Tutorial · 5 min read
The Author's Launch Automation, Built Three Weeks Early
Why an author's account needs a different approach at all — the spike shape, the dated templates that quietly become lies — is argued in full here. Take that as read. This is the schedule.
It is written backwards from publication day, because that is the only fixed date in the process and everything else has to fit around it.
Three weeks out: build it on a book nobody is talking about
Pick a backlist post. An old cover reveal, a reading-order carousel, a photo from a festival two years ago. Something that gets a handful of comments a day.
- Choose the trigger word before anything else. It has to be short, typeable on a phone, unambiguous, and — the part people get wrong — a word that does not appear in ordinary comments about your book.
CHAPTERis a bad trigger for a novelist; half your comment section says it already. Something likeSAMPLEorORDERfires only when somebody meant it. - Set the trigger to that one backlist post. Under Advanced, restrict to specific posts. You are testing, not launching.
- Write the negative keywords.
not interested, plus anything that means a complaint rather than a request —damaged,wrong copy,refund,not delivered. Those are for a human and often for your publisher, never for a template. - Public reply: four or five words. "Sent it to your DMs." It is a receipt, not the answer.
- Private reply: undated. This is the discipline the whole post exists for. Write "the link in my bio has the current details" rather than "pre-orders close on the 30th". The first ages; the second becomes wrong on a scheduled day while the post keeps circulating.
- Capture to Leads, on. People who ask for a sample chapter three weeks before publication are the people who buy on day one.
Then Test on myself, which runs the entire pipeline and delivers to your own account, and read what arrives for register rather than accuracy.
Two weeks out: go live quietly and read what gets stopped
Turn it on for the backlist post. Then, two or three days later, open Activity and switch to Blocked.
Expect a stack of window-closed rows — comments older than seven days cannot be replied to, and a backlist post has plenty. Expect duplicates from Instagram redelivering the same comment. Neither is a fault. What you are looking for is an unhealthy connection, or takeovers, which mean you are answering by hand faster than the automation and it should be narrower.
One week out: the launch copy, and the cap
Now build the real one, as a separate automation on the launch posts, and change three things from the test version.
- Set a rate budget before launch, not during. An announcement that travels is exactly the scenario where an uncapped automation sends hundreds of near-identical DMs in an hour, which is how a legitimate account starts looking like a spam account to Meta.
- Set quiet hours in your readers' timezone. If your books sell in three countries, pick the one that buys most and accept that the others get a morning reply.
- Decide on first-time senders only. Under Advanced. If you post daily during launch week, turn it on — otherwise the same devoted follower gets greeted under every post.
Launch week: do almost nothing
The point of the previous three weeks is that this week you are not configuring anything. You are on trains and in bookshops.
One job, once a day: open Activity, glance at Blocked, confirm the connection is healthy. That is it. Resist editing templates on launch day — a change made on a phone between events is the change that goes out to the largest audience with the least review.
Every dated promise in a template becomes a lie on a scheduled date. Nothing in the tool knows that date. Your calendar does.
The week after: the teardown
Six lines, and it takes ten minutes:
Switch off the launch automation. Delete or rewrite any template mentioning a date, a bonus, or a pre-order. Check the bio link still points somewhere true. Export the Leads CSV — there is no CRM sync, so if you want that list for the next book it has to leave now. Turn the backlist automation back on if you paused it. And keep one thing running permanently: the reading-order reply, which series authors get asked forever and which never changes.
What it will not do
It cannot announce your book to your followers; nothing on the official API can message people who have not messaged you first. It cannot verify a receipt or read a screenshot of one, so a proof-of-purchase bonus needs a human or your publisher's system. No scheduling, no publishing, no WhatsApp.
Templated replies are free and unlimited, so the quiet months between books cost nothing. Credits move only when the AI writes something new. Free tier is 100 credits with no card; packs start at ₹499.
If the comment-to-DM mechanic itself is new to you, start with how that flow works, then come back to this schedule.
