The holidays are coming, along with thousands of book-buying customers for your work. Now is the best time to break out your creative book marketing ideas to touch base with more readers. Here are 12 holiday-themed book promotion ideas for celebrating the season while catching more readers' eyes.
- Donate one week's proceeds to charity. Advertise this for weeks in advance on your website, Author Central page, Facebook feed and everywhere else you post. The increased book rank and resulting good will can more than make up for the loss of royalties.
- Host a reader cookbook! Get your readers involved by asking them to submit recipes your main characters might cook. When all the recipes are collected, turn them into a giveaway booklet for your fans as a holiday gift.
- Create gift basket ideas featuring your book. If you've written a book on container gardening, suggest your book along with gardening tools and seeds. For a romance reader, the perfect basket might be a basket filled with cocoa or tea, a mug, and a copy of your book on top.
- Create an indie author's holiday bundle. Have each author write a short holiday-themed story connected to their current works, or make standalone shorts celebrating the season. If you write non-fiction, put together a group of holiday-themed chapters. Sell the bundle at a deep discount, and include links to everyone's work in each book.
- Post "12 Days of Your Book" on social media. Come up with 12 topics that tie in with your book niche such as play lists, recipes, photos or flash fiction. Make your readers eager to read your website the next day to see what happens.
- Make package deals to make buying sweeter. Bundle together multiple stories, offer to give a story to a friend if your reader buys one for herself, or make virtual subscription cards you can "punch" each time someone buys one of your books.
- Partner with local stores. Talk hardware stores to stock copies of your woodworking book at the front counter, or your crochet pattern book in local yarn stores. Many shop owners are happy to feature local artists. Sell enough during the holidays and you might even get a signing gig for next year.
- Write a holiday story featuring the main characters in your most popular book or series. Make it a short piece and give it away to newsletter subscribers or put it on InstaFreebie and post the code on social media.
- Offer free gift wrapping for readers who buy your physical books, or offer to send book-related swag to people who buy your ebooks as gifts. Make sure the paper and swag connect with your book, and don't forget the personalized gift tag.
- Decorate your newsletters and other email. Give every correspondence a bit of holiday cheer by designing a holiday-themed version of your logo, or using one of the holiday templates offered by you email list provider.
- Give the gift of reading. Host a giveaway for your books and for Amazon gift cards. Everyone can use more books, and a giveaway helps to put everyone in the holiday spirit.
- Close up shop. Plan a couple of days off to recharge your energy and imagination. Set up a big blowout sale and celebration right before your shut-down, set your email responders to let people know you'll be out of touch, and turn off the computer. Spend some time celebrating with your families. If you're like most writers, you've spent a lot of time working this past year and you deserve a break.
Keep the Faith and May the Force be with You!