July 18, 2025 • 17 mins
The holiday season represents a golden opportunity for authors to boost book sales—but only for those who start planning early enough. In this strategic episode, we dig into why "Christmas in July" isn't just a retail concept but a vital timeframe for authors who want holiday marketing success.
We reveal the shocking truth about holiday marketing timelines: if you're waiting until November to plan your holiday book promotions, you're already months too late! Media outlets finalize gift guides during summer, promotional spots book up by early fall, and consumers need time to discover your book before making purchase decisions. This episode walks you through the essential preparations you need to make now to position your book effectively for holiday sales.
You'll learn the crucial distinction between marketing a holiday-themed book versus positioning any book as a gift, and why specific messaging matters ("perfect for your adventure-loving niece" resonates more than generic "great gift" language). We cover practical steps including website preparation, scheduling promotional content, booking eBook deals for Black Friday, building up reviews, and how to successfully pitch to holiday gift guides at outlets like Buzzfeed and major online magazines.
Whether you're planning to offer special holiday bundles, signed editions, book-plus-merchandise packages, or simply want more Amazon sales, the groundwork must begin now. Don't let another holiday season pass with disappointing sales—grab your marketing calendar and start implementing these proven strategies that have helped countless authors transform the holidays from a missed opportunity into their most profitable season.
Buy Penny's book The Amazon Author Formula
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, this is Penny Sansevierie and Amy Cornell and
we are rerunning a veryappropriate show.
So it's a Christmas in Julyshow and I think this was like
three years ago that we did thisshow.
It was super popular.
If you are thinking aboutpositioning your book for
holiday sales, this is anot-to-be-missed show.
(00:21):
So we thought that it was areally good time to rerun it and
we hope that you are enjoyingthese show reruns.
We would love your feedback onthis new kind of thing that
we're doing and thank you somuch for tuning in and we'll see
you next time.
Bye-bye, hello, and welcomeback to the mini-soda, the book
marketing tips and authorsuccess podcast.
This is Penny Sanseviery, withmy awesome co-host, amy Cornell,
(00:44):
and we are talking.
I know that it's July and Iknow that y'all are in the
middle of summer plans and allkinds of things, but we are
going to talk about Christmasand holiday marketing and what's
interesting is that this theorigin story of this podcast.
Amy and I have been wanting todo this for a while, but
(01:05):
yesterday I was doing a webinarand somebody asked me if I have
a Valentine's Day book, whenshould I start marketing that
Valentine's Day book?
Should I start it like the daybefore, the week before, and I
always tell people take a cuefrom the consumer market.
So as soon as Christmas is overand the New Year's decorations,
(01:30):
I always find that actuallypersonally depressing.
I'm like, oh, christmas is over, but as soon as the New Year's
decorations start, you know tokind of dwindle.
The Valentine's Day stuff comesup right Second of January.
You gotta start early.
We so many I cannot tell youhow many times we've had people
(01:51):
contact us in November or afterThanksgiving we like, hey, I
want to market my book for theholidays.
I'm like, which holiday?
Because it's not, because it'snot going to be this holiday.
So that was sort of the focus.
And what I hope that you learnfrom this podcast is how to
prepare, how to get ready.
(02:12):
There's a reason that we callit Christmas in July and it's
not just we, meaning Amy andmyself, although obviously we
are like trendsetters but thereason that we call it, that
it's called Christmas in July isbecause any kind of marketing
that you want to do for theholiday season you got to start
(02:32):
now.
And I'm not necessarily sayingthat you have to put up.
You have to start advertisingyour holiday specials now, but
you got to start prepping, andthat's what we're talking about
today.
So, amy, do you want to kickthis off?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, absolutely.
I love the point about preppingbecause you're so right.
People come to us and I willsay for what it's worth, because
you know we are a bookmarketing company.
If you do want to get help withyour promotions around the
holidays and things like that,you know it's the timing.
You have to consider how peoplework and how quickly people can
turn things around.
I mean, penny, our team canwork pretty quick and turn
(03:10):
things around pretty quickly andprep for a campaign, but there
is still a little time in thereand that's another thing to keep
in mind.
