Christmas and other gift-giving holidays are around the corner. If you’ve embraced your inner marketer, you may be mulling over extra ways to promote your books and ebooks this season. You’re not alone — judging by the various blog tours, requests for guests posts, and Kindleboards threads I’ve seen, a lot of authors are making plans.
Should you join the rush? Here are my thoughts and experiences on ebooks and holiday promotions:
This is technically my third Christmas as an independent, e-publishing author, though it’s hard to count the first, since I released my first ebook just days before the 2010 holiday. I didn’t have a fan-base or even many relatives waiting to buy. Thus Christmas was a non-event my first year.
Last year, December brought my (at that point) best earnings month, though I’m not sure how much of that I can attribute to the holidays. I’d released my third Emperor’s Edge book at the beginning of November, then, after Thanksgiving, had the first go free for the first time at Amazon. I credit those events with the boost in sales.
So, what am I going to try this year? Less than you’d think. I don’t have much data to back up my hypothesis, but I don’t think people necessarily buy more ebooks in the weeks leading up to Christmas. You may get more sales in the weeks after, if lots of people get e-readers for the first time, and that’s when it may pay to be more visible at Amazon and the other stores. That’s always easier said than done, but you could try some advertising (I had a good run at Bookbub recently), though there aren’t many places out there with enough eyeballs to be worth the fees. Other authors have had good luck banding together and doing group promotions that include blog tours and Facebook posts with lots of cross-promoting of each other’s work.
If you have something in the pipeline, releasing a new book tends to help too. I was hoping to do that with an EE novella I started during NaNoWriMo, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get that together in time for a Christmas release. It’ll probably be more of an early January publication. I do have another Bookbub spot coming up on the 12th, this time for the second book in my EE series. I’ve never paid for advertising on a sequel, but EE1 has already been promoted there. I’m dropping the price to 99 cents for the day of the sale, and I’ll be curious to see if random people buy it without having read others in the series (or perhaps downloads of Book 1 will pick up).
What about paperback books?
I’m glad you asked. Paperbacks, unlike ebooks, make good Christmas gifts (yes, you can email someone a gift certificate for an ebook at Amazon or B&N, but it’s not anything you can put under the tree). I haven’t done anything to promote my paperbacks, but I’ve definitely noticed more sales of late. That started in mid-November and December has been strong so far. Maybe next year, once I have all six EE books out, I’ll do something on my site for folks who may be interested in buying signed copies of the set.
If you like to sell in person (and have a big stack of author copies on hand), this may be the best time of year to push those paperbacks. While you don’t make a lot on paperbacks ordered online from Amazon and such, you can do much better by ordering author copies (mine run $4.70 to $5.75 or so, depending on length, at CreateSpace) and selling those at retail prices.
What are your holiday book-promotion plans?
Do you guys have any plans of your own that you’re enacting? Anything you did last year that worked well? Please let us know in the comments.
No promotion plans, but my favorite gift idea for ebooks is to pick up a coffee mug or tea cup at a thrift store and put the redemption code for a specific book inside. That way you’re not just giving a piece of paper, but an actual selected book in an inexpensive but cozy packaging. (And if your recipient hates your taste, Amazon lets them exchange it for something else.)
This is a little off topic but does anyone know if there’s a way to get your money back, as the e-gift giver, if someone doesn’t redeem a ebook certificate after a certain amount of time?
That is a really cool idea, Sarah!
I’ve definitely seen an uptick in sales of the paperbacks in November and December (thus far). I’ve got a store page set up on my site for buying autographed copies of my first book, and I’ve had at least one copy bought as a Christmas gift as well. Unfortunately, I’m still doing self-publishing as a night job, so my ability to rig up a special holiday sale is limited. I’ve got one Christmas of sales to look back on, and I definitely found that late December and early January were great for eBook sales. People may not give eBooks as gifts, but they DO give eReaders, and people eager to test out their new gadget go looking for highly rated free books.
I don’t know if it’s Christmas necessarily, but I think a lot of people read more in the winter since it’s cold and dark outside early. Winter in general has been good to me.
This holiday season I’ve posted gift giving recommendations/guides on all my blogs and websites with links to my own books, other’s books I recommend, and books that are on my wishlist.
Hmmm . . .what about giveaways as another promotion tool? Not necessarily of your books (although there’s that too, of course), but gift baskets, gift cards, gift . . . stuff. Just to get more eyeballs on your material. Anyway, it’s a thought. Thank you, as always Lindsay, for sharing your experiences!
