Where authors stand in this debate is without doubt related to how many books they sell, but it’s a topic worth discussing for next year’s marketing plans.
Industry bloggers agree that the majority of book sales take place during the holiday season, with estimates ranging from 20% to 40% of a year’s total sales. Book sales in general are down a bit since 2020, but that still means mid-November until mid-January is a very lucrative couple of months.
On the other side of the story, many authors, particularly those who self-publish, stop funding ads during December because they don’t sell enough to offset their costs. What’s best for any specific author, or even any specific book, can be hard to predict, but there are some indicators for guidance.
Bestsellers do well because there’s lots of chat about them. Pretty books, the cocktail table kind, also do well because they make nice gifts. Books people read for fun, such as mystery, fantasy, or romance, seem to do less well, perhaps because folks are too busy during the holidays to take time for themselves. That said, holiday-themed fiction typically does get a seasonal bump.
Agatha Annotated is not a cocktail book, but it’s not fiction either. In 2023, the holiday season came six months after publishing, and we did really well in December, better than any other month.
Here’s how I imagine those sales were made: A shopper is trying to find a gift for Aunt Carol. They think about things she likes and come up with Golden Retrievers, spicy food, and Agatha Christie. They got her a Golden Retriever ornament last year, and food is hard to transport, so Agatha Christie it is! But they don’t know which book she doesn’t already have. Agatha Annotated was recently published, so she probably doesn’t have that one. They click to buy.
Strangely, the highest number of sales last holiday season were on December 26 and 28. Maybe folks were using their gift cards? There were also sales spikes in January before leveling off.
We did some Facebook advertising in November and December last year. This year, due to ridiculously overbooking ourselves, we almost didn’t advertise at all, as I mentioned in an earlier post. So far, book sales are pretty good and outpacing ad costs, but they could be better, which is a niggling reminder of what could have been had we prepped more.
Besides my own anecdotal evidence, I did some research online. Actual statistics were hard to come by, but I read lots of opinions from other authors. Some launched their books specifically in September for holiday sales. Others stopped spending advertising dollars until February. Whether your book would do well during the holidays may be hard to determine without experimenting. I’d love to hear what other authors are doing, so please comment. And come back in a few weeks to find out how well our Facebook Ads experiment went!
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