The Publisher Perspective: December 2021

by Jay Hartman

Q: With the holiday season here, I want to make sure I’m promoting all of my books to get the most sales possible. What’s the most effective way to do that? – S.L, Syracuse, NY

A: What’s the most effective way of promoting all of your titles to get the highest return in a three-week period?

Simple answer: you don’t. What should you do? Read on.

Back in the earlier days of the ebook industry, it was pretty easy to get your titles noticed by readers because there weren’t a whole lot of titles out there. Then came the advent of things like KDP, and suddenly the market flooded with thousands upon thousands of titles in a relatively short period of time. The ability to make a title stand out in a sea of other titles became more difficult than ever. CreateSpace, Lulu, and others contributed to a similar problem on the paperback and hardcover side. Unless you paid for traditional advertising (which, I should add, is what you should do), your title will be lost.

The rise of self-publishing also gave birth to a very unfortunate side effect from the buyer’s standpoint. With so many titles releasing so quickly, and with nobody really able to keep up on reviewing these titles or building any real buzz before the next title landed, a new phenomenon evolved known as “choice paralysis.” When buyers feel overwhelmed by too many options, they can’t make a decision. So, they err on the side of buying nothing at all.

Too often, writers (and publishers) don’t realize the disservice they do their readers by trying to promote all their titles in a period of time instead of being selective about which ones get the visibility. Again, given too many options, your reader will choose none.

Okay, so we know trying to promote all your titles is not a great idea. What is the right solution, then? For any given sales period such as the holidays when a theme doesn’t necessarily matter (opposed to, say, marketing specific titles for Mother’s Day), you should follow these tried-and-true methods for building your sales.

1. Promote your most recent frontlist title. It’s the newest, therefore the one you should push anyway. You typically have only three to four months after a book’s release to get the majority of revenue it will create for you. Unless, of course, it becomes a major bestseller.
2. Promote your personal favorite book from everything you’ve written. Readers want to feel a connection between themselves and the author. Knowing the title is your own favorite helps seal the deal.
3. Promote one title from your backlist, preferably your lowest-selling title. That may seem really strange, but it works. Typically, your lowest-selling title is either a) one of the first you wrote and you didn’t yet know how the publicity game worked or b) never got any love because other books were released that got more attention. Backlist sales usually take care of themselves because sales of your frontlist and your personal favorite drive sales of your backlist anyway. For most publishers, backlist makes up the majority of their sales, not frontlist. It’s the bread and butter.
4. Focus on paperback and hardcover sales over ebook, even though we see some delays going on with printing. In our experience, no slowdowns are happening yet with any of our orders. Gift-giving in the world of ebooks isn’t the easiest thing at most vendors, and you don’t want recipients to jump through hoops to get their title or have difficulty with coupon redemption. Christmas is known as the tangible holiday, where studies show people far prefer opening physical items rather than virtual ones or even gift cards.
5. Avoid saying things like “makes a great Christmas gift!” Remember not everyone celebrates Christmas. Close to ten million Jewish people live in the United States, and may celebrate Hanukkah (it happens early this year: November 28 – December 6). It’s estimated that around six million people in the US will celebrate Kwanzaa (December 26 – January 1). And millions of other Americans celebrate lesser known year-end holidays. Of course, if your title is for a specific holiday you should push that aspect.

As with anything, there’s always the caveat that your mileage may vary if you try these things. After a decade of producing and selling our titles, however, I know these suggestions work in most cases. It’s also the same pattern most publishers have followed for the holiday season since way back when I was a Waldenbooks store manager.

I hope you and yours have a happy, healthy and successful holiday season!

Looking to get The Publisher Perspective? Send your questions to jhartman@untreedreads.com with TPP in your subject line. If your question is used, we’ll send you a free ebook from Untreed Reads.

Jay A. Hartman, editor-in-chief at Untreed Reads Publishing, founded Untreed Reads to promote ebooks with an emphasis on independent authors and publishers. He’s written about the ebook industry for fifteen years and previously served as content editor for KnowBetter.com, one of the internet’s oldest sites reporting on ebooks and epublishing.