I have rarely had a lot of success giving away unrelated gifts in giveaways (These are experiences from my company, so not directly related to books, although I believe the effect is much the same).
The problem tends to be that you get the eyeballs, but they are all attracted to “shiny” i.e. the gift, and if it is not related to your products, then their attention wears off, and you often attract people who are not even remotely interested in your porducts to begin with.
If you can keep it related to your products, then the effect will greatly increase, and it is always a possibility to be creative. As you suggest gift baskets gift cards, may I suggest always adding something directly related to your products in the mix.
If you already have a readership, then a shirt with one of your main characters could be an idea. Give away a couple as a christmas promotion and afterwards sell them through an e-store with print on demand.
I’ve posted a couple videos of me singing about my books and offered to write and perform a song for people who give all three of my books reviews before the end of the year.
I’m also donating 100% of my profits (a little more than, actually, but who’s counting?) to Worldbuilders.
We’ll see if any of that finds new readers.
Pingback: Friday Features #34 - yesenia vargas
First, thanks so much for the tip about BookBub. Forbidden Mind went up based on your post about it, and it went really well and helped launch The Forbidden Trilogy omnibus! My husband (Dmytry Karpov) and I love your site.
Second, I’ve noticed paperback books doing better for direct sales of signed copies. I think because I’ve built up my fan base (this is my first full year as a published author, but I have 4 YA books out in a complete series and 5 children’s books out in an ongoing series) and they are excited to get signed copies for friends for Christmas. I launched a Christmas book in my Three Lost Kids series and it’s been doing surprisingly well as an ebook and in paperback sales at schools and through fans directly.
So, I would agree, having 2 books launch around Christmas helped sales, but that could be because it was a launch, and having a Christmas book available for kids was a big help to that series. At this point, other than blog tours, I don’t have much else planned. I already did a few school events and a fair, and my fans have ordered signed copies. I’ll probably sell a few more signed print copies, but I’m hoping for ebooks sales to continue for my YA series after the holidays. We’ll see.
Next year I’ll have more out and I might do a harder push, but I’m not sure what that will look like. Perhaps hitting up bookstores for signings or creating a better page on my website for signed copies. (I have the page now, but the paypal buttons have gone on strike and refuse to work properly!) I read a newsletter from Smith Publicity that had some ideas for making the most of holiday sales.
Here’s a link to it. (It’s the second article)
http://www.smithpublicity.com/2012/10/november-2012/#more-1508
Pingback: Writing Blog Treasures 12~8 | Gene Lempp ~ Writer
Last Christmas, I was very, very new to indie publishing, and only had a short story out. I didn’t do anything special for the holidays.
I released my debut novel earlier this month and have seen a few sales trickle in across my channels (Amazon, BN, Kobo, Smashwords, etc [though I’m still waiting to get into iBooks, so when I do, I think it’ll help; I’ve had good sales through iBooks via Smashwords for my short works). I’m not doing anything big promotion wise—just a small blog tour through this month and January, a few random giveaways, and a free copy to everyone on my email list. My plan was to originally do a huge release tour but then I decided I’d rather just keep writing. I optimized everything instead (website, ebook sale pages, etc), and chose my blog tour stops very wisely.
By next December, though, I’m hoping to have Sade on the Wall and the novels I’ll be releasing in 2013 available in print. I’ve gotten quite a few print requests, so that’s definitely a priority.
Thanks for more interesting tips. I love your blog, it is always so insightful. I just published my first book a few days ago, so I’m thinking of some decent marketing strategies. It seems like you’ve paved the way for all indie publishers into the hardest part about being an author, promotion!
p.s. I finally figured out what EE means lol.
Cheers, and keept it up.
-L.W.
One thing that I think could benefit authors is the ability to bundle multiple eBooks together and sell them directly to their audience. Imagine an author choosing a few of their eBooks, bundling them together, and selling at the price of their choice any time they’d like to. They could set up holiday gift sets, daily deals, flash sales, etc.
This is a bit self-promotional since my company (http://get.ganxy.com/directsales/) has developed this tool, but I think this could really benefit authors in the coming weeks. Here is Melissa Foster’s holiday bundle: http://ganxy.com/i/73417. People can even send the bundle to friends as a last-minute gift.
You can read more about it here: http://bit.ly/W6ct5T. We developed this tool for authors – I’d love to have your feedback!