That it's hard.
You know, when you're figuringout your timeline it's like,
well, okay, if you hire acompany on this date, you kind
of figure there's a very goodchance a lot of the work won't
start for at least a week, ifnot two.
You know, even if they'removing fast because they need
(03:32):
information from you, there'ssome brainstorming that needs to
happen.
That's very specific to yourbrand and your message and your
genre, you know, if you wantthem to do a good job.
So I think, along with yourpoint, penny, about the timeline
, you have to also think aboutthat.
You want to do some qualityprep work as well with your team
If you plan on hiring a team tohelp you with your holiday book
(03:52):
marketing as well, right, Right, exactly, and I think you also
have to figure out what youreally want to accomplish.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So, does your book tie into the holidays
specifically, or is it a?
Is it, is it a gift?
Is it a great?
Is it a great gift idea?
And I think you delineatebetween the two because people
say to me well, do you think my,my book is a good holiday gift?
I'm like, well, I, I mean,books are always a good holiday
(04:21):
gift, but the difference is,does it tie into the holidays
per se or is it a gift?
And I think that that's going todifferentiate what you start to
do.
But the first piece of this isgoing to be your website.
So it's good to start earlybecause websites always take
longer than you think they'regoing to take and start to think
(04:41):
about are you going to want todo?
Do you have a mailing list,right?
Do you even want to bother withselling books off of your
website?
You might, right.
Maybe you have a hardcover thathas not been released yet and
you want to release it in timefor the holiday season, and it's
going to be a signed,autographed hardcover version of
your book and that's going tobe on the store on your website.
(05:02):
You better start prepping thatnow, because if you contact a
website person in November,they're going to be, they're
going to say, well, sayonarauntil February, because they're
they're.
You know what I mean they're,they're just they're, they're,
they're going to be, they'regoing to be busy.
And I think that, by the sametoken, if you want to pitch you,
so if your book is holidaytopical right, so we've worked
(05:26):
with books about, you know,family stress during the
holidays and things like thatthat's kind of a whole different
market, but also one that youhave to start with early, so
starting to think about whoyou're going after.
But in terms of selling yourbook as a gift, there's a lot of
fun things that you can do.
(05:47):
You could pair your book withswag.
You could have a two book deal,especially if you're wanting to
lure people off of Amazon andsell them.
You know, sell books on yourwebsite.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Right, that's a very good point.
I think that that's anotherelement that you need to
consider coming up with theideas, figuring out how long
it's going to take you toexecute.
Figuring out, I think, onething that gets missed a lot,
Penny especially.
You know, if it's not a holidaytopical book, if it's not a
holiday recipes or a, you know,a romance book set around
(06:26):
Christmas time, if it's notdirectly related to the holidays
but you think it would make agood gift, you really have to
get smart about deciding whothat would be a good gift for,
yeah, and you have to get yourmessaging right too.
So you know, maybe your messageis that it's great for your
girlfriend who's in a book club,or it's great for your friend
(06:47):
that you know is taking avacation over the holidays and
will be traveling.
You know things like that thatpersonalize it, really stand out
and catch people's attention.
When the holidays just makepeople kind of crazy in good and
bad ways, yeah, but that's onething that you have to remember
too is that getting someone'sattention during the holidays,
(07:08):
in the lead up, even a couplemonths before, becomes
increasingly, exponentiallyharder than any other time of
year because everybody is sodistracted.
So you really can't do just thenormal kind of marketing.
You really have to zero in onvery specific buyers and tailor
messages to those people.
(07:29):
It doesn't mean you can't havemore than one of those, but I
always see the most successfulones are are about really
narrowing in on who that personis in your life that that book
is for, because that's when thelight bulb goes off for people
and they go oh yeah, so-and-sowould love that.
So the more the thick you canget when you're pitching your
book as a holiday gift, thebetter.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So and I think that if you want to get away, so
prepping your website is never abad idea, even if you want to
get away from.
