embed eye-catching feeds for your site.
You get a drag and drop editor where you can set your layout, color scheme, header design, post style, and much more. Then you can use the live preview to check your changes in real time.
Once you’ve designed your Facebook feed, you can embed it on your site in just a few clicks – no need to worry about complex codes.
What’s more, you can even embed Facebook reviews and testimonials on your website.
That way, you can show your visitors that real people on Facebook are enjoying your work and convince them to buy your book.
On top of that, you can also use this plugin to embed your group or page and grow your Facebook community.
As you can see, Facebook Feed Pro is an all-in-one tool that can help you launch your book successfully, grow a community of dedicated readers, and get more sales.
If you want to get the most out of Facebook marketing, give Facebook Feed Pro a try today.
Here’s a detailed guide on how you can embed Facebook live streams on your website.
4. Start a Twitter Chat
You can also use Twitter chats to talk with your fans and get them involved in your virtual book launch.
Twitter chats are simply conversations on Twitter where you can start discussions about a specific topic.
The best part? It’s super easy to organize a Twitter chat – even if you’re new to social media marketing.
All you have to do is make a list of topics to discuss and select a specific hashtag to identity your Twitter chat.
Then, you can let people know when your Twitter chat is taking place and ask them to use the hashtag to join in.
When it’s time for your Twitter chat, you can add that hashtag to your tweets and talk about your newest book.
You can ask questions, give out interesting information, interact with fans, highlight the best parts of your story, and more that way.
Plus, there’s a simple way to boost your Twitter followers and bring in tons of people to your Twitter chat: Twitter Feed Pro.
With the Twitter Feed Pro plugin, you can show Twitter content on your site using social media feeds.
As a result, you can embed your tweets and get tons of new interactions and followers from the people visiting your website.
What’s more, you can embed tweets that have the hashtag you picked for your Twitter chat. So, tons of people can join the chat and help make your virtual book launch a massive success.
You can also use the plugin to embed book reviews from fans who enjoy your work. That can act as social proof and convince more people to check out your books.
Since the plugin is so user-friendly, you can add Twitter feeds to your website in just a few minutes.
Get Twitter Feed Pro today, and you can boost your Twitter presence and promote your new books with ease.
5. Organize a Twitch Stream
If you want a place to host an event and talk to people in real-time, then Twitch is a fantastic option.
Since this platform is specifically for livestreaming, you can find many people interested in checking out live events here.
To get your virtual book launch started, you can let people know that you’re streaming on Twitch and ask them to join in.
Twitch can also let you build a community of fans. People can support you buy purchasing a premium subscription to get exclusive content, custom emojis, badges, ad-free viewing, and more.
When you organize your virtual book launch, you can even ask viewers to subscribe to your channel for extra content.
And with the help of RafflePress, it’s easy to kickstart your Twitch event and get tons of followers and subscribers. You can use it to start a viral giveaway and ask people to follow you on Twitch to participate.
Then, people will be much more likely to join your Twitch community since you’re giving out something in return.
Take a look at this simple tutorial on how to do Twitch giveaways and you can start promoting your book launch event easily.
6. Go Live on Instagram
As one of the biggest social media platforms for visual content, you can also use Instagram for your book launch.
All you have to do is hop on Instagram Live, and your followers will get a notification that your live book launch event has started.
After that, people can use the Instagram app to join your livestream as you promote your new book.
You can also invite up to 3 guests on Instagram Live directly from the app. That way, you can have interesting discussions to keep your fans engaged.
On top of helping your virtual book launch, you can also use Instagram Live for Q&A sessions, interviews, casual chats with fans, and more.
Want to have tons of people joining your Instagram livestreams? You can just give Instagram Feed Pro a try.
Using this plugin, you can display Instagram photos and videos on your website to engage your visitors.
And if you embed your own Instagram posts, you can easily get more likes, comments, and followers.
Plus, Instagram Feed Pro comes with a simple guided flow that helps you create, customize, and embed Instagram feeds with ease.
With its live feed editor, you can make a beautiful Instagram feed for your site in no time – no need to hire a designer or bother with coding.
