5 Tips for Fitting Book Marketing into Your Summer Schedule

by Penny Sansevieri | Jul 13, 2021 | Bestseller Essentials, Book Marketing Basics

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The world is getting busy again, but that doesn’t mean that you get a free pass on your summer book marketing. It’s hard to keep it going when there are so many fun things happening now. But with a bit of strategic book promotion planning, you can dedicate one afternoon to plan out your summer author platform so you can take some time off and enjoy this new, wide-open world.

One thing that’s important to remember as you’re planning your summer promotions is that, unless you have a new title releasing (or have just released a book), you don’t need to create big, robust campaigns. Plot out a few thoughtful strategies that can carry your book(s) through the summer months and keep them in front of your readers!

Plan your Pricing Promotions

Pricing promotions are fun things and an easy way to boost your book visibility. You can plan one for July and one for August, spacing them a month or so apart is never a bad idea. If you have a series of books that you’re promoting, or a large backlist of books, you can plan to rotate these books in and out of promotions.

And here’s a pro-tip: even in non-summer markets, I love planning eBook promotions as a way to keep books bouncing up the Amazon charts. It’s also great for your Amazon algorithm, too, so keep that in mind!

Update your Amazon Author Central with Summer-centric Language

We discussed this on our recent podcast, about positing your book as a summer-read (if you haven’t listened to that show yet, I’ll post the link below). Whether you are promoting a summer read, or a craft book, or something else with a summer tie-in like certain cookbooks, it’s a nice way to nudge your book in front of readers and highlight your author platform.

For example:

• Includes Great Summer BBQ Recipes!
Or
• A Great, Light Beach Read!
Or
• Keep Your Kids Busy This Summer with These Fun Crafts!

You get the idea! It’s a great way to remind readers how your book can fit in with their summer plans. It’s also nice to add thoughtful details to your book page, because it reminds readers you’re paying attention!

A Book Marketing Winner: Summer-focused Amazon Ads

I so rarely see authors doing this, but it’s such a great idea: create one or two summer-focused ads. Whatever fun, summer tie-in language you used on your book page can also be used in these ads. You can do one or two ads using the same language.

I’d recommend doing a product placement ad and matching your book with similar-type summer read title, craft books, cook books, or whatever your summer tie-in is. Also, plan to run keyword ads because you can easily use some of these summer or vacation centric keywords, too!

Plan out All your Social Content

I love doing this, regardless of the season actually. If you have an afternoon and can plan out your social media content around whatever you have going on (promos or whatever) it’s a great way to build your content and set it and forget it.

So, you can take some vacation days and not have to worry about updating your social content. And here’s another pro-tip: once you start planning your social content in advance, you’ll be surprised how easy this is and you’ll be tempted to do this all the time!

Support Limited Time Discounts with Focused Ads

I love doing Bookbub ads for limited time discounts on a Kindle book, in fact I never run Bookbub ads on a book that isn’t discounted even slightly. And I’m not talking about the Bookbub daily deals, I’m speaking of their ads, which you can run any time, in any newsletter. You could even create a special Amazon ad set that you schedule around your price promo to run for a day or two to help boost your book visibility.

Planning ahead so you can take some much-needed time off is a great way to keep your book momentum and author platform going, while not spending hours in front of your computer. I love this strategy even during non-summer months. Planning a few key things that you do on a rotating basis is a great way to keep the book marketing machine fed without having to spend tons of time each day wondering what you’ll do next.

We have a great (and free) book marketing planner that will help you get started with any promotion you’re wanting to plot out. You can grab it here!