How to Sell Books During the Holidays in 2020

The holidays are almost upon us, and if you're a savvy book marketer, you're already wondering how you can sell more books. This year. Less people will be heading out to the stores, there'll be fewer craft fairs, and there's going to be fewer holiday events. So what's an author to do if you're wondering how to sell books during the holiday season? Well, this video is absolutely for you. Hey there. I'm Julie, the book broad from Book Launchers. We're your professional self publishing team helping you write, publishers, publish and promote a nonfiction book that will help you have a huge impact on your readers. And done right will help you grow your brand, build your business, and make you money. The best part? You keep all rights and royalties. It's been a rocky year, but the good thing about people staying home a lot more is that they're buying and reading a whole lot more books. Media consumption is up, way up. And here's the part you need to focus on. Just because people are much less likely to go into a store doesn't mean they are less likely to buy books. It just means your goal this year is a little different than past years because your goal is to get your book in front of their screen this year. There's one other trend to focus on local buying and supporting local. So today I have five points. Ideas considerations. Okay, I don't know what they are, but I have five of them and they're all things that are going to help you sell more books this year and every year, frankly, but especially in this crazy pandemic year. So let's get into them. You can tell me afterwards whether they were points, tips to dos ideas, or whatever. Okay? All right. Number one, delivery problems all year long has people thinking early buying. My mom had 80% of her gift buying done before Halloween. I got my Christmas present early. Maybe I'll get something extra this year. We bought our 3 year old a pedal bike and bought it super early too because we were worried about getting it in time. The hot sheet from Jane Friedman, my Go to Resources for Staying on top of the Publishing Industry, said that retail expects early shopping will be a trend this year as gift buyers try to get out in front of any supply chain problems. So what's this mean for you? Start your holiday book promotions right now. If you're thinking of doing an ebook deal to increase sales on Amazon or to boost your print book, awesome. Do it as soon as you can. If you aren't already running Amazon ads or bookbub ads now is the time to get that started. If you have an email newsletter, making them an offer to buy 3 copies of your book as a gift to for their friends and family in exchange for you giving them something in return is always an excellent promotion idea, so get that rolling today. Number two Connect with your local bookstore and see if there's something you can do together. Consumers want to support local right now it's a very strong trend. Many are clicking to order online and the do many are clicking. Many buyers are clicking online to order and then doing a curbside pickup. This can be a great opportunity for you to do a virtual event with your local bookstore to give them some content and drive some sales through their store. The store can benefit because people may buy other things from their store and you can benefit by selling books and drawing attention to you as a local author. Maybe you offer the bookstore's audience a workshop or a reading from your book. Just try to consider what their customers might find valuable when you pitch this to the store and be sure to do some things to help promote this. Don't expect the store to do all the promotion for the event. Posters in some places locally, few Facebook ads or something very targeted to your local market in your email list could go a long way to getting a handful more people to participate, which helps you and the store. 3. Amazon's gonna matter a lot for the holiday buying season this year. Make sure your Amazon page and your book page is in tip top shape so you're set up to show up for the buying opportunities. I highly recommend running Amazon ads during the holiday season, but just a heads up that you can expect ad costs to be pretty high for Cyber Monday and Black Friday and probably the week before Christmas. That's when people are in a buying frenzy, but advertising more heavily other days around that might be more cost effective for most authors. Ultimately, make sure your book descriptions are as great as they can can be and keyword rich. End your book description with the reason why someone should buy and buy today. Having a clear call to action that is Buy this book for the bird enthusiast or for the football fan. You can always edit that later, but telling them to buy it as a gift and who it's a great gift for is smart. And if you don't have at least 25 reviews right now, turn on the jets to get those reviews. And if you can encourage reviewers to say in their review who the book is a perfect gift for bonus points. 4. Update your author website and your social media to promote your book as a great gift. Get creative with the imagery on your website and social media. You could even create suggested gift baskets that include your book. For example, if you're Pat Watson, I don't know what that was. If you're Pat Watson, author of Tactical Lock Picking, maybe you have links to buy your book and some of your recommended lock picking tools package that together. If you're Martin Holland, author of the Profit Problem, they say I make money so why don't I have any? You may want to feature the book for the business owner and include two other great business books as a potential package gift. Or make a list of the top 10 books to buy for that X person in your life and voila. Your book of course is listed on that bold it. Most importantly, be a little in the face of your audience to let them know that your book makes a great gift. When my next book Self Publish and Succeed is ready for you all, I'll be shouting it out that this is the perfect gift for anyone you know that is thinking of writing a book or that should write about or that should write a book. This is coming in February 2021. By the way. It's all about the no boringbooks way to write a nonfiction book that sells. I can't wait to share it with you. If you like these videos, you are going to love that book. Also, I know I already mentioned your email newsletter when I said start your promotions early, but this is a great place to mention it again because this is going to be the most effective way to sell books. 5. Remember that when Christmas is over, your book promotions should not be done. In fact, as authors we have the wonderful opportunity of selling selling folks ebooks to fill up their brand new E reading device. So don't stop because Christmas is done. Remember those days and weeks after Christmas are when people are going to be shopping for ebooks and even audiobooks to load up for the year. This year is a special kind of year, hopefully a one of a kind year that we only experience once in our lifetime. But that doesn't mean there aren't some glorious opportunities for you to have an impact with your book and sell a whole lot more of them. I'm super curious, what are you gonna do this year to sell books over the holiday season? Let's share ideas in the comments below. And when you comment the day a video is released, you'll be entered to win some sweet noboringbookswag like this fabulous no Boringbooks mug and this oh so soft journal. New videos every Tuesday and Friday. Make sure you catch everyone by subscribing to the channel and turning those notifications on. On. You're lovely to hang out with. Would you like to hang out for a little bit more? Okay, good. This is a video I did last year on selling books in the holidays. The ideas are still valuable and might spark some cool new concepts for you this year. Or YouTube really thinks you're going to like this one. So go ahead, click on the one that you want to see next. I'm excited to see you there.