by Diana Urban (from BookBub October 30, 2019 Reprinted with permission)
10. Run giveaways with book bundle prizes.
Authors and publishers alike often run generous giveaways during the holiday season, bundling a big stack of books as the prize. Maggie Hall and 15 other YA authors once ran a giveaway offering 16 signed books on Tumblr. This was a great way for each author to get cross-promotion exposure to the other authors’ audiences, since each author promoted the giveaway to their own followers.
Similarly, HarperCollins UK ran a gift-themed giveaway and included many of the books published under their imprint.
11. Create a holiday gift guide (or pitch a book for one)
Shopping for the holidays can be overwhelming, so consider providing your readers with a holiday gift guide. This could be a blog post, a social-media post, or even a downloadable PDF on your website. Include your own books and fellow authors’ books, or even create different guides by theme (e.g. “Holiday Gift Guide for Thriller Lovers”).
Simon & Schuster created a holiday gift guide in the form of a 30-second video featuring books from their catalogue!
Sejal Badani recommended two books from her backlist as holiday gifts on Instagram, using hashtags like #giftideas and #seasonsgreetings to boost discoverability.
You can also see if influencers or publications with a relevant reach already compile annual gift guides for their readerships, and pitch your book for inclusion.
12. Run a longer promotion based on the holiday length
Since some of the winter holidays span several days (e.g. eight days of Hanukkah, 12 days of Christmas), they provide a great opportunity to run a multi-day themed promotion around a book, whether the book is holiday-themed or not.
Here’s a great promotion from Scholastic, during which they ran a giveaway from one of their children’s holiday books, Clifford Celebrates Hanukkah. They gave away eight copies for each of the eight days of Hanukkah!
A few years ago, Debbie Macomber launched a coordinated promotion around the 12 days of Christmas; of course, it helped that her new book’s title was Twelve Days of Christmas. First she launched a “Twelve Weeks of Giveaways” social-media campaign in which she ran a weekly giveaway leading up to Christmas.
She also ran a “Twelve Days of Kindness” campaign in which 12 bloggers—one a day for 12 days—reviewed her book, described a small act of kindness they had performed, and ran a giveaway. Here’s an example post from Book Bento Box:
13. Host a holiday-themed online party
Some of the most creative holiday-themed marketing campaigns don’t focus on book sales; rather, they help build awareness for an author and cater to loyal fans. Jennifer Niven hosted a holiday-themed Twitter Q&A a couple of days before Christmas. She positioned the event as a holiday party and created a hashtag so fans could easily follow along, and she promoted the event weeks in advance on multiple social-media channels, including Instagram:
During the Twitter Q&A, Jennifer provided her answers by quote-retweeting the questions:
At the conclusion of the party, Jennifer gave heartfelt thanks to all of her fans who participated in the Q&A.
Diana Urban is the industry marketing manager at BookBub and was previously the head of conversion marketing at HubSpot. She’s an expert in inbound marketing and lead generation. Diana is also an author of dark, twisty thrillers, including All Your Twisted Secrets (HarperTeen, 3/17/2020). Follow her on Twitter at @DianaUrban.