Book Marketing Magic: Quick Tips to Grab Holiday Sales and Sell More Books!

by | Nov 20, 2017 | Book Marketing Basics

Reading Time: ( Word Count: )

Reading Time: 4 minutes

We all want to sell more books around Christmas, right? Whether it’s targeting Black Friday, Cyber Monday or the last-minute shoppers, this is one of the biggest times of the year for book sales and a great time to implement some fun and creative book marketing strategies! If you’re eager to capture some holiday sales but feel like you may have missed your window, take heart. There’s still time!

It used to be that trying to capture the Christmas market and sell more books, without a lot of ramp up, was tough. But more and more that’s changing. Shoppers are waiting until the last-minute, both because they’re just busy and also because many consumers know that the best deals often happen in the days or the week before Christmas. If you’re eager and ready to sell more books, here are a few points to consider.

Start with your current buyers

It’s always easier to sell more books to current customers first, so start there. If you have multiple books, or a new book – you’ll most definitely want to let them know via your mailing list. If you don’t have a mailing list, then you’ll want to start pushing your messages to your social media stream. You can offer specials in social media that could pull in buyers you may not be aware of.

Social Media Sales

While many of us often feel the burden of social media overload, which involves keeping up with the various accounts and adding fresh content, studies show that all of this effort is definitely worth it. Both Shop.org and BIGinsight found more than one-third of shoppers visit Facebook when researching products so pushing your message, specials, sales, and holiday extras on social media sites is a great way to gain attention and sell more books. But remember book marketing 101: don’t take on more than you can handle. If that means just having one social media site, then that’s what you should do.

Using Hashtags

It’s fairly easy to track keywords, especially on Twitter. I would suggest identifying your keywords and hashtags and start following them. Many times you’ll find trends like #HolidayRomance, if you’ve written a romance novel. Or something more newsworthy if your book is non-fiction. Trending topics on Twitter can be a great way to push your message out to a new audience and gather more book sales in time for Christmas. It’s also a good book marketing strategy just in general, to spark continues sales and tie your book into something that’s current and fresh.

e-Book campaigns

If you haven’t done an eBook campaign in a while, or even if you have – pushing eBook promotions are a great idea. You don’t have to do a freebie promotion, instead consider marking your book down by $1 or $2 instead. It’s a great way to sell more books, and even if most people prefer your paperback to your eBook, eBook promotions are still a great way to drive consumers to your book.

Dress up Your Book Pages

If you’re doing an eBook promo on one of your books, especially if it’s part of a series, be sure to mention it at the top of your Amazon book descriptions to help drive more book sales there.

Sell More Books From Your Website

If you’re trying to push more website sales, I urge you to consider a few things. First off, remember that all online sales are competing with Amazon so things like offering free shipping and gift wrapping could really help boost exposure and help you sell more books. Also, offer autographed copies of your book. Autographed copies make great gifts and people love that personal touch! Autographed books, in general are always a fun, book marketing.

Free shipping

I mentioned this in the earlier paragraph but it’s worth repeating. People love free shipping so offer it, even if it’s just a small window. So, for example, offer free shipping the week prior to Christmas.

BOGO

As a free incentive to boost sales, offer a BOGO on your books. Generally, it’s less pricey to do this with eBooks, but you could offer a free eBook for every print book purchased. Book marketing wise, BOGO is a fun strategy that, if used correctly, can really help to sell more books.

Free Gift with Purchase

It’s funny how much more cosmetics companies sell when they offer a free gift. You can do the same! Offer a free, fun canvas tote bag. You can often get these on sites like Zazzle for pretty cheap and customize them, too! Offer to send people a bag with a purchase off of your website, or forward their receipt from Amazon. A free gift with purchase, if done right, can really help you sell more books – even outside of the holiday season!

Unique Specials

Unique book marketing promotions can be a really fun way to engage your audience and sell more books during the holiday season. And any time of year, unique, timely offerings are a fantastic book marketing strategy. Consider some of these ideas to help spark sales:

  • Daily deals & Daily Gifts or Gift of the Day are always fun. It’s also easy to plan these out well in advance, too. If you do Daily Deals have fun with this, using terms like The 12 Days of Deals or Santa’s List of Daily Deals, etc.
  • Save now & save later: This is another fun one. Offer discounts at time of purchase and then coupons for January promotions, too.
  • Gifts by price point: This is something that really took off on Pinterest. You can identify the amount of money you want to spend and segment your items accordingly. This makes it really easy for shoppers to find what they want; be sure to use Pinterest for this since you’ll get some extra buzz just being on that website.

After Christmas Sales

Didn’t get what you wanted for Christmas? Many shoppers love these after Christmas sales and stores are spending a lot of time and effort pushing out inventory that didn’t sell during the main holiday shopping season. Post-holiday sales are a great way to drive more people to your store and more revenue to your pocket!

Keep in mind that the book marketing ideas I’ve mentioned here aren’t necessarily isolated to holiday sales. You can certainly use them anytime but deciding to key into the holiday market is never a bad idea. In fact, if you’ve never done a holiday push, this could help you create a strategy that you implement each year. Update your product, verbiage, and social media strategy as you go. If you didn’t capture the Black Friday or Cyber Monday market, take heart, there are still a lot of shopping days left to get your book out there and sell more books!

And finally, if you’re able to start planning earlier in the year, read more about how you can get a jumpstart on your holiday book sales here!

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *