20 Ways to Promote Your Book During the Holiday Season ‪ ‬ Novel Marketing

December is the biggest sales month for most authors because books make great gifts! So how can your holiday book promotion help your book become a go-to Christmas gift? 







But first…







Don’t Let Publishing Ruin Your Christmas















Before we talk about tactics, let’s discuss how we can keep holiday book promotion in the right place. I don’t want to add stress to an already stressful time of year. I believe the following strategies will help reduce your stress.







Take a Break







You can take a break from marketing to spend time with your family. If your book is good and already has a fan base, then people will still buy your book as a gift even if you do zero marketing. That said, more people will buy it as a gift if you remind them, but it’s ok to take a break if you need to.







For example, I will be taking a few weeks off podcasting so that I can spend time with my family. 







Promote Ahead of Time







Plan your holiday book promotion before the rush of the season. When you start promoting your books early in the Christmas season, you’ll have more time to enjoy your family as the holiday approaches. 







Put Marketing on Autopilot







Many marketing tactics can be scheduled in advance. The rest of the Novel Marketing episodes this month are scheduled to release while I’m “on holiday,” as they say in the UK. 







Create a Template







Once you’ve promoted your book through one Christmas season, you can use your marketing plan as a template for the next year. Much of your material can be used again. For example, you can reuse your emails and tweak them next year so that you don’t have to start from scratch.







For more time-saving tips, see my post How to Spend LESS Time Marketing Your Book.







If you’re ready to make a template you can follow or tweak for years to come, consider implementing the following strategies for your holiday book promotion.







#1 Make a Plan







Create a written marketing plan for your holiday book promotion season. I recommend breaking it into three phases: Prep, Promo, and Echo.   







Prep (Starts October 1)







In the preparation phase, you get things in order. You’ll draft your blog posts, gather your gift ideas, and write your emails. The goal is to put as much as possible on autopilot so that you can spend your holiday season baking cookies and playing scrabble. 







Only shoppers wait until the last minute. Sellers plan ahead. If you want to sell your book during the holiday shopping season, start thinking like a seller. 







Promo (Starts Black Friday)







The Christmas promo window in the US starts the day after Thanksgiving. Interestingly, countries like the UK and Canada also have Black Friday, even though they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Black Friday is a good starting point for your holiday book promotion in most English-speaking countries.







Echo (Starts December 26)







Holiday shopping happens in two waves. In the first wave, shoppers buy paperbacks and hardbacks because they’re easy to wrap and place under the tree. 







In the second wave, people buy books, ebooks, and audiobooks with the gift cards they received for Christmas.