Street teams and launch groups
A street team is a small group of readers who care about your books and have agreed to help when a new one comes out.
It is not an ARC list, and the confusion between the two is why most attempts at one fizzle.
How it differs from an ARC list
An ARC list is a campaign. It exists to produce early reviews, it is assembled for a specific book, and when the reviews are posted its job is done. See Getting early reviews without breaking a rule for how that is run.
A street team is a standing group. They get the book early too, but the point is everything around that: they talk about it, they post, they recommend it when someone in a reader group asks for something exactly like your book, they turn up on launch day so the page is not silent — and, quietly the most valuable part, they tell you when something is wrong.
They are the people who will email you that chapter nine has a duplicated paragraph, or that the series numbering on the new cover does not match book two. Nobody else is going to tell you, because nobody else has read all of them closely enough to notice.
One group produces reviews for one book. The other is a relationship that runs across a career.
Where they come from
From your existing readers. Specifically, the ones who email you.
That is the whole recruitment method, and it is worth being blunt about why. Enthusiasm cannot be recruited. A reader who wrote to you unprompted about a character has already demonstrated the thing you are looking for; a stranger who signed up because a form promised free books has demonstrated that they like free books.
So keep the emails. When a reader writes something warm about a book, reply properly, and when you have a few of those, ask them directly whether they would like early copies of the next one in exchange for talking about it.
Your newsletter is the other source, and a good one, because those readers chose you already. Ask there — once, plainly, with a description of what the job involves — rather than putting a permanent sign-up form on your site and collecting whoever wanders past.
Size: small and real
A dozen people who genuinely love the books will outperform two hundred who signed up for a free copy. This is not a consolation for having a small list; it is how it actually works.
A large team has a diffusion problem. Nobody in a group of two hundred feels that their own post matters, and so most of them do not post. In a group of twelve, everyone knows their absence would be noticed, and the author knows all their names.
There is also the work. A real street team is a group you talk to. At a dozen people that takes twenty minutes a week. At two hundred it is an unpaid second job with a spreadsheet, and it will be abandoned by the third book.
Start with the five people who already write to you.
What to give them
The book, early. Weeks ahead of release, in the format each person reads.
A say in things, where you can honestly give one. Two cover options, a shortlist of titles, the name of a minor character, which novella comes next. This is the part people underrate: being asked is what makes someone feel like part of the book rather than part of a mailing.
Visibility. Share what they post. Quote them. A reader whose words appear in your newsletter has been paid in something no discount matches.
Real thanks in the acknowledgments. Names, in the book, permanently. Ask first, and use the name they want.
In the tools. Previews are free, unlimited and watermarked, so you can show your team two real cover options in the Cover Maker before you commit — and the Interior Formatter builds the acknowledgments page from a field, so adding a name is a setting rather than a re-typeset. Start your book → · about the tools
What not to do
Never require a review in exchange for anything. Not for the free copy, not for staying in the group, not for a giveaway entry — Giveaways, and what they are actually for is worth reading before you run one for your team, because the rules are stricter than they look. A prohibition on paid and incentivized reviews is common to most stores, and reviews from a group that all received something conditional on reviewing are detectable — the pattern is obvious at scale. Check the policy of every store you sell on before you write the rules of your group. Ask for honest posts, want nothing specific back, and the problem does not arise.
Never run it as a work rota. Assigned tasks, tracked quotas, a monthly minimum — do any of that and you have converted volunteers into unpaid staff. Volunteers leave quietly when that happens, and they do not tell you why.
Never let it become a job. The test is whether a member could ignore a whole launch, say nothing about it, and still be welcome. If the answer is no, the group is an obligation, and obligations end.
Running it
One place to talk. A group chat, a small private forum, a dedicated email thread — whichever your readers already use. One, not four.
A short, clear list of what would help. Before a launch, say plainly what is useful: post on release day, add it on a reading site, mention it if someone asks for a recommendation in a group. Three things, not twelve, and every one of them optional.
Honesty about how it is going. Tell them the launch went well, or that it did not. People who know the real numbers behave like insiders. People who only ever hear good news correctly conclude they are being marketed to.
None of this pays off in one launch. A street team is a relationship with readers that outlasts any individual book, and the authors who have a strong one built it over years, one reply at a time.
Make your book
The tools are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Back to: Cross-promotion with other authors · More: Getting early reviews without breaking a rule · Launch week, without the panic · The newsletter, and what to give people for joining