You can then show Instagram photos, IGTV videos, stories, and more on your website to promote your books.
As a bonus, you can even set up shoppable Instagram feeds using this plugin.
That way, you can give your fans an amazing shopping experience and get more sales.
Grab your copy of Instagram Feed Pro here, and you can get tons of followers, boost your conversions, and easily promote your books.
7. Use Email Marketing
Did you know that for every $1 you put into email marketing, you get $36 in return?
As you can see, email marketing is one of the best ways to reach tons of people and get them to engage with your brand.
To promote your virtual book launch using email marketing, you can email your fans and let them know about your event at least a month before.
You can email them again on the week of your launch party as a reminder. Finally, you can send another email with a link on the day of the event and have people join in.
To get started with email marketing, the first thing you need is an email list of interested people.
And the easiest way to grow your email list is by using OptinMonster.
OptinMonster can help you show popups on your website and collect your visitors’ email addresses.
Since people on your site are already interested in your content, you can easily get them to join your email list that way.
On top of that, OptinMonster comes with a smart targeting feature. It can track your visitors and show them the popup at the perfect time.
As the best lead generation tool in the market, OptinMonster can help you grow your email list, boost social media following, get more sales, and much more.
Want to learn more? Then you can check out our guide on how to run a successful email marketing campaign.
8. Use YouTube Livestreams
YouTube is the biggest platform for videos on the internet and a popular choice for virtual book launches.
By picking YouTube, your viewers can check out your book launch on a place they already use to watch videos.
On top of livestreams for your event, you can also make shorter “trailers” to promote your new book and build hype.
The best part? It can be super easy to grow your YouTube following and host a successful virtual book launch party.
All you have to do is use the YouTube Feed Pro plugin.
You can use YouTube Feed Pro to embed video content on your website with ease. As a result, you can keep your visitors engaged with relevant YouTube videos.
By embedding your own YouTube channel, you can even use your site traffic to get tons of new viewers and subscribers.
On top of growing your YouTube channel, you can use YouTube Feed Pro to directly embed your virtual book launch livestream. Anyone visiting your site can see that you’re launching a new book and joining the event.
YouTube Feed Pro also makes everything simple so you can embed YouTube feeds in a few simple clicks.
Plus, you get ton of options when it comes to YouTube feeds. That means you can embed YouTube channels, playlists, search results, reviews, and more.
Get YouTube Feed Pro today and make your virtual launch party a massive success.
9. Cross-promote to Other Social Media Platforms
To make the most of social media marketing, you can promote your virtual book launch on all the major platforms.
If you just stick to 1 or 2 platforms to share news about your event, so many of your fans might miss out on your launch entirely.
Instead, you can make book marketing posts on different social media platforms and reach tons of people at once.
For example, if you’re using YouTube to host your virtual book launch, you can share a link to your livestream on Twitter and get more people to join in.
As a result, you can get more viewers for your virtual book launch event.
If you don’t have lots of social media followers on different platforms yet, Smash Balloon has you covered.
Using the Social Wall Pro plugin, you can combine social media posts from YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram in a single feed.
As a result, you can display a social wall with content from all the major social media platforms.
Your fans can then follow you on different social media platforms with ease.
At the same time, you can show a variety of content on your website and make it more engaging.
The best part is that Smash Balloon comes with a team of WordPress experts who’re always ready to lend you a hand if you need any help.
You can just check out the user reviews to see how happy people are with Smash Balloon plugins.
All you have to do is get the All Access Bundle, and you can get Social Wall Pro along with the best social media feed plugins for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
You can then embed social media feeds and build a massive following on different platforms with ease.
And that’s it!
This was our list of the best virtual book launch ideas that you can try for your newest book. As you can see, a virtual book launch can be super easy with these proven ideas.
You can now bring many people to your book launch party, keep them engaged, and get tons of sales with ease.
Ready to run successful book promotions? Get Smash Balloon’s All Access Bundle and start today!
While you’re here, don’t forget to take a look at our guide on how to make money on Twitter.
