Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast
Ready to supercharge your author journey? Join bestselling author and book marketing maven Penny Sansevieri and savvy publishing insider Amy Cornell for lively, no-nonsense conversations filled with smart strategies, creative inspiration, and publishing know-how you can actually use.
Whether you’re self-published, traditionally published, or somewhere in between, this podcast delivers real-world advice to help you sell more books, build your platform, and thrive in the ever-evolving publishing landscape. From clever promo hacks to critical industry insights, each episode is designed to move the needle on your success.
Fresh ideas. Actionable tips. Unfiltered talk.
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Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast
Christmas in July: Why Authors Need to Prep Now for Holiday Sales
The holiday season represents a golden opportunity for authors to boost book sales—but only for those who start planning early enough. In this strategic episode, we dig into why "Christmas in July" isn't just a retail concept but a vital timeframe for authors who want holiday marketing success.
We reveal the shocking truth about holiday marketing timelines: if you're waiting until November to plan your holiday book promotions, you're already months too late! Media outlets finalize gift guides during summer, promotional spots book up by early fall, and consumers need time to discover your book before making purchase decisions. This episode walks you through the essential preparations you need to make now to position your book effectively for holiday sales.
You'll learn the crucial distinction between marketing a holiday-themed book versus positioning any book as a gift, and why specific messaging matters ("perfect for your adventure-loving niece" resonates more than generic "great gift" language). We cover practical steps including website preparation, scheduling promotional content, booking eBook deals for Black Friday, building up reviews, and how to successfully pitch to holiday gift guides at outlets like Buzzfeed and major online magazines.
Whether you're planning to offer special holiday bundles, signed editions, book-plus-merchandise packages, or simply want more Amazon sales, the groundwork must begin now. Don't let another holiday season pass with disappointing sales—grab your marketing calendar and start implementing these proven strategies that have helped countless authors transform the holidays from a missed opportunity into their most profitable season.
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Hello, this is Penny Sansevierie and Amy Cornell and we are rerunning a very appropriate show. So it's a Christmas in July show and I think this was like three years ago that we did this show. It was super popular. If you are thinking about positioning your book for holiday sales, this is a not-to-be-missed show. So we thought that it was a really good time to rerun it and we hope that you are enjoying these show reruns. We would love your feedback on this new kind of thing that we're doing and thank you so much for tuning in and we'll see you next time. Bye-bye, hello, and welcome back to the mini-soda, the book marketing tips and author success podcast. This is Penny Sanseviery, with my awesome co-host, amy Cornell, and we are talking. I know that it's July and I know that y'all are in the middle of summer plans and all kinds of things, but we are going to talk about Christmas and holiday marketing and what's interesting is that this the origin story of this podcast.
Speaker 1:Amy and I have been wanting to do this for a while, but yesterday I was doing a webinar and somebody asked me if I have a Valentine's Day book, when should I start marketing that Valentine's Day book? Should I start it like the day before, the week before, and I always tell people take a cue from the consumer market. So as soon as Christmas is over and the New Year's decorations, I always find that actually personally depressing. I'm like, oh, christmas is over, but as soon as the New Year's decorations start, you know to kind of dwindle. The Valentine's Day stuff comes up right Second of January. You gotta start early. We so many I cannot tell you how many times we've had people contact us in November or after Thanksgiving we like, hey, I want to market my book for the holidays. I'm like, which holiday? Because it's not, because it's not going to be this holiday.
Speaker 1:So that was sort of the focus. And what I hope that you learn from this podcast is how to prepare, how to get ready. There's a reason that we call it Christmas in July and it's not just we, meaning Amy and myself, although obviously we are like trendsetters but the reason that we call it, that it's called Christmas in July is because any kind of marketing that you want to do for the holiday season you got to start now. And I'm not necessarily saying that you have to put up. You have to start advertising your holiday specials now, but you got to start prepping, and that's what we're talking about today. So, amy, do you want to kick this off?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. I love the point about prepping because you're so right. People come to us and I will say for what it's worth, because you know we are a book marketing company. If you do want to get help with your promotions around the holidays and things like that, you know it's the timing. You have to consider how people work and how quickly people can turn things around. I mean, penny, our team can work pretty quick and turn things around pretty quickly and prep for a campaign, but there is still a little time in there and that's another thing to keep in mind.
Speaker 2:That it's hard. You know, when you're figuring out your timeline it's like, well, okay, if you hire a company on this date, you kind of figure there's a very good chance a lot of the work won't start for at least a week, if not two. You know, even if they're moving fast because they need information from you, there's some brainstorming that needs to happen. That's very specific to your brand and your message and your genre, you know, if you want them to do a good job. So I think, along with your point, penny, about the timeline, you have to also think about that. You want to do some quality prep work as well with your team If you plan on hiring a team to help you with your holiday book marketing as well, right, Right, exactly, and I think you also have to figure out what you really want to accomplish.
Speaker 1:So, does your book tie into the holidays specifically, or is it a? Is it, is it a gift? Is it a great? Is it a great gift idea? And I think you delineate between the two because people say to me well, do you think my, my book is a good holiday gift? I'm like, well, I, I mean, books are always a good holiday gift, but the difference is, does it tie into the holidays per se or is it a gift?
