How to Create a Book Publishing Schedule That Capitalizes on Sales
Bella Rose Emmorey
book editor, rogue behaviorist, digital marketer, writer, brand builder, plant aunt, and cheese enthusiast.
$ $ We’re not going to waste a ton of time explaining why you’ll benefit from creating (and sticking to) a book publishing schedule. If you’re taking becoming an author seriously, it’s just common sense.
But what’s not common sense is how to make that schedule so it benefits your goals for the type of author you are.
Authors are all different types of people with different goals, writing different genres. That requires more than a one-size-fits-all approach. In the same way, every publishing schedule will be different, as will its purpose.
Depending on your goals, a publishing schedule can help you:
- Stay accountable to your draft and publishing goals
- Plan out potential earnings far out in the future
- Capitalize on strategic releases
- Create a proven system for multiple books you can rely on and improve
- Establish trust with your readership (let’s not get into GRRM or Patrick Rothfuss)
- Build bigger and stronger launches
We’ll get into details about how each of these works in the creation process below.
First thing to note is that there are a couple of different processes depending on what you write. So we’ll be digging into two different methods for creating a publishing schedule.
Book Publishing Schedule Method 1: Standalone Books
Those who write standalones, especially mystery, spy thrillers, or other books with the same main character but different storylines, will want to cater their schedules to the calendar in order to capitalize on current events.
The idea is this:
You write a Valentine's Day murder-mystery that releases on February 1st.
You write a Christmas spy thriller and launch it December 1st.
You write a romance novel that takes place over Halloween and release it on October 1st.
You see the pattern. What you’re doing here as a standalone author is creating your publishing schedule, so when you release a new book, it will align with the surge of topical consumption at that time.
As we know, Amazon will increase visibility of books with certain keywords and categories during these times, which can help your book’s launch do even better. When your initial launch is strong, it can impact the $ ongoing book sales$ .
So how do you do this? Whether you $ write romance$ standalones, cozy mystery, or another genre, you have the ability to do this.
Here’s how:
1. Choose which consistent events you want to use
Again, popular holidays are ones celebrated widely in your country. For the U.S., that’s primarily Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Valentine’s Day,
Alternative "events" you can also use can be niche and important to your audience, like spring break and summer break appealing to college-goers.
This example is from author $ Joanne Fluke,$ who writes cozy mystery novels: a Christmas themed novel released in October to get people in the spirit.
Another example is Hannah Lee Kidder’s Starlight, a spooky standalone short story collection published on October 11th for those wanting to capitalize on the Halloween vibe.
2. Create the timeline
You have to know how long this book will take to ideate, outline, write, and produce.
Some full-timers will make a looser schedule and decide to write and produce a book every three months. If they finish it early, great!
The timeline is the most important because here, you’ll dictate how long each phase will take.
1. Book Production
Full-time authors usually have an editor and cover artist they use consistently. This allows them to send their book publishing schedule ahead of time and have them block off their schedule for their books.
The best reason for this is so you’re not held back by not being able to get an editor or cover designer in time. Most editors will have a waitlist at least a month or longer, so if you think you can reach out and have them $ edit the book$ right then and there, you’re wrong.
Lock these steps in by reaching out and confirming they have certain dates available.
Time this usually takes for one book: 1 month
2. Book Ideation
Here’s where many wannabe authors get it wrong. They think every single book they write has to be their life’s work. Obviously, you want to be proud of what you write, but you can absolutely write-to-market by choosing the setting of your story intentionally.
If you want to publish a book to capitalize on Valentine’s Day, the timeframe will be then. The setting can be anywhere this holiday is celebrated, and the plot can be whatever you want it to. It doesn’t have to be about Valentine’s Day, so long as it takes place during that time.
Ideating is mostly about getting down any thoughts and ideas you have, notes about characters, different tropes you want to use that are popular in your genre. For example, popular romance tropes like enemies-to-lovers or forbidden love can be used as the basis of the plot.
