Episode 60: Effective Book Marketing for the Holidays
K
Hello, my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you’d like to be welcome to the writers triangle, a podcast about publishing and all things, books. And today we’re going to be talking about book promotion, but specifically book promotion during the winter season or as we wrap up the end of the year. And the reason that I thought it would be good to do an episode just on promoting at the end of the year, is because I view it differently than promotion the rest of the year. And I think for me, it’s because I’m a business owner, but also because I was raised in the United States, and most businesses make the majority of their money, mid November through the end of December. And that’s when you see a lot of sales going on and see a lot of very specific promotions going on. And that’s because people are trying to make the most out of that time of year and the fact that a large percentage of the world, it’s a gift giving season. And so people are buying gifts, and shopping in and enjoying all of the good sales and all of that, for me promotion during that time. A lot of authors, I think, make a mistake. And the biggest mistake I think authors make is that they put their book on sale for 99 cents during the busiest shopping season of the year. And I think that, that, although it is counter intuitive, I would say don’t discount your book. And the reason why are you against discounting your book is because everybody else will be running discounts. And you can benefit from that. And something that I did that I love to do is I love to take advantage of other bookstore promotions, and other retailers promotions other than us, right? Well, we’re not a retailer or a bookstore. But I don’t like to discount our books ever. We do a discount for libraries. And that’s it. I don’t want to give anybody else a discount. So sorry, not sorry, we don’t discount our books. But we do do giveaways, and I’ll talk about those in a minute.
K
For me, looking at the website, I’m just going to take four websites, and that is Walmart, Walmart is the biggest retailer in the world like it or not, whatever your feelings are about the company they just are. If your book is listed on Walmart, like all of ours are you us our books list on of course on all the websites that we’re talking I’m going to be talking about and in the bookstores that we’re talking about, I’m talking about today, yay for our sales team, so proud of them. But anyhow, I digress. If your book is listed in by Walmart, Walmart does tons of sales during the the winter season. And if your wrap up, you don’t need to put your book on Syllabus at Walmart, all you have to do is Google your book, and Google Walmart and see if your book is one of the ones discounted that day because I find something interesting specifically about Walmart. And Barnes and Noble does does this as well, Barnes and Noble, and Walmart, they don’t discount all of their books, they discount different sections and portions and different genres, and different. I want to say fiction versus nonfiction and age groups, they do all of those differently. And I think that’s just one way that they keep their sales fresh, and keep people going back and checking because I know it makes me click on their their websites at least once a day or a couple times a week. And see which of our books are on sale through them. And if your book is on sale through them, then you can promote their sale. And sometimes they will promote you on their social media. And if you’re promoting them on your social media, make sure that you tag them. Because if they see you promoting what I find is that because I do tag the bigger retailers. I don’t tag Walmart as much as I should. But I do tag Barnes and Noble a lot. And because of that Barnes and Noble has retweeted some of our promotions of their promotion and their sale and they have a much bigger audience than I do. And I’m, I don’t feel any type of way about that except grateful. Right. So if you’re taking my advice, and you’re retweeting and promoting on your social media or even on your website, I would say it would be worthwhile during this time of year to on your website, track the sales. It does require updating your website a lot that that works in your favor, because every time you change something on your website, it gets registered by Google as an active website. And that is so important for encouraging traffic and encouraging positive search engine optimization, so that your website will come up, and it will cause your website to come up and ranking. And then when you’re searching your book, you might you’ll notice that, you know, you hit the landing page on Google because that’s everyone’s Search Engine Optimization goal, right is to be on Google’s landing page for anything that’s really significant. For me For for books, I feel like a book is doing really well. If you can get six pages on a Google search for your book. I think your book is doing really well in terms of search engine optimization. So with these big bookstores and these big chains like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart books, a million booktopia all of these really big retailers and sellers of books will have sales that are going on and like Books a Million has, every now and then they put a spin the will thing up so when you go to their website, you can click to spin the wheel and you can get up to 15% off randomly. And Amazon as you know, they do like the Kindle, if you’re offering your book through Kindle, they do candle sells quite a bit. And they also sometimes I really love Amazon will do a hard hardback hardcover sale of just hardcover books. So when you go on to these different websites, and you’re searching these books, looking for sales, make sure you click on each way that your book is offered if you have all of the ways of offering it, which is an ebook, paperback, hardback and audio book, click on each one because each of these retailers have sales for just specific formats. And I love when the hardback goes on sale, I love selling hardbacks, they’re just I love owning them. I love that they exist in the world. So it’s always really exciting for me. And I think that’s really exciting for the authors as well. And it’s, it just feels fancy, right. And if you’re gonna give a gift of a book, I think get the heck back, it’s easier to wrap.