I don't really want to sellstuff on my website, off my
website, which I don't blame you, because there's a whole, you
know, e-commerce backend andwhatnot.
Maybe you don't want to getbothered with that, but if you
do want to position your bookfor, let's say, gift guides
(08:12):
which we're going to talk aboutin a second and you want to get
more people to buy it off ofAmazon, definitely look at
increasing your book reviews,and and and.
July is a good time to startbecause you have plenty of time.
So increase your book reviewsbecause people like what other
people like and it's going to beeasier to get a sale if you
(08:35):
know people are.
There are some reviews on thebook and readers can see what
everything's about.
The other thing that Iencourage you to is we and we
get this a lot If you are again,you're focused on the Black
Friday or Cyber Monday market,whatever you want to do an ebook
promo for your book.
You got to book those early.
(08:55):
You've got to book those early.
We get people who come to usjust before Thanksgiving.
Hey, I want to do a postThanksgiving ebook promo.
It's like, well, we're talkingThanksgiving 12 months from now.
Because I just because they'reall, because they book up really
, really quickly, so because wehear this a lot, don't we, amy,
about you know?
And ebook promos are a greatway to get, especially when
(09:16):
people are in the mindset.
Now, like you know, november ishit and it's full on Christmas
everywhere and people are in thebuying mindset and doing an
ebook promo could be great, butyou've got to book those ahead
of time.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, absolutely.
And set up your book, both ads.
You don't have to do thosesuper far in advance, but again,
I'm a huge fan of not waitinguntil the last minute in general
really finding those refiningyour targets, again, the
messaging, the pitching, how youdo that is tied into all of
this.
So, along with your timing,make sure you keep your, your
pitching really refined, andthat counts for book club ads
(09:49):
and things like that as well.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, and then I think, if you are again, if
you're planning promotionsaround the holidays, schedule
your blog posts.
Start writing your blog posts,because you know we talk about
how busy everybody gets, butyou're also everybody, so you're
also somebody who's probablygoing to be very busy around the
holidays, maybe with traveling,now that people are traveling
again, et cetera.
So schedule your social mediaand your blog posts.
(10:13):
Just, you know, start to writethose.
Get those out of the way.
Get those, focus on those aheadof time, because if we, if you
get on top of November or evenOctober and everything just
starts happening, you mightforget the other piece of this
too.
And then we're going to talkabout gift guides in a minute,
but warming up your mailing list.
So if you have a mailing listand maybe you haven't like, oh,
(10:37):
I haven't really dedicated a lotof time to it If you're going
to do any kind of promotionsaround your book so we talked
about the hardcover, theautographed hardcover, maybe a
book with some swag, et ceterayou got to warm up your mailing
list.
Don't just expect to write themin November and say, hey, I
know you haven't heard from meall year, but I have this great
deal and here's what it is,because the response rate's
(10:59):
probably going to be fairly thin.
Um, just to you know, just kindof keep that in mind.
So, amy, we've had talked a lotabout gift guides and I know we
want to keep this mini-sode tothe mini-sode format.
I love gift guides.
Gift guides you can find them alot of times in harrow help a
reporter out dot com.
They start running themactually now and you can find
(11:21):
gift guides not just around forthe holidays but all year long,
and I've written a number ofarticles actually on gift guides
and you can search them on theweb.
But gift guides are great.
I mean we you and I share a lotof gift guides just for random
stuff throughout the the yearand holiday season especially.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Oh yeah, and I'm always it really the ones that
stand out to me are the onesthat are a little more personal.
Um, so I would say, yeah,obviously Harrow is a good one,
and just it sounds weird.
Good old fashioned Googlesearch, you know, and put on
your consumer hat, be the personthat you want to buy your book
(12:02):
and do some searches, the wayyour target market, your your
demographic searches for things,and that'll help give you a lot
of insight as well into who youneed to be reaching out to,
what kind of sites you need tobe reaching out to things like
that, because, again, you know,like Penny has said a lot of
these people, there's a lot ofmoney to be made around the
holidays and nobody else iswaiting until the last minute,
(12:25):
so that's another big factor inthis, too.