Put all of this ideation in a place you can use to write your outline. ($ NovelPad Notes$ , perhaps.)
Time this usually takes for one book: 1 week
3. Book Outlining
You should know by now to use a structure for your story. You’ll want the inciting incident, a couple big plot points leading to an all-hope-is-lost moment, then a couple more plot points prior to the climax and resolution.
Start with those main points and fill in the details to craft an outline you’re happy with. The better your outline is, the faster you’ll be able to write.
Time this usually takes for one book: 1-3 weeks
4. Book Writing
To finish on time, you don’t need much—discipline and a place to track progress.
Tracking progress in a fun and visual way can actually help your discipline because it’s fun to see that progress bar move. If you use $ NovelPad’s writing software$ , this is really easy to do.
In the examples above, you can navigate to the "goals" and fill out the information to align with when you want to$ finish your draft$ . Remember: The draft should be done far enough in advance to allow for self-editing, critique partners or beta readers, and cover design.
Time this usually takes for one book: 3-6 months depending on length and dedicated time
Note: Many experienced full-time self-published authors can write a rough draft of an 80,000 word novel in about a month, but if you have another job, this will take longer.
Full Book Creation Time: 6 months with consistent work
3. Build a rough schedule
Knowing you have about 6 months, it’s time to get granular.
If you use $ NovelPad$ , the schedule will build itself when it’s time to start writing. But you do still have to schedule ideation and outlining time, as well as book production.
The actual schedule will be up to you. When will it work best to fit writing time in? What hours are you most creative and have free to dedicate to your book?
The one rule we do have: Document the schedule somewhere that can notify you.
Google Calendar is a great way to do this so you can link it up to your phone (a device we know you use regularly) and allow alerts. First, draft your schedule somewhere and confirm it’ll work for you. Then grab your phone and download the Google Calendar app.
Next, open the calendar and create a new event.
Title it with what you’ll be working on, choose the times, and you can even color code it for which type of work it is, like the example below.
This schedule will help you see at a glance what your week or month will look like. It also ensures you can’t schedule other things on top of it.
It’s a perfect excuse to use, "let me check my calendar!" when being invited somewhere. Often, the hardest thing about making time for your book is telling people in your life "no". Prioritizing yourself and your work can be hard! Practice makes perfect.
Book Publishing Schedule Method 2: Book Series
The strategy for publishing a book series (specifically for fiction self-published authors) is a bit different. There’s a method called rapid release in which an author publishes Book 1 of the series one month, Book 2 the next, and Book 3 on the third month.
This differs widely from the traditional publishing industry, where it can take a year or two (or longer…*cough cough* GRRM *cough*) between book releases. The purpose of a rapid release is to capitalize on the reader’s momentum.
Thanks to the near-constant stimuli of the digital world, our current culture’s attention span is short. You can even see this reflected in the pacing differences in books published two decades ago to the ones now, where before, it could take seven chapters to get into the inciting incident and now, it sometimes happens in the first. You need to hook a reader faster.
You can lose a reader even faster.
What the rapid release does is get a single reader to read the next book asap, then the one after that. They don’t have to wait too long, because when given that time, they’ll wander off to another book or another author.
This momentum will also give it a higher visibility on Amazon, and because you have a full series, the right readers are more likely to consume it and do so quickly—which, if your book is listed in Kindle Unlimited, will give you maximum page reads. This itself will then boost your book in the algorithm, since page reads are an important metric.
So how do you do this? Do you have to wait three years before publishing your series?
Let’s get into how to create this type of publishing schedule.
1. Pick a publishing date
We have to work backward. Because you’re not likely to align a series with current events or holidays, this can really be any time. We recommend skipping publishing on major holidays like Christmas, since the launch can get lost in the increase of Amazon purchasing during that time.
The date doesn’t have to be anything specific, but do try to take the mood of your series into account. Publishing a dark urban fantasy in the fall will do well, just like publishing an upbeat summer romance will do well launching in June.