K
That’s my 50 cents. That’s one great way to do promotions where you’re not discounting your book. So this episode really should be called don’t discount your book I get when people discount it, and I get why they do it. And I think a much better time to discount your book where it’s more advantageous, if you’re going to do a 99 cent sale, that that should be done. And January and February, when everybody is having that depleted reserves, and they want to kick up savings or not, but they still want to consume books, I would save that sale for the post winter season and the post shopping season and get the biggest bang for your buck so that you can make the most amount of money possible because you know, mid November through the end of December is when retailers make you know what sustains them through to the Lean months. So I think it’s really important to think about optimizing what other people are doing and minimizing the effort that you have to put into it, and minimizing any loss that you would take. Anytime a book is on sale and you discount it, that’s a last year taking. If you wait for a retailer to put it on sale, they’re still paying retail price for your book, they don’t pay you less, because they put the book on sale with the exception with the exception of Amazon, sometimes Amazon if you publish through Amazon, they will charge you they will carry that discount on through you. We don’t publish through Amazon because of that, because of all of their their discounting rules. We prefer to have them buy the book and then stock it and they just do their sales that way. And that’s working out really great for us if you can do it. And I think you know, every author should be able to because if you do print on demand nowadays you don’t have to pay anything for for books to be printed you you pay for when the order is made. So I think every author should really think about doing print on demand, even as just a private, private person and not a company because it allows you to then offer these big retailers the ability to buy the paperback and the hardback and if you go with a great print on demand company, a lot of them have self sources that will go out and sell the book for you. Do your research on that and make good choices for you. The reason I say it that way is because I I don’t want anyone to think that they have to do any one thing. And I want everybody to be making good choices for themselves. And I don’t want authors to feel pressured. I do want authors to fill fiscally responsible when they’re thinking about their book sales. Another great thing to do is during this season, people are looking for how to draw people into their store. And I think that it would be really cool for you to go down to your local bookstore and say hey, are you doing any book readings, I’m an author from the area. And I’d love to come do a reading for you. And whatever genre you’re writing and say, I’d like to do, I could do a reading of just my work, or I could do my work and, and collection of other authors to get variety in the reading. If you’re a middle grade person doing a kidlit day where you read for you do a children’s reading circle, I think that that’s really great for for building customer base, building good relationships with your local bookstore and book community. And you can say the same thing to librarians like brands are really open to authors coming in and reading their books, it is easier to get a librarian to say yes to you coming in and reading your book than it is to get them to agree to stock it. And I think by having it there and having it there for for folks to read and saying, Hey, if somebody wants to check out copies, would you be willing to stock it then. And I know, it may seem like libraries don’t generate book sales, but they do a lot of people like to read before they buy. And that’s a safe way to do it. So I think going down to your local bookstore, your local library and offering to do readings and looking at the various holiday events that they have. If they’re already putting on events, ask can you attend? And can you be a part of that event, because it is also event season, people are really wanting to get down there and get out and about and enjoy this wonderful time of year. And I think that there’s a great atmosphere of community and family and wanting to be together. And this is universal for in every culture that the winding down of and beginning of a like it’s the winding down of fall and really the beginning of winter. And that that cold weather brings wants to bring people together and you know, be safe, be smart.