There are a lot of websitesthat are already developing, if
not wrapping up, their giftrecommendation posts for the
season.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, yeah, it's a really good time to start and
what you know?
Blogs are not the only outletfor that, but you can also go
out and you know, take a look atlike Buzzfeed.
Buzzfeed does a ton of giftguides every year.
Start to, you know, go, just gothrough the site.
Most of the gift guides fromprior years are probably still
(12:54):
up there.
So take a look and see whatthey do.
They do a ton.
As a matter of fact, they hadfour or five gift guides out
because we just passed AmazonPrime Day.
Think about also media outlets.
Now you're going to be a littlebit too late to get into actual
(13:15):
print magazines, but mostnational magazines have online
portals that you can pitch to aswell for gift guides and things
like that.
Gift guides are great andthey're usually you know.
Again, take a look at thedemographic that you're
targeting.
Make sure that it's right forthat market, like a kid's book
going to.
You know, good Housekeeping orthe Good Housekeeping Gift Guide
(13:37):
or Real Simple Magazine does aton of gift guides.
But online media is anotherreally really great way and you
can start early there.
They probably do, I mean, Iknow, like Buzzfeed does I don't
know 20, it seems like they do20 gift guides around.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Oh, they have it for everything and they really
refine it by demographic.
So, gift guide for the geekydad, gift guide for the foodie
dad, it's like wow.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, it's, it's, it's really, it's super, super
fun and, like I said, I justthink that it's.
It's a great way to um, it's agreat way to get some additional
exposure.
Gift guides are easy.
They're always looking forcontent.
You can go to Harrow, you can.
You could look up gift guides.
Uh, you can look up some onlinemedia and take a look at their
gift guides.
Buzzfeed is another really goodoutlet, but any of them really
(14:24):
are.
I mean, if you start tosubscribe, if you get Apple news
, they have a great app for thattoo and you can start to search
by gift guides and reallyreally get some ideas.
But before you do that, you gotto make sure that everything
else is lined up.
So make sure you have a goodlooking website.
Obviously, your book cover wetalk about book covers a lot
Polish.
Just start to polish yourcollateral materials.
(14:48):
Your Amazon page make sure youget lots of reviews, because the
holiday season, you can't youcan't wait too late to get out
there and pitch them.
Amy, any other thoughts to thisbefore we let everybody go?
No, and start working on theirwebsite and all the things I
know right when they startworking on all their homework.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
No, I mean, I think again, like you said, let's try
to keep it to a mini-sode format.
We've definitely written aboutthis in the past.
You know, penny, you wrote abook on holiday promotions.
I did.
I did write a book on holidaypromotions.
I did write a book on holidaypromotions.
I still and this is not only ashameless plug, but truly there
(15:30):
are.
I mean, it was 52 ways, quiteliterally 52 ways to sell more
books around the holidays, andisn't it?
99 cents for the ebook?
Yeah, do you recall?
I haven't, but I mean it's oneof those that, like you, really
can't afford not to have it onyour virtual bookshelf.
So, anybody listening to this,if you don't have it, grab it
because, again, not just ashameless plug there are, out of
(15:53):
the 52 ideas, I guarantee ahandful of those that you feel
totally comfortableincorporating and, honestly, now
is the time to start goingthrough that book and deciding
what you feel you can take onand what you're comfortable with
and what you can incorporateinto your you know, your website
and all your branding and yourmarketing plan and things like
that in the next few months, andso, really, it is a really
(16:13):
great inexpensive resource thatwill save you a lot of scrolling
on our blog well, and one ofthe other things that we don't
have the time to address on here, but I want to kind of allude
to it.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
That's in the book is talks about how to dress up
your social media to prep yourfollowers for thinking about
your book, or books as they're,you know, putting together their
holiday shopping list.
So there's a ton of informationthere.
Thanks for mentioning that, amy.
I really appreciate that.
Oh my gosh.
Well, thank you so much fortuning in.
(16:48):
This has been the mini-sode.
