by Jay Hartman
April showers bring May flowers.
What do May flowers bring?
Pilgrims.
That’s a very old (and very bad) dad joke, but timely. As we head into April and spring arrives in many parts of the country, everything starts to look fresh and new. People clean out their closets. Exterior home improvements begin. Spring break vacations get underway.
April tends to be a big month in the publishing world. Many houses will launch tentpole titles during April to capture readers who are ready for vacation or who want to relax on a lounge chair in the garden and soak up the sunshine.
No wonder April hosts literary-themed holidays:
April is National Poetry Month, April 2 is International Children’s Book Day, and April 4 brings National School Librarian Day for readers in the United States. My personal favorite is April 23, which is World Book and Copyright Day, a United Nations holiday sponsored by UNESCO. This day is all about instilling the love of reading in both children and adults.
As authors and publishers, we tend to forget about these holidays as showcases to highlight our works. Sure, everyone knows that from November 1 through December 25 you have the winter holiday buying crowd. Mother’s Day tends to be—wrongfully in my opinion—a holiday of romance titles. Father’s Day is typically sports and history. Yet so many other holidays lend themselves to book promotion and getting the word out on titles.
Most publishers create a budget centered around a promotional calendar. Different levels of spending are established by buying seasons. Usually you’ll see the biggest budgets held for the October through December holiday season, with very little spent everywhere else.
Here’s the thing:
If everyone focuses promotion on the same time period, then the ratio of signal to noise becomes skewed. Your title becomes one of thousands shouted from rooftops and is undoubtedly going to get lost in the shuffle. Amazon loves to have you pay for keyword searches and ads, but if everyone is trying to do the same kind of ads at the same time, no title is going to float to the top. The only entity in this scenario that will make money is Amazon.
My recommendation, which is going to seem a bit counterintuitive, is to not spend all your hard-earned money on promotion during the holiday season. Yep, you heard me correctly. Knowing it’s virtually impossible to reach enough eyeballs during that three-month period because every business is competing for the same customer, focus your efforts on other times of the year when your title or catalog will stand out more.
Got a nonfiction gift book?
Use it as your entry into Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, or early summer wedding season. People want to read lighthearted fiction titles on summer break or on a long holiday weekend like Memorial Day or Labor Day. History and historical fiction typically sees a bump around major national holidays such as July 4. Family sagas enjoy a boost at Thanksgiving because, let’s face it, the turkey table is filled with the kind of drama you see in these pages.
By no means is this limited to the United States. Titles with international appeal should be marketed around boom times in international calendars. In my roster of authors I have June Whyte, an Australian mystery author whose titles are set in Australia. She has international reader appeal, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t market her books in Australian venues around important Australian holidays and vacation times.
I highly recommend sitting down with a calendar to look at the possibilities for marketing your titles when it isn’t the winter holiday season. Be sure to especially look at fun, one-day holidays such as National Pie Day or National Penguin Day if your title fits into these super-narrow niches. April 26 is Hug an Australian Day, and I’ll promote June Whyte’s titles then. I guarantee hers will stand out with a hashtag for the holiday among a sea of other promotions.
Thinking outside the box for scheduling promotions is just another way you can come away a winner in The Publishing Game.
Join the discussion! Send your questions to jhartman@mistimedia.com with TPG in your subject line.
WPN Vice President Jay A. Hartman has worked in the publishing industry for more than 30 years. For 13 years he served as the creator and editor-in-chief of Untreed Reads Publishing before the company was acquired in 2022. In 2023 he created Misti Media, a company dedicated to book publishing and author education.