K
Make sure that you’re making healthy choices for you and and your body and your immunity and decide whether you want to do things master unmask vaccinated or unvaccinated that is everybody’s own personal choice. Keeping that in mind when you’re when you’re going out there and doing events. But it is really that I think of it as sort of like the cozy season because I do just want to you know, Nestle up in my bed with a with a hot beverage and a loved one. And just veg I really, and nothing better to do that with than a good book. And you can introduce your good book to a lot of great readers by going and doing these events. Another thing that you can do is volunteer at events, even if you don’t get to do a reading, volunteer at book fairs, volunteer on Scholastic days at your local school and ask people are there events that you need volunteers for. And this time of year by volunteering, you’re getting to know people people are getting to know you. And that creates an opportunity for you to talk about yourself and talk about the fact that you’re an author, and talk about the fact that you would love to do a reading that you love to read. And if you have two or more author friends, you can pitch an entire event with you and a couple of your friends that it takes about four authors to make a really poppin reading and author event where it’s a nice evening where you know, these author does 30 minutes. And if there’s four of you, that’s a couple of hours, you read 15 minutes, and then 15 to 20 minutes, and then you do a q&a afterwards. And then there is the book selling after that if you’re doing a bookstore event and that’s a great way to sell your books. Another thing to do on top of you know, the events and looking at bookstores is looking at your website and changing your website to have a more festive appearance so that it’s more visitor friendly. And your imagery of round your book and your promotions switching it to match the seasons. We find that that actually sells a lot of our back catalogue. And if you have more than one book, looking at your books, what sort of book bundles can you make for yourself in terms of when you’re pitching your book? Does your book naturally bundle if it’s not in a series with your other books? And if it doesn’t, with your other books, do you know another author that would bundle their books with you? And how that works is however Are there selling their book or not? You just reach out to them and you say, Hey, can we read each other’s books. And if you’re distributing your own books after handling distribution, or if you are distributing your books in a similar way, then it’s just a natural book bundling. And that’s something that you can really take advantage of. And another thing that that can be done is giveaways. Right? There’s a great season for giveaways. We like to do our giveaways around the anniversary of the book, or a month before the book is going to come out. We like to do a giveaway. And we do library things. I’ve talked about this before, and Goodreads giveaways. The reason that we do the giveaways is to remind people that the books are there and available, and also to get data on what people are interested in our books and how many people want to buy it and hopefully get some reviews. And so I find that Goodreads makes it really easy to do a giveaway. And so does library things. And I think library things is great. Their giveaway is really awesome. Because it absolutely costs zero money. So for me, I kind of feel like library things is a better giveaway than good reads on my my scale because it’s free. And I’m I’m frugal. And I like free stuff. And I think everybody likes free stuff. And right now this isn’t as a great time to be doing giveaways. Because we have sold books, I’ve gotten feedback from people, they’re like, Oh, me, and I signed up for this giveaway. I didn’t get it. So then I bought the book. And that’s, that’s exciting.