It's a little bit longer than amini-sode, but I thought it was
really important to addressmaking more sales around the
holiday and Christmas of Julyand I wish you all sales success
, lots of success on that.
And if you all sales success,lots of success on that.
And if I had, if you'relistening recently and I just
saw you on one of the manyclasses I'm teaching like seven
(17:09):
classes this week I know somecrazy number right.
So if you're just, if you're anew listener and you found us on
one of the classes that Itaught, welcome, welcome,
welcome.
Please go back and listen tosome of the older shows.
We have tons of information onthe podcast.
We've been doing this for twoyears and we all love.
We love reviews.
So wherever you listen topodcasts, please leave us a
(17:30):
review.
Thank you so much for listening.
Bye-bye.
Hello, this is Penny Sansevierie and Amy Cornell and
we are rerunning a veryappropriate show.
So it's a Christmas in Julyshow and I think this was like
three years ago that we did thisshow.
It was super popular.
If you are thinking aboutpositioning your book for
holiday sales, this is anot-to-be-missed show.
(00:21):
So we thought that it was areally good time to rerun it and
we hope that you are enjoyingthese show reruns.
We would love your feedback onthis new kind of thing that
we're doing and thank you somuch for tuning in and we'll see
you next time.
Bye-bye, hello, and welcomeback to the mini-soda, the book
marketing tips and authorsuccess podcast.
This is Penny Sanseviery, withmy awesome co-host, amy Cornell,
(00:44):
and we are talking.
I know that it's July and Iknow that y'all are in the
middle of summer plans and allkinds of things, but we are
going to talk about Christmasand holiday marketing and what's
interesting is that this theorigin story of this podcast.
Amy and I have been wanting todo this for a while, but
(01:05):
yesterday I was doing a webinarand somebody asked me if I have
a Valentine's Day book, whenshould I start marketing that
Valentine's Day book?
Should I start it like the daybefore, the week before, and I
always tell people take a cuefrom the consumer market.
So as soon as Christmas is overand the New Year's decorations,
(01:30):
I always find that actuallypersonally depressing.
I'm like, oh, christmas is over, but as soon as the New Year's
decorations start, you know tokind of dwindle.
The Valentine's Day stuff comesup right Second of January.
You gotta start early.
We so many I cannot tell youhow many times we've had people
(01:51):
contact us in November or afterThanksgiving we like, hey, I
want to market my book for theholidays.
I'm like, which holiday?
Because it's not, because it'snot going to be this holiday.
So that was sort of the focus.
And what I hope that you learnfrom this podcast is how to
prepare, how to get ready.
(02:12):
There's a reason that we callit Christmas in July and it's
not just we, meaning Amy andmyself, although obviously we
are like trendsetters but thereason that we call it, that
it's called Christmas in July isbecause any kind of marketing
that you want to do for theholiday season you got to start
(02:32):
now.
And I'm not necessarily sayingthat you have to put up.
You have to start advertisingyour holiday specials now, but
you got to start prepping, andthat's what we're talking about
today.
So, amy, do you want to kickthis off?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah, absolutely.
I love the point about preppingbecause you're so right.
People come to us and I willsay for what it's worth, because
you know we are a bookmarketing company.
If you do want to get help withyour promotions around the
holidays and things like that,you know it's the timing.
You have to consider how peoplework and how quickly people can
turn things around.
I mean, penny, our team canwork pretty quick and turn
(03:10):
things around pretty quickly andprep for a campaign, but there
is still a little time in thereand that's another thing to keep
in mind.
That it's hard.
You know, when you're figuringout your timeline it's like,
well, okay, if you hire acompany on this date, you kind
of figure there's a very goodchance a lot of the work won't
start for at least a week, ifnot two.
You know, even if they'removing fast because they need
(03:32):
information from you, there'ssome brainstorming that needs to
happen.
That's very specific to yourbrand and your message and your
genre, you know, if you wantthem to do a good job.
So I think, along with yourpoint, penny, about the timeline
, you have to also think aboutthat.
