Post-launch outreach for visibility and momentum
- Veronica Mathai
- Aug 3
- 2 min read
Client: Tayla Jean Grossberg, multi-award-winning YA fantasy romance author
Service: Instagram Outreach for Kingdom of Keys and Curses
Platform: Instagram
The Challenge
Kingdom of Keys and Curses had already launched. The fae-world, forbidden-magic romantic fantasy was live and available. But a launch date isn't the same as launch momentum. Without a sustained visibility push in the weeks after release, even a well-written book can quietly stall in the Amazon rankings while readers who'd love it never hear it exists. Tayla needed outreach that would keep the book in front of the right bookish audiences post-launch, not just on day one.
The Approach & Process
Because Tayla already had an established platform, I wasn't building an audience from zero, I was translating existing goodwill into active readership. My process:
Identified Instagram bookstagrammers and reviewers active specifically in the fae/fantasy-romance niche
Crafted outreach messaging tailored to the book's specific hooks forbidden magic, morally grey love interests, fairy-tale-retelling elements rather than generic "please review my book" copy
Positioned the book within reader conversations already happening around fae romance and fantasy trilogies, so recommendations felt organic rather than promotional
Tools & Strategies
Manual bookstagrammer research and vetting within the fae/fantasy-romance niche
Personalized, hook-specific outreach messaging (no generic templates)
Organic conversation positioning rather than paid promotion
The Results
100 bookstagrammers contacted
68 readers confirmed they read the book
44 reviews generated over a period of 4 weeks
A 64% response-to-read rate and a 65% read-to-review conversion rate meaning the outreach wasn't just reaching people, it was reaching the right people who followed through
Reflection
The numbers matter less than what they confirm: niche-specific targeting and hook-driven messaging outperform broad outreach. Reaching 100 people and converting 44 into reviews a 44% overall conversion from first contact to published review shows that a smaller, well-matched list beats a larger, generic one. This is the same principle that drove the messaging-test approach on the BITTERSWEET campaign: know exactly who you're talking to before you write the message.
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