How do you decide when to release your book?

My favorite answer to give: it depends.

I can tell you what works for me. I am what I would call an “external pressure-driven” author. Setting my own dates in my head doesn't work for me because then the only person I’m letting down is myself if I don’t release the book on time. I don’t mind letting myself down. I really mind letting down other people. So I put up pre-orders and I make sure to announce the preorder everywhere I can, which makes me beholden to other people. Seeing their excitement keeps me on track.

There is an extra benefit as a wide author that pre-orders can be really, really helpful algorithm wise on the retailers, but I do it mostly because I know I might not finish my books otherwise.

But how do I choose when to set the preorder?

I know how many words in a day I can write. I use that to predict how long it will take me to write a book.

I found this amazing website that I'm absolutely in love with, called pacemaker.press. It will tell me exactly what word count I need to write every day to hit my goal. So, I'll put in the date I want to have it finished by, put in my word count, put in any extenuating circumstances (like weekends off) and then see how many words I would have to write per day to make that goal. Then, if I need to, I shift the goal.

At that point I can tell my editor when I’ll be able to get it to her and then I pick a release date about a month out from that.

I’ve also been doing this long enough to know that I need four books a year in my main series (I have two of them, so two books per year in each series). I need to have those releases spread evenly over the year, because I’m a full time author and my family relies on my income. Spreading out the releases helps me in the algorithms and keeping my income steadier.

But that’s all just me.

For some people, preorders don’t work at all. The pressure of the preorder makes it impossible to write. Others find it best to wait until the book is off to the editor and then put it up for preorder. Some wait until they finish multiple books in a series and then they rapid release the books.

I think the biggest consideration has to be: how do you work best? What are your goals when you release?

Now if you have the books all set up and you’re just trying to figure out what day of the week you’re going to release one – again, it depends.

Tuesdays have been a big release day in the past because that gave authors the best chance of hitting the USA Today Bestseller’s list… however, that was only for wide authors and there are some Tuesdays that you pretty much never want to release one (I cannot recommend ever releasing a book on election day, even if it’s not a contentious election).

Some people prefer to release right before a weekend, figuring that it will give people time to read over the weekend. Others like the beginning of the week. I do think the most popular days are still Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. But only you know your audience best. One of the great things about being an indie author is that you can experiment and change it. If you’re traditionally published, then of course you don’t get to choose.

There really is no right or wrong way to do this though, so however works best for you, go forth and release!