You want to do some qualityprep work as well with your team
If you plan on hiring a team tohelp you with your holiday book
(03:52):
marketing as well, right, Right, exactly, and I think you also
have to figure out what youreally want to accomplish.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So, does your book tie into the holidays
specifically, or is it a?
Is it, is it a gift?
Is it a great?
Is it a great gift idea?
And I think you delineatebetween the two because people
say to me well, do you think my,my book is a good holiday gift?
I'm like, well, I, I mean,books are always a good holiday
(04:21):
gift, but the difference is,does it tie into the holidays
per se or is it a gift?
And I think that that's going todifferentiate what you start to
do.
But the first piece of this isgoing to be your website.
So it's good to start earlybecause websites always take
longer than you think they'regoing to take and start to think
(04:41):
about are you going to want todo?
Do you have a mailing list,right?
Do you even want to bother withselling books off of your
website?
You might, right.
Maybe you have a hardcover thathas not been released yet and
you want to release it in timefor the holiday season, and it's
going to be a signed,autographed hardcover version of
your book and that's going tobe on the store on your website.
(05:02):
You better start prepping thatnow, because if you contact a
website person in November,they're going to be, they're
going to say, well, sayonarauntil February, because they're
they're.
You know what I mean they're,they're just they're, they're,
they're going to be, they'regoing to be busy.
And I think that, by the sametoken, if you want to pitch you,
so if your book is holidaytopical right, so we've worked
(05:26):
with books about, you know,family stress during the
holidays and things like thatthat's kind of a whole different
market, but also one that youhave to start with early, so
starting to think about whoyou're going after.
But in terms of selling yourbook as a gift, there's a lot of
fun things that you can do.
(05:47):
You could pair your book withswag.
You could have a two book deal,especially if you're wanting to
lure people off of Amazon andsell them.
You know, sell books on yourwebsite.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Right, that's a very good point.
I think that that's anotherelement that you need to
consider coming up with theideas, figuring out how long
it's going to take you toexecute.
Figuring out, I think, onething that gets missed a lot,
Penny especially.
You know, if it's not a holidaytopical book, if it's not a
holiday recipes or a, you know,a romance book set around
(06:26):
Christmas time, if it's notdirectly related to the holidays
but you think it would make agood gift, you really have to
get smart about deciding whothat would be a good gift for,
yeah, and you have to get yourmessaging right too.
So you know, maybe your messageis that it's great for your
girlfriend who's in a book club,or it's great for your friend
(06:47):
that you know is taking avacation over the holidays and
will be traveling.
You know things like that thatpersonalize it, really stand out
and catch people's attention.
When the holidays just makepeople kind of crazy in good and
bad ways, yeah, but that's onething that you have to remember
too is that getting someone'sattention during the holidays,
(07:08):
in the lead up, even a couplemonths before, becomes
increasingly, exponentiallyharder than any other time of
year because everybody is sodistracted.
So you really can't do just thenormal kind of marketing.
You really have to zero in onvery specific buyers and tailor
messages to those people.
(07:29):
It doesn't mean you can't havemore than one of those, but I
always see the most successfulones are are about really
narrowing in on who that personis in your life that that book
is for, because that's when thelight bulb goes off for people
and they go oh yeah, so-and-sowould love that.
So the more the thick you canget when you're pitching your
book as a holiday gift, thebetter.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
So and I think that if you want to get away, so
prepping your website is never abad idea, even if you want to
get away from.
I don't really want to sellstuff on my website, off my
website, which I don't blame you, because there's a whole, you
know, e-commerce backend andwhatnot.
Maybe you don't want to getbothered with that, but if you
do want to position your bookfor, let's say, gift guides
(08:12):
which we're going to talk aboutin a second and you want to get
more people to buy it off ofAmazon, definitely look at
increasing your book reviews,and and and.
July is a good time to startbecause you have plenty of time.
So increase your book reviewsbecause people like what other
people like and it's going to beeasier to get a sale if you
(08:35):
know people are.
There are some reviews on thebook and readers can see what
everything's about.
The other thing that Iencourage you to is we and we
get this a lot If you are again,you're focused on the Black
Friday or Cyber Monday market,whatever you want to do an ebook
promo for your book.
