by Diana Urban (from BookBub October 30, 2019 Reprinted with permission)
5. Launch a holiday-themed anthology with other authors
If you prefer the short story approach, you can still join forces with other authors! Consider rallying friends in your genre to create an anthology where each of you contributes a holiday-themed short story.
Seven bestselling romance authors joined forces to create a holiday anthology called Naughty or Nice. We love how they listed each contributing author on “The Naughty List.”
6. Send a holiday-themed email to subscribers
Of course, launching a holiday-themed book or box set isn’t necessary to drive book sales during the holiday season. By sending festive emails to your subscribers with clever promotions, you can boost sales and engagement among readers looking for gifts — both for loved ones, and for themselves!
Glynnis Campbell sent her subscribers an email positioning her books as gift ideas. She organized her email by her books’ price points, so it would be easy for recipients to find the perfect gift in their price range! See the full email here.
Cheyanne Young emailed subscribers offering her book The Breakup Support Group as a gift if they completed a Google form. In the email, Cheyanne encouraged readers to leave a review (but noted that it wasn’t required). So while this free giveaway might not have resulted in an immediate revenue gain, garnering more reviews can help lead to long-term gains. Also note the use of cute emojis in the subject line!
7. Send readers a joint book gift
Consider banding together with other authors to send each of your mailing lists one free book from each of you. These don’t need to be holiday-themed books! This way you’ll give your readers a wonderful gift for the holidays, and you reach new audiences at the same time.
Corinne Michaels emailed her subscribers three days before Christmas offering one of her books, one of Kendall Ryan’s books, and one of J.S. Scott’s books for free.
8. Run a holiday-themed BookBub Ads campaign
BookBub Ads provide a great way to gain book visibility to a targeted audience during a specific date range. Advertisers can target their own fans or fans of comparable authors, and use any creative they’d like — sometimes opting for holiday-themed creative.
Here are some great ads our advertisers created to promote their holiday-themed books between mid-October and late December:
Again, you don’t need to promote a holiday-themed book to run a holiday-themed ad. After all, any book can be a gift! Here are some great examples of BookBub Ads for non-holiday books that positioned themselves as gifts by using Christmas imagery or a festive color scheme.
9. Design a limited-time holiday-themed box set cover
Julianne MacLean created a special Christmas edition of her existing The Color of Heaven box set, including a bonus Christmas-themed novel. She priced the holiday-themed set at $6.99 for the duration of the campaign. Readers got a great deal, since they would have had to pay $13.97 to purchase every book individually.
Here’s one of the BookBub Ads Julianne ran, where she targeted readers who expressed interest in a comparable author:
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.