Speaker 1:And I think that that's going to differentiate what you start to do. But the first piece of this is going to be your website. So it's good to start early because websites always take longer than you think they're going to take and start to think about are you going to want to do? Do you have a mailing list, right? Do you even want to bother with selling books off of your website? You might, right.
Speaker 1:Maybe you have a hardcover that has not been released yet and you want to release it in time for the holiday season, and it's going to be a signed, autographed hardcover version of your book and that's going to be on the store on your website.
Speaker 1:You better start prepping that now, because if you contact a website person in November, they're going to be, they're going to say, well, sayonara until February, because they're they're. You know what I mean they're, they're just they're, they're, they're going to be, they're going to be busy. And I think that, by the same token, if you want to pitch you, so if your book is holiday topical right, so we've worked with books about, you know, family stress during the holidays and things like that that's kind of a whole different market, but also one that you have to start with early, so starting to think about who you're going after. But in terms of selling your book as a gift, there's a lot of fun things that you can do. You could pair your book with swag. You could have a two book deal, especially if you're wanting to lure people off of Amazon and sell them. You know, sell books on your website.
Speaker 2:Right, that's a very good point. I think that that's another element that you need to consider coming up with the ideas, figuring out how long it's going to take you to execute. Figuring out, I think, one thing that gets missed a lot, Penny especially. You know, if it's not a holiday topical book, if it's not a holiday recipes or a, you know, a romance book set around Christmas time, if it's not directly related to the holidays but you think it would make a good gift, you really have to get smart about deciding who that would be a good gift for, yeah, and you have to get your messaging right too. So you know, maybe your message is that it's great for your girlfriend who's in a book club, or it's great for your friend that you know is taking a vacation over the holidays and will be traveling. You know things like that that personalize it, really stand out and catch people's attention.
Speaker 2:When the holidays just make people kind of crazy in good and bad ways, yeah, but that's one thing that you have to remember too is that getting someone's attention during the holidays, in the lead up, even a couple months before, becomes increasingly, exponentially harder than any other time of year because everybody is so distracted. So you really can't do just the normal kind of marketing. You really have to zero in on very specific buyers and tailor messages to those people. It doesn't mean you can't have more than one of those, but I always see the most successful ones are are about really narrowing in on who that person is in your life that that book is for, because that's when the light bulb goes off for people and they go oh yeah, so-and-so would love that. So the more the thick you can get when you're pitching your book as a holiday gift, the better.
Speaker 1:So and I think that if you want to get away, so prepping your website is never a bad idea, even if you want to get away from. I don't really want to sell stuff on my website, off my website, which I don't blame you, because there's a whole, you know, e-commerce backend and whatnot. Maybe you don't want to get bothered with that, but if you do want to position your book for, let's say, gift guides which we're going to talk about in a second and you want to get more people to buy it off of Amazon, definitely look at increasing your book reviews, and and and. July is a good time to start because you have plenty of time. So increase your book reviews because people like what other people like and it's going to be easier to get a sale if you know people are. There are some reviews on the book and readers can see what everything's about. The other thing that I encourage you to is we and we get this a lot If you are again, you're focused on the Black Friday or Cyber Monday market, whatever you want to do an ebook promo for your book.
Speaker 1:You got to book those early. You've got to book those early. We get people who come to us just before Thanksgiving. Hey, I want to do a post Thanksgiving ebook promo. It's like, well, we're talking Thanksgiving 12 months from now. Because I just because they're all, because they book up really, really quickly, so because we hear this a lot, don't we, amy, about you know? And ebook promos are a great way to get, especially when people are in the mindset. Now, like you know, november is hit and it's full on Christmas everywhere and people are in the buying mindset and doing an ebook promo could be great, but you've got to book those ahead of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And set up your book, both ads. You don't have to do those super far in advance, but again, I'm a huge fan of not waiting until the last minute in general really finding those refining your targets, again, the messaging, the pitching, how you do that is tied into all of this. So, along with your timing, make sure you keep your, your pitching really refined, and that counts for book club ads and things like that as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then I think, if you are again, if you're planning promotions around the holidays, schedule your blog posts. Start writing your blog posts, because you know we talk about how busy everybody gets, but you're also everybody, so you're also somebody who's probably going to be very busy around the holidays, maybe with traveling, now that people are traveling again, et cetera. So schedule your social media and your blog posts. Just, you know, start to write those. Get those out of the way. Get those, focus on those ahead of time, because if we, if you get on top of November or even October and everything just starts happening, you might forget the other piece of this too. And then we're going to talk about gift guides in a minute, but warming up your mailing list. So if you have a mailing list and maybe you haven't like, oh, I haven't really dedicated a lot of time to it If you're going to do any kind of promotions around your book so we talked about the hardcover, the autographed hardcover, maybe a book with some swag, et cetera you got to warm up your mailing list. Don't just expect to write them in November and say, hey, I know you haven't heard from me all year, but I have this great deal and here's what it is, because the response rate's probably going to be fairly thin. Um, just to you know, just kind of keep that in mind.