You got to book those early.
(08:55):
You've got to book those early.
We get people who come to usjust before Thanksgiving.
Hey, I want to do a postThanksgiving ebook promo.
It's like, well, we're talkingThanksgiving 12 months from now.
Because I just because they'reall, because they book up really
, really quickly, so because wehear this a lot, don't we, amy,
about you know?
And ebook promos are a greatway to get, especially when
(09:16):
people are in the mindset.
Now, like you know, november ishit and it's full on Christmas
everywhere and people are in thebuying mindset and doing an
ebook promo could be great, butyou've got to book those ahead
of time.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, absolutely.
And set up your book, both ads.
You don't have to do thosesuper far in advance, but again,
I'm a huge fan of not waitinguntil the last minute in general
really finding those refiningyour targets, again, the
messaging, the pitching, how youdo that is tied into all of
this.
So, along with your timing,make sure you keep your, your
pitching really refined, andthat counts for book club ads
(09:49):
and things like that as well.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, and then I think, if you are again, if
you're planning promotionsaround the holidays, schedule
your blog posts.
Start writing your blog posts,because you know we talk about
how busy everybody gets, butyou're also everybody, so you're
also somebody who's probablygoing to be very busy around the
holidays, maybe with traveling,now that people are traveling
again, et cetera.
So schedule your social mediaand your blog posts.
(10:13):
Just, you know, start to writethose.
Get those out of the way.
Get those, focus on those aheadof time, because if we, if you
get on top of November or evenOctober and everything just
starts happening, you mightforget the other piece of this
too.
And then we're going to talkabout gift guides in a minute,
but warming up your mailing list.
So if you have a mailing listand maybe you haven't like, oh,
(10:37):
I haven't really dedicated a lotof time to it If you're going
to do any kind of promotionsaround your book so we talked
about the hardcover, theautographed hardcover, maybe a
book with some swag, et ceterayou got to warm up your mailing
list.
Don't just expect to write themin November and say, hey, I
know you haven't heard from meall year, but I have this great
deal and here's what it is,because the response rate's
(10:59):
probably going to be fairly thin.
Um, just to you know, just kindof keep that in mind.
So, amy, we've had talked a lotabout gift guides and I know we
want to keep this mini-sode tothe mini-sode format.
I love gift guides.
Gift guides you can find them alot of times in harrow help a
reporter out dot com.
They start running themactually now and you can find
(11:21):
gift guides not just around forthe holidays but all year long,
and I've written a number ofarticles actually on gift guides
and you can search them on theweb.
But gift guides are great.
I mean we you and I share a lotof gift guides just for random
stuff throughout the the yearand holiday season especially.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Oh yeah, and I'm always it really the ones that
stand out to me are the onesthat are a little more personal.
Um, so I would say, yeah,obviously Harrow is a good one,
and just it sounds weird.
Good old fashioned Googlesearch, you know, and put on
your consumer hat, be the personthat you want to buy your book
(12:02):
and do some searches, the wayyour target market, your your
demographic searches for things,and that'll help give you a lot
of insight as well into who youneed to be reaching out to,
what kind of sites you need tobe reaching out to things like
that, because, again, you know,like Penny has said a lot of
these people, there's a lot ofmoney to be made around the
holidays and nobody else iswaiting until the last minute,
(12:25):
so that's another big factor inthis, too.
There are a lot of websitesthat are already developing, if
not wrapping up, their giftrecommendation posts for the
season.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, yeah, it's a really good time to start and
what you know?
Blogs are not the only outletfor that, but you can also go
out and you know, take a look atlike Buzzfeed.
Buzzfeed does a ton of giftguides every year.
Start to, you know, go, just gothrough the site.
Most of the gift guides fromprior years are probably still
(12:54):
up there.
So take a look and see whatthey do.
They do a ton.
As a matter of fact, they hadfour or five gift guides out
because we just passed AmazonPrime Day.
Think about also media outlets.
