How Can You Sell More Books at Christmas?

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.

Related Posts:

How to Improve Your Ebook Sales at Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and iTunes
High Level vs Low Level Book Promotion Techniques
Trading Excerpts with Other Authors in the Back Matter of Your Ebook