Speaker 1:So, amy, we've had talked a lot about gift guides and I know we want to keep this mini-sode to the mini-sode format. I love gift guides. Gift guides you can find them a lot of times in harrow help a reporter out dot com. They start running them actually now and you can find gift guides not just around for the holidays but all year long, and I've written a number of articles actually on gift guides and you can search them on the web. But gift guides are great. I mean we you and I share a lot of gift guides just for random stuff throughout the the year and holiday season especially.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, and I'm always it really the ones that stand out to me are the ones that are a little more personal. Um, so I would say, yeah, obviously Harrow is a good one, and just it sounds weird. Good old fashioned Google search, you know, and put on your consumer hat, be the person that you want to buy your book and do some searches, the way your target market, your your demographic searches for things, and that'll help give you a lot of insight as well into who you need to be reaching out to, what kind of sites you need to be reaching out to things like that, because, again, you know, like Penny has said a lot of these people, there's a lot of money to be made around the holidays and nobody else is waiting until the last minute, so that's another big factor in this, too. There are a lot of websites that are already developing, if not wrapping up, their gift recommendation posts for the season.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's a really good time to start and what you know? Blogs are not the only outlet for that, but you can also go out and you know, take a look at like Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed does a ton of gift guides every year. Start to, you know, go, just go through the site. Most of the gift guides from prior years are probably still up there. So take a look and see what they do. They do a ton. As a matter of fact, they had four or five gift guides out because we just passed Amazon Prime Day.
Speaker 1:Think about also media outlets. Now you're going to be a little bit too late to get into actual print magazines, but most national magazines have online portals that you can pitch to as well for gift guides and things like that. Gift guides are great and they're usually you know. Again, take a look at the demographic that you're targeting. Make sure that it's right for that market, like a kid's book going to. You know, good Housekeeping or the Good Housekeeping Gift Guide or Real Simple Magazine does a ton of gift guides. But online media is another really really great way and you can start early there. They probably do, I mean, I know, like Buzzfeed does I don't know 20, it seems like they do 20 gift guides around.
Speaker 2:Oh, they have it for everything and they really refine it by demographic. So, gift guide for the geeky dad, gift guide for the foodie dad, it's like wow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's, it's really, it's super, super fun and, like I said, I just think that it's. It's a great way to um, it's a great way to get some additional exposure. Gift guides are easy. They're always looking for content. You can go to Harrow, you can. You could look up gift guides. Uh, you can look up some online media and take a look at their gift guides. Buzzfeed is another really good outlet, but any of them really are.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you start to subscribe, if you get Apple news, they have a great app for that too and you can start to search by gift guides and really really get some ideas. But before you do that, you got to make sure that everything else is lined up. So make sure you have a good looking website. Obviously, your book cover we talk about book covers a lot Polish. Just start to polish your collateral materials. Your Amazon page make sure you get lots of reviews, because the holiday season, you can't you can't wait too late to get out there and pitch them. Amy, any other thoughts to this before we let everybody go?
Speaker 1:No, and start working on their website and all the things I know right when they start working on all their homework.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, I think again, like you said, let's try to keep it to a mini-sode format. We've definitely written about this in the past. You know, penny, you wrote a book on holiday promotions. I did. I did write a book on holiday promotions. I did write a book on holiday promotions.
Speaker 2:I still and this is not only a shameless plug, but truly there are. I mean, it was 52 ways, quite literally 52 ways to sell more books around the holidays, and isn't it? 99 cents for the ebook? Yeah, do you recall? I haven't, but I mean it's one of those that, like you, really can't afford not to have it on your virtual bookshelf.
Speaker 2:So, anybody listening to this, if you don't have it, grab it because, again, not just a shameless plug there are, out of the 52 ideas, I guarantee a handful of those that you feel totally comfortable incorporating and, honestly, now is the time to start going through that book and deciding what you feel you can take on and what you're comfortable with and what you can incorporate into your you know, your website and all your branding and your marketing plan and things like that in the next few months, and so, really, it is a really great inexpensive resource that will save you a lot of scrolling on our blog well, and one of the other things that we don't have the time to address on here, but I want to kind of allude to it.
Speaker 1:That's in the book is talks about how to dress up your social media to prep your followers for thinking about your book, or books as they're, you know, putting together their holiday shopping list. So there's a ton of information there. Thanks for mentioning that, amy. I really appreciate that. Oh my gosh. Well, thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1:This has been the mini-sode. It's a little bit longer than a mini-sode, but I thought it was really important to address making more sales around the holiday and Christmas of July and I wish you all sales success, lots of success on that. And if you all sales success, lots of success on that. And if I had, if you're listening recently and I just saw you on one of the many classes I'm teaching like seven classes this week I know some crazy number right. So if you're just, if you're a new listener and you found us on one of the classes that I taught, welcome, welcome, welcome. Please go back and listen to some of the older shows. We have tons of information on the podcast. We've been doing this for two years and we all love. We love reviews. So wherever you listen to podcasts, please leave us a review. Thank you so much for listening. Bye-bye.
