Create Holiday Promotions for Nonfiction Books Without Spending Money on Ads

Get ready everyone. We’re entering the eating season. Beginning with Halloween candy, rolling through Thanksgiving, Holiday parties and ending with New Year’s Day when several of my friends host open houses there’s a constant stream of food.

Before we all fall into a food coma, let’s think about planning a holiday promotion for your book. Whether you’re already published or still writing, there’s an opportunity to make sales and build buzz.
First of all, set a goal for what you want to accomplish over the holiday season. You may want to get more people on your mailing list, sell more books, or get more reviews.

You’ll notice that none of the tips include purchasing ads and most focus on adding value as opposed to lowering prices. The price of books is usually in the ‘impulse buy’ price range. People don’t have to think too hard to spend $20 or $25 on a book. Think carefully before you spend ad dollars during the holidays. There are so many big companies spending money during this period, it will be difficult for your ad to get much visibility.

A few of the tips reference your Dream 100. This concept was created by Chet Holmes, author of The Ultimate Sales Machine who recommends you put together a list of 100 people you want to do business with and systematically build a relationship with them.

For Both Published and Aspiring Authors:

• Keep in mind that you should already be communicating on a regular basis with your fans and followers through social media and email. If you haven’t been posting, publishing a newsletter or keeping in touch on at least a semi-regular basis, I don’t recommend starting with a sales pitch. You haven’t built a relationship with your followers. Instead, use the ideas that focus on getting people to follow you on social media and sign up for your mailing list.
• People are already in the mood to shop on Black Friday and Cyber Monday so take advantage of that by creating a special deal related to your book. If you’re not published, you can ask for pre-orders and if you’re already published you can put together a special holiday offer.
• The week after Christmas people are looking for ways to spend the gift cards they received. Now is the time to post on social media and send out emails to your list with an offer to purchase.
• New Year’s Day and throughout the month of January. If your book lends itself to a new start or a new goal, you have plenty of opportunities to tie your book to New Year’s resolutions your target audience may already be thinking about.

• Are you a patron of a local business that normally sends out a promotional calendar each year? Talk with them about sending out signed copies of your book instead. You can get stickers made with the business owner’s logo and website to put on the front cover so that the promotion is tied to them. Offer the books to the business owner at a ‘wholesale price’ that covers the printing cost and a small profit but is less than the retail price. If your book isn’t published, you can still use this idea by creating gift certificates the business owner can include with their calendar with a pre-order price promotion.
• Another idea for partnering with a local business is to send a gift certificate for your book in their holiday greeting cards. This can be a very attractive low risk promotion for the business owner because there’s no upfront cost. They will only buy the book from you if their client redeems the gift certificate.
• Find a local gift basket business in your area and put together a themed gift basket that includes your book. You can sell the baskets on your website, send them as Thank You/Holiday gifts, or send them to your dream 100 prospects.
• Some hashtags to use on social media: #Christmasshopping, #ChristmasGiftIdeas, #BlackFriday, #CyberMonday, #StockingStuffer
• When sending emails, don’t ever automatically add someone to your list without first asking permission. You run the risk of your email being marked as spam and getting your account banned by your email service. Not to mention, it annoys people which is the opposite of what you want to do.

Get More book reviews

• Send a free eBook in exchange for an honest review. Anyone who writes an honest review during your holiday promotion can send you the name and email of a friend who will then receive the eBook version of your book. The simplest way to send the eBook is to upload your pdf file to a file sharing service such as DropBox or Google Drive. Then create a shareable link that you can send via email.  If you’re worried about unauthorized copying of your eBook file one popular solution to investigate is e-junkie.com.

Expand Your Tribe

• Create some holiday themed graphics with inspirational quotes or quotes from your book. In the captions always include an invitation to sign up for your mailing list with the appropriate link.
• Share and comment on interesting articles and industry news that tie your topic to the holidays. It will reinforce your visibility as an expert in the industry.
• A variation on the tip above is to write blog posts that tie your topic to the holidays. Post on your own website or query other bloggers to write a guest post.
• You should already be following potential partners, suppliers, and your dream 100 clients on social media. Retweet, share, and comment on their posts and tag them as appropriate. It will give other people who follow them visibility to you and they just might follow or subscribe, expanding your tribe.
• Give your books away. Some authors are reluctant to give their books away because they feel they’re losing a sale but I’ve found that the books I’ve given away have either generated more sales or gotten clients for my consulting business. The author cost of your book will average five dollars. I guarantee you can’t purchase any more impactful marketing tool for that price!
• Make it easy for people to follow you. Have a subscribe box in a prominent place on your website and links/icons to all of your social media profiles.

Sell More Books

• Create a holiday gift guide for your target audience. For example, I created a gift guide for writers which includes my book as one of the options. If you’re on Amazon, it can be as simple as creating an idea list. You can then share a link to the list in an email to your subscribers and on social media. Click here to see my Gifts for Writers List and Click here for instructions on how to create your own idea list.
• Host a more casual and fun book signing at your favorite hair or nail salon or barbershop. Other fun places to hold an informal book signing are your local coffee shop or sandwich shop. These signings don’t require a lot of advance planning and it’s easier to get permission from the business owners. Announce the details on social media and you’re good to go!
• Create a special holiday bundle perfect for gift giving and offer it at a special price. Include a signed copy of your book and a book mark. Package those items with something appropriate to your subject or to the holiday such as gourmet chocolates or holiday cookies or gourmet coffee. For something even more unusual, visit Etsy.com and search for custom book cover jewelry. There are several vendors who will take your book cover and turn it into a locket or bracelet.

Get More Pre-orders

• Update your website with a pre-order page and include an incentive for people to purchase for holiday giving. For example, your book may not be published until Spring but you can create a gift certificate that purchasers can download and give to their recipient. If they purchase in advance, they will also receive something available only during the pre-launch. Some ideas are a special worksheet or special tip sheet with ideas that aren’t included in the book, or a webinar for purchasers going more in depth on your topic.
• Offer a free eBook with pre-order of the print version.
• Some businesses can write off books as education expenses on their tax returns. Selling them a gift certificate for your upcoming book can be a win-win. They get to claim the expense for this year and you get dollars to help defray the cost of publishing.

Now that you have lots of ideas to consider, choose one or more to implement. Even though this post is geared toward holiday promotions, with a few tweaks all of them can be used on a regular basis. For example, instead of a holiday promotion use them for Mother’s Day or for an industry related anniversary. To find monthly anniversaries and fun holidays one of my favorite sources is brownielocks.com

If you need some additional help putting together your holiday promotion plan, sign up for a strategy session with me.