This date will dictate how we work backward to create the schedule. You can always adjust it if you realize it’ll take you longer to write the books, but start with a longer timeline than you think you need.
One year for a trilogy is a great starting point for most first-time authors.
2. Ideate your series
The difference with writing a series for rapid release is how you write the books.
Many authors will plan and write book one, then plan and write the second, etc. In this case, we’re going to plan the entire series, then outline the entire series, and then write it all as if it’s one long book.
The reason for this is simple: it streamlines the process and keeps everything cohesive so you can write faster.
This is also done before creating your schedule because you don’t yet know how many books there will be, which will alter how you write them (and even your publishing date).
Now, onto how to ideate your series:
- Brainstorm the overall plot points—nothing too specific, just the main plots of each book
- Determine the main character’s details (VERY important, the character makes the series): outer journey, internal journey and arc, flaws, subplot, want, etc.
- Develop important side characters for the whole series
- Plot the series using a strong story structure (also noting that with Kindle Unlimited, books can get away with—and even perform better—bigger cliffhangers when the next book is, or will soon be, available to read)
- Review your plot yourself
- Review your plots with a critique partner for plot holes, inconsistencies, or opportunities for strengthening
3. Build your timeline
Once you have most of the ideas down, you should have the number of books you want to turn this series into. Trilogies are very popular because they’re enough books for a reader to be excited about a series, but not too many that it intimidates.
From here, start drafting your publishing schedule.
1. Book Production
This is very similar to the way to do it for standalone novels, except that you will have three different books to work with. Reach out to an editor or cover designer and confirm three separate works you want them to produce for.
The best way to do this is to send off each book as they finish.
And by "finish" we mean: you’ve self-edited it, it’s been beta read, and you’ve revised it.
Time this usually takes for one book: 1 month
Note: This can be done while writing the next book, so you don’t need to add a month for just this part.
2. Book Outlining
You’ll outline all your books at once. This is the best method for writing faster and better, because if you know what happens in book three, you can plant seeds and foreshadow more effectively.
Obviously, if you can get it done quicker and spend more time on it, that’s great! Just remember to leave room for running it past your critique partners so they can point out issues early on. A good method for outlining a series is to start with the overall plot for all of the books, then the core plots for each book, and then fill in the rest of your outline with subplots and details, starting with book one.
Time this usually takes for one book: 1-3 weeks, plan at least a month for a whole series
3. Book Writing
The best thing to do is have a strong outline next to you as you write, block out all possible distractions, and focus on using on your schedule time to do nothing but write. Remember: don’t edit as you write.
See any of the tips in the above section to make this easier. After you finish writing book one, make sure you take time to self-edit and send it off to your editor before starting book two.
If your editor prefers, you can also write all the books at once, self-edit them at once, and send them all to your editor to work on at a single time.
Again, use a progress tracking app or a writing app that has one built in like $ NovelPad$ to stay on track.
Time this usually takes for one book: 3-6 months depending on length and dedicated time
4. Create your publishing schedule
Once you have a timeline of what you need done and when, you can get granular to schedule when you’ll do which task and for how long.
We can’t really tell you what to put in your schedule, just that if you want to make progress and stick to your goals, you’ll have to make room for this new activity in your life. Don’t think you can just add this publishing schedule to your current schedule without any changes.
It might mean only watching one episode on Netflix at night so you can make other time for writing. It might mean waking up an hour earlier so you can sneak in outlining before work. It might also mean choosing to eat lunch separately from your work friends so you can use that time to self-edit.
Our best advice: Focus on doing it frequently enough to make it a habit in a way that best suits how you work. For example, some people do really well with daily consistency and should spend an hour a day working on their drafts. Others will do better with longer hours only a couple days a week, like spending four hours on a Saturday morning.
If you want to make a lot of progress quickly, do both.
All in all, give yourself the time, but structure that time so you can actually get these books done. And if you’re just starting out, remember that working a different job and fitting in writing time can be hard, but not impossible. Expand the timeline if you need to, knowing you will learn, improve, and shorten the time between publications.
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