If you want to increase book sales over the holiday season, or at any time of the year, hosting a special promotion can attract new book buyers. The concept behind a promotion is that it’s only available for a limited time.
Consider the promotional campaigns you see every day from your favorite retailers, restaurants, or travel sites. Department stores typically host sales for a week or less, offering discounts on specific products. Airlines put their prices on sale for short periods of time—often just a few days. These limited offers are meant to inspire buyers to avoid delaying a purchase and instead take immediate action.
When you host a promotion for your books, setting a time limit creates urgency and helps increase the likelihood that browsers will hit the “buy” button. Ideally, promotions of any kind should have a time limit of around two weeks or less.
The following are some book promotion strategies to help you inspire more book sales during the holiday season and beyond.
Offer Bonus with Book Purchase
Buyers of all kinds love to receive a bonus with purchase, so offering something extra for your buyers can fire up some new book sales. The following are some ideas for bonuses you can offer.
- An extra chapter that didn’t get included in the book.
- A fillable template or collection of templates.
- Digital workbook or worksheets.
- Mini training course you create with a few short video recordings.
- Brief collection of recipes, travel tips, historic facts, or other topics related to your book.
- First two chapters of your next book.
- Invitation to attend a live event with you online.
- Recording of a previous webinar or presentation you delivered.
- Report or white paper.
- Collection of resources such as recommended website links.
Host a Multi-Author Promotion
Years ago, when I owned a brick and mortar bookstore, we hosted many local authors for book signings. The hard reality is that most only sold a few books at a time. Then we hosted a special “Local Authors Day” event and invited a dozen authors to come sign their books. We also gave the authors pre-written promotional copy and asked them to share event details with their networks. As a result, the participating authors sold many dozens of books that day.
Why not do something similar? You could host an event at a local bookstore or other retailer. Or you could create an online promotion with a group of authors in a similar genre. You might host a group webinar, and each read a short passage from your book. Or you could create a landing page featuring all your books listed together and then encourage all participating authors to share the page with their networks.
There are no rules here. Get creative and create a winning promotion strategy for a collective group of peers.
Deliver Autographed Copies or Signed Book Plates
The fact that you’ve authored a book is an impressive accomplishment, especially to readers who’ve never written a book themselves. And for readers, getting an autographed copy, especially one that is personalized for gifting purposes, adds great value.
If you sell books from your website, allow buyers to input a name for personalization. And if you don’t sell books from your site, you could offer to send buyers an autographed book plate, which is simply a sticker that can be adhered to the inside of the book cover or the title page. You can use a plain white sticker (sized 3”x4”, for example) or have a branded sticker design created. Either way, stickers are inexpensive to produce and mail and can increase the perceived value of a book for readers and gift buyers.
Create Bulk Purchase Discounts
It’s common for publishers and authors to offer discounts when buyers purchase books in larger quantities. And while bookstores and retailers expect discounts of 50% to 55%, you can offer much lower discounts to companies, nonprofits, and individual buyers who will be thrilled to receive any kind of discount.
There aren’t any publishing industry rules for bulk discounts so you can set them however you like. Here is an example of how your discounts might look:
3 TO 10 COPIES – 5% OFF
11 TO 25 COPIES – 10% OFF
26 TO 100 COPIES – 15% OFF
101 TO 500 COPIES – 20% OFF
501 TO 1,000 COPIES – 25% OFF
1,001+ COPIES – 30% OFF
Offer a Bonus with Bulk Purchase
You can inspire readers to buy multiple copies of your book by making a bulk purchase appealing. Author Seth Godin features a special offer on his site. When you buy five copies of his book “The Song of Significance,” you will receive 25 copies of a limited-edition booklet he created called “Leading Together.”
We see similar examples when authors run Kickstarter campaigns. For example, when you buy 25 copies of a new book, the author may give you a private coaching session or invite you to a special event for book supporters only.
You can get creative with bonuses for bulk purchases. For example, if a company purchases 100 or more copies of your book, you could deliver a free webinar or mini training for their staff. And if they purchase 1,000 copies, you could deliver training in person at their location or by Zoom.
Think about what you could offer to benefit your bulk buyers and start reaching out to them to inquire.
Release a Special Edition
Most nonfiction authors publish in paperback, while some also publish in hardcover. If you don’t yet have a hardcover edition, this is something you may want to add, especially if you’re self-published and have access to your print files.
Creating a hardcover edition means you need a dust jacket designed and a new ISBN assigned. If your paperback interior file is the same size as the hardcover, you can likely make some simple modifications to that by inserting the hardcover ISBN on the copyright page. Also, and add “Limited Edition” or “Special Edition” to the title page.
Once your files are ready, you can print copies through your current book printer or through a service like Lulu.com, which makes it easy to upload files and print a short run of books. Then, promote the special edition—and maybe offer autographed copies for an added bonus.
Create Book Bundles
If you have authored more than one book title to date, bundle your books together and sell them as a set. You may offer the bundle at a slightly discounted price or offer a bonus with the bundle purchase.
Create a Limited eBook Discount
Fiction authors frequently host discounted ebook promotions since fiction readers tend to be more price sensitive, but nonfiction authors can do the same. If you’re self-published, you can lower (or increase) the price of your ebooks at any time. Do this through your Amazon KDP account and any other ebook distribution services you may be using. A common promotion price is $2.99, though you can choose whatever price you want to offer. And if you’re traditionally published, ask your publisher if they are willing to lower the price for a brief period of time to support your promotion efforts.
Run Amazon Ads
Amazon’s pay-per-click advertising system is available to all authors, whether you’re traditionally published or self-published. This program relies on keyword phrases you choose, and you indicate a “bid” price, which is what you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad. Depending on how competitive your keywords are, you could pay as little as $.20 per click to over $1.00 per click. Keep in mind, you only pay for actual clicks—not for the ad to display on Amazon. And if you convert the majority of those clicks into book sales, your investment should pay for itself many times over.
Market Your Promotional Campaign
Now that you have some campaign ideas, you will need to put some marketing grease on your wheels to make your promotion a success. Here are some ways to get the word out:
- Share with your email subscribers.
- Post on social media repeatedly (throughout the campaign).
- Announce in online groups where your audience spends time.
- Share details in your blog.
- Reach out to your community of influence—people you know—and ask them for support. They could share with their own followers and subscribers, buy your books to support your campaign, or connect you with contacts who can help.
- Schedule speaking engagements and/or podcast interviews to occur during that time.
Wishing you tremendous success during your promotion and beyond!