K
That’s exciting to me, it shows me that the giveaways do actually work when you get that kind of feedback. And when you look at however, you’re cracking your sales, when you look at your sales tracker. Another great way to do some vavoom and get your book out there is to look at look for literary magazines that are in your genre and sell books through them. Or if you belong to any special interest groups, sell books to them. And looking at if you’re in the United States, you can do really great boxes, inexpensively. And I think that a great box to me has just a very few, very few items in it. And I would say for me a no brainer is always a bookmark because it’s a book. Another easy one that’s fairly inexpensive, is a coffee mug. And some people do a poster or a map depending on what what what would fit with your book, what makes sense for your book. And some people are sending out books with ornaments in them. And this gives a really great time for you to think well it’d be a great little tchotchke what would make a great keepsake for your book and boxes up and send those out to reviewers and librarians. And this time of year it just lends itself to that because you get discounts on shipping right now there’s a lot of really great shipping discounts and you can find or make these items for relatively low cost. One author who made calendars from their book characters and scenes in their book, they have a hand and artistry so they do know how to do graphic design and layout so they were able to make a calendar and they were able to render characters and all of that for themselves. If you don’t have that artistic ability I would say reach out to artists friends that are willing to do a swap are willing to do it for you know a reasonable fee and have some calendars made and ship those with your books or or drop them off at places and just you know make sure you get all the dates correct. We did have a while back not at cinnabar moth but I different business i n we did have a calendar made that the days weren’t correct. A staff member had got the wrong months for for the year. So do make sure that you’re getting the days right. So you can do giveaways you can take advantage of retail or sales and you can also do speaking engagements and events. This is also a really great time to attend book fairs and sign up for because there are quite a bit, I was really surprised that there are so many in Europe and the Americas, both North and South America, there are so many different book tours and book fairs, not booked or so many book fairs and book specific events, that I was really, really quite pleased and envious. I wish that I was in the US, I just hit them all up, because there’s so many there primarily on the east and west coast, there are a few in middle America. But I would say, you know, again, look into that. And bookstores are a great resource bookstore owners are a great resource because they do belong to a lot of mailing list. This is a great time also to look at your mailing list and do customer appreciation. And for me, with customer appreciation, we do have some customers who have purchased all of every single book in our catalog, and we do have a special gift for all of our really loyal customers. And for everyone on our PR list, we have gifts that are that are going out. And for us, it’s just the guests on our peer list or more books. But for me, it’s just a really nice thing to do to send those things out.
K
And to send thank you letters, a lot of people have forgotten about the power of a thank you letter when we switched over to the email system. And sending someone a nice card, if you have a PR list. And your PR list has been they’ve been doing the reviews, they’ve been making their posts, it’s a really great time of year to give a shout out and send them either an E card or in purse or mail card, whichever level of access you have to say thank you and be grateful for their time attention and their effort. A thank you is so appreciated, and it’s something that is often so overlooked in business is telling our our clients, our customers, our PR and everyone who’s been supportive of your journey, thank you for your support, I see you, I appreciate you. And I don’t think I would be where I am without you. And you’ll be surprised how grateful people are for that appreciation and for seeing them. Because everyone on a PR list and everyone who is supporting them as everyone has their own hustle and their own grind. So someone’s trying to become a social media influencer, or a key person in the book to Bookstagram book talk, Book, Twitter, if anyone’s trying to make a name for themselves and the literary role just like you are, think about how it felt when you got your first yes and how it felt when you’re when you read a positive review. And for me, it can be something if you don’t feel comfortable with with sending an email, or a card or anything like or a physical card. Something as simple as going through Goodreads and liking every review that you’ve gotten for your book and thanking them. That’s something that’d be like, Hey, I got my review. Got it. Like, that’s pretty cool. Because by liking their review and doing a positive comment of their review, you’re giving them positive feedback. And you’re letting them know that you appreciate them. And you see them and you read the review. And you’re happy that they reviewed your book and hope that they continue the connection and the relationship going forward. So I feel like that’s a pretty good rundown of things that you can do during the winter season. And as we wrap up the year to promote your book solidify and strengthen relationships. I do want to mention one other thing that I think is so important this time of year, and that is taking the time to promote somebody other than you. I know that that might seem a little bit counter intuitive. We often do it with other presses, we will promote other presses and other literary magazines as a way to thank them and let people know of the other great indie presses that are out there. We do the same with with indie bookstores, we always promote any bookstores because we love indie authors and new bookstores, all things and be in and litter literature right? So for me, it’s really important that we create a sense of community. I’m sorry, my computer is being so obnoxious right now. Sorry about that. But on that happy note, I hope that you and yours are having a wonderful end of year and And I hope that you find something interesting or helpful in this video. What are you doing to promote during the end of the year? What sort of things are you taking advantage of? Did I leave something off that works really well for you? If so, leave us a comment down below and be sure to like the video and subscribe and turn on the notification so that you don’t miss it when we upload. And yeah, that’s it for today. Thank you all of our beautiful cinnabar moth or any kind of math you’d like to be or you can even be a butterfly but I’m not Mariah Carey I’m not trying to bite her rhyme bye.