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Welcome to LAUNCH PAD
Celebrating new book releases and the authors that created them
Award-Winning Radio Show and Marketing Experience:
Best in the Arts, Best in Fiction, Best in Publishing, Best Host
Join Grace Sammon and Mary Helen Sheriff on LAUNCH PAD, the radio show and marketing experience that celebrates new book releases and the authors that create them.
Be Grace’s guest as part of a fast-paced thirty-minute interview that goes live on Facebook at Bookish Road Trip an over 5,000-member reading and writing community. Then, through a collaboration with Authors on The Air Global Radio Network, the show airs in 153 countries.
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Sharpen your author marketing skills by working with Author Marketing Coach Mary Helen Sheriff in a series of “Monthly Marketing Meetups.”
Listen to episodes! Find your next favorite author, book club choice, and great bookish adventure.
The LAUNCH PAD Book Trilogy
After Grace was invited to be interviewed over 100 times after the release of The Eves and her friend and colleague Mary Helen Sheriff, the Author Marketing Coach launched her book marketing business, Grace realized that the world of successfully launching a novel was a decidedly different experience than her other three releases. Novelists and memoirists need help to be successful. Grace, always the creative collaborator and reinventor, decided to create LAUNCH PAD, the radio show to help authors promote their book releases. In tandem with Mary, LAUNCH PAD quickly took off and led to the creation of three anthologies involving over 40 authors, publishers, and influencers. LAUNCH PAD the Countdown to Writing Your Book, LAUNCH PAD the Countdown to Publishing Your Book, and LAUNCH PAD the Countdown to Marketing Your Book all released in the first half of 2023.
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Find out more and purchase at: www.LAUNCHPADCountdown.com
About the Show
LAUNCH PAD: the radio show and marketing experience that celebrates new book releases and the authors that create them.
LAUNCH PAD was recently awarded first prize for Best in the Arts, Best Host, Best in Fiction, and Best in Publishing by Speak Up Talk Radio. The LAUNCH PAD experience couples the award-winning radio show with marketing, networking, and skill-building training.
Authors, readers, bookstagrammers, book promoters, book clubs, publishing houses, and writing organizations are all raving about the success of LAUNCH PAD’s unique format in providing authors and readers alike with an opportunity to celebrate and share bookish news.
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The use of both Facebook and radio platforms provides guests with broad exposure and an interactive format. Guests can invite their followers to listen, comment, and ask questions. The show then airs on Authors on the Air Global Radio Network in both audio and video platforms in 153 countries. Authors on the Air has over 2 million social media friends, listeners, and readers.
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LAUNCH PAD is a collaboration between Grace Sammon, Author Marketing Coach Mary Helen Sheriff, Authors on the Air Global Radio Network, and Bookish Road Trip.
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The on-air format features up to four guest authors in a 30-minute episode. Each episode is audio and video.
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Grace guides her guests through questions about their new releases and each author’s journey to this moment. The authors also pose questions and interact with each other.
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Each guest receives graphic art appropriate for social media posting highlighting their appearance on the show. They also receive the appropriate links to repost to their platforms.
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Each episode is promoted prior to air dates across the platforms noted above.
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Each guest is expected to cross-promote each author, multiplying the “reach” for each author.
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Each guest is invited to participate in a season of monthly group marketing session via zoom with Author Marketing Coach Mary Helen Sheriff. Here, specific marketing topics and tools are shared, and participants’ network.
Mary's Monthly Marketing Meetups
Included in your LAUNCH PAD hosting fee is an invitation to join author marketing coach Mary Helen Sheriff for a season of hour-long marketing meetups.
Meetups are held via Zoom. Mary will begin each hour-long session with a mini-lesson on an aspect of marketing. Then she'll facilitate a discussion around guests' questions and ideas. Skills are honed and great networking takes place. Sessions will be recorded for interested LAUNCH PAD guests unable to attend. Season Three begins in August of 2023 and the schedule for the marketing sessions is still to be announced.
Together marketing is easier, better, and more fun! Let the marketing mayhem begin.​
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For more about Mary as an author and Author Marketing Coach: https://maryhelensheriff.com/
Become a Guest
We’d love to consider you to be a guest on LAUNCH PAD. Please review the following:
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You must have a completed book and a specific launch date. We are now accepting books with 2022 and 2023 launch dates. Launches of older books in new formats (audio, eBook, paperback) qualify too.
Each episode hosts three to four authors who agree to cross-promote the other authors, tag them in social media posts, and the like.
Each guest agrees to submit a $100 hosting fee, bio, headshot, blurb about their book, including genre, and a day-of-show phone number. Guests also review and agree to the LAUNCH PAD Consent Agreement. Read that here.
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We have found that the best episodes are those when author friends or colleagues sign up together. If approved as a guest, consider signing up for an episode with authors you know with whom you enjoy collaborating. Friends, members of the same press, genre or professional organization are all good choices.
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If all of that sounds like a match – please complete the Guest Request Form. Find the Guest Request Form here.
Testimonials
Grace, I wanted to thank you for last LAUNCH PAD session. I think your questions were interesting and insightful, and not the typical run of the mill questions. You made me feel comfortable, which always helps. I was also impressed with how easily and gracefully you moved from one author to the other.
–Noel Caraccio, Esq
This was the best author interview I've seen. Every moment was wisely used, and every question elicited meaningful responses. Thank you for presenting a program well-worth the time I spent listening.
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What a terrific job you did of finding common threads among our diversified panel. Thanks for all you're doing to help authors share their voices in the literary world.
-Marleen Pasch
Authors all know the truth: we never know what podcast appearance, what professional review, or what book group recommendation is going to turn the book sales tide. But when a promotional effort clicks, the results are quick and substantial. After an initial surge in sales, my most recent novel, Stars in Their Infancy began to level. But two weeks ago, after an appearance on Grace Sammon's fabulous Launch Pad podcast (and a simultaneous gold medal win in the 2022 Global Book Awards) sales are popping once again. Thanks Grace, thanks readers, thanks, fellow authors!
Grace is a wonderful moderator—one of the best I’ve experienced on a podcast. She makes conversing with several people at once look easy.