Now you're going to be a littlebit too late to get into actual
(13:15):
print magazines, but mostnational magazines have online
portals that you can pitch to aswell for gift guides and things
like that.
Gift guides are great andthey're usually you know.
Again, take a look at thedemographic that you're
targeting.
Make sure that it's right forthat market, like a kid's book
going to.
You know, good Housekeeping orthe Good Housekeeping Gift Guide
(13:37):
or Real Simple Magazine does aton of gift guides.
But online media is anotherreally really great way and you
can start early there.
They probably do, I mean, Iknow, like Buzzfeed does I don't
know 20, it seems like they do20 gift guides around.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Oh, they have it for everything and they really
refine it by demographic.
So, gift guide for the geekydad, gift guide for the foodie
dad, it's like wow.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, it's, it's, it's really, it's super, super
fun and, like I said, I justthink that it's.
It's a great way to um, it's agreat way to get some additional
exposure.
Gift guides are easy.
They're always looking forcontent.
You can go to Harrow, you can.
You could look up gift guides.
Uh, you can look up some onlinemedia and take a look at their
gift guides.
Buzzfeed is another really goodoutlet, but any of them really
(14:24):
are.
I mean, if you start tosubscribe, if you get Apple news
, they have a great app for thattoo and you can start to search
by gift guides and reallyreally get some ideas.
But before you do that, you gotto make sure that everything
else is lined up.
So make sure you have a goodlooking website.
Obviously, your book cover wetalk about book covers a lot
Polish.
Just start to polish yourcollateral materials.
(14:48):
Your Amazon page make sure youget lots of reviews, because the
holiday season, you can't youcan't wait too late to get out
there and pitch them.
Amy, any other thoughts to thisbefore we let everybody go?
No, and start working on theirwebsite and all the things I
know right when they startworking on all their homework.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
No, I mean, I think again, like you said, let's try
to keep it to a mini-sode format.
We've definitely written aboutthis in the past.
You know, penny, you wrote abook on holiday promotions.
I did.
I did write a book on holidaypromotions.
I did write a book on holidaypromotions.
I still and this is not only ashameless plug, but truly there
(15:30):
are.
I mean, it was 52 ways, quiteliterally 52 ways to sell more
books around the holidays, andisn't it?
99 cents for the ebook?
Yeah, do you recall?
I haven't, but I mean it's oneof those that, like you, really
can't afford not to have it onyour virtual bookshelf.
So, anybody listening to this,if you don't have it, grab it
because, again, not just ashameless plug there are, out of
(15:53):
the 52 ideas, I guarantee ahandful of those that you feel
totally comfortableincorporating and, honestly, now
is the time to start goingthrough that book and deciding
what you feel you can take onand what you're comfortable with
and what you can incorporateinto your you know, your website
and all your branding and yourmarketing plan and things like
that in the next few months, andso, really, it is a really
(16:13):
great inexpensive resource thatwill save you a lot of scrolling
on our blog well, and one ofthe other things that we don't
have the time to address on here, but I want to kind of allude
to it.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
That's in the book is talks about how to dress up
your social media to prep yourfollowers for thinking about
your book, or books as they're,you know, putting together their
holiday shopping list.
So there's a ton of informationthere.
Thanks for mentioning that, amy.
I really appreciate that.
Oh my gosh.
Well, thank you so much fortuning in.
(16:48):
This has been the mini-sode.
It's a little bit longer than amini-sode, but I thought it was
really important to addressmaking more sales around the
holiday and Christmas of Julyand I wish you all sales success
, lots of success on that.
And if you all sales success,lots of success on that.
And if I had, if you'relistening recently and I just
saw you on one of the manyclasses I'm teaching like seven
(17:09):
classes this week I know somecrazy number right.
So if you're just, if you're anew listener and you found us on
one of the classes that Itaught, welcome, welcome,
welcome.
Please go back and listen tosome of the older shows.
We have tons of information onthe podcast.
We've been doing this for twoyears and we all love.
We love reviews.
So wherever you listen topodcasts, please leave us a
(17:30):
review.
Thank you so much for listening.
Bye-bye.
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