By Frankie Harnett, Mishelle Kennady, Eden Soughton and Natalie Klinkenberg
Knowing when to release a book can feel incredibly daunting, especially for first-time authors. December offers an incredible opportunity to increase sales and gain high exposure, if utilised correctly. Topical holiday themes offer significant marketing opportunities, but Elizabeth Javour also points out that there can be less competition for certain genres at this time, such as beach reads, which can be popular internationally in different climates. Advertising is central to the release of any book, but never more so than in the holidays. Amazon ads can be highly effective, but Kinga Jenetics warns against writing off smaller companies, suggesting marketing price promotions through Bookbub and Bargain Booksy.
While there are endless marketing perks that come with publishing a book under a well-known publishing house, the holiday season can also aid with spreading word through unconventional means. Elf on the Shelf by Carol Aebersold and Chanda Bell was self-published in 2005 and took the world by storm through social media frenzy. The book started out as a family tradition in Carol’s household with her twin daughters, Chanda Bell and Christa Pitts, involved in the book venture and marketing process respectively. Each copy of the book came with an elf toy that parents could disguise and hide every day to prove how the elf had a life and mind of its own, presumably reporting updates on children’s behavior to Santa. The toy quickly gained attention as families were busy decorating their homes in creative ways to incorporate the elf and posting to social media under specific hashtags. The internet age has offered authors the ability to advertise their own books, providing them with a widespread audience and resources. During November 2024, Melanie Jacobson released a holiday romantic comedy titled Dropping the Ball. Prior to and upon its release, Jacobson took to social media to market their book in fun and interactive ways to garner interest and keep up excitement. They shared character profiles, offered quotes from the book, highlighted certain scenes that readers might enjoy and held a giveaway for titles written by fellow Christmas rom-com authors along with their new release.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is perhaps the most famous Christmas story ever written. The story of Ebenezer Scrooge and his encounters with three ghosts of past, present, and future who teach him the true meaning of Christmas has sold millions of copies and received more adaptations on stage and screen than one can count. However, the story is also an early example of self-publishing. Though Dickens’ novel was indeed published by Chapman and Hall, as with several of his previous books, Dickens actually provided the funds for the publishing himself. Writers beware, any publisher or agent who asks for money from you should not be trusted. What Dickens did was not too dissimilar to modern self-publishing writers who have to pay a lot of money up front to produce and sell their books. The only real difference is that there was a third party company who did much of the work.
Another self-published and iconic Christmas story is The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern. If you doubt its iconicity or have not heard of it, let me tell you this: The Greatest Gift inspired the film It’s a Wonderful Life. If you haven’t heard of that one, a television series you love has parodied it before. In the story, George Pratt contemplates suicide before being approached by a mysterious stranger who shows him what the world would be like had he never been born. Seeing that the world is worse off without him, Pratt returns to his old reality and life. Stern was unable to find a publisher when he wrote the story in 1943 and so, he sent his 200 copies to friends as Christmas presents. The story came to the attention of RKO Pictures producer David Hempstead, and the studio bought the film rights to the story in April 1944. The book was published officially in the December of 1944, and the film It’s a Wonderful Life was released in December 1946. I believe the lesson here is that you should send your writing to people this Christmas, rather than things like presents. The world is too materialistic anyway, and you might even get a movie deal out of it.
A reason that some of the stories mentioned above are so popular among readers no matter their publication date is the emotional and festive appeal of the winter season. Holiday spirit is everywhere, especially as readers pick up holiday reads to immerse themselves in whatever holiday is around the corner - whether it’s Christmas or even Halloween. With characters in romance novels going on winter-themed dates like ice skating or sledding, or keeping plots centered around the holiday like how the New Year’s gala in Dropping the Ball is the main event that brings the main characters together, readers find themselves sharing holiday experiences with soon-to-be favorite characters, bringing more excitement to the winter season.
There are plenty of online resources to help those looking to self-publish and want their manuscripts ready in time for the next holiday season. Starting to write your story in the first quarter of the year, making edits and finding beta readers in the middle and doing finishing touches and marketing towards the end is one way to go, but everyone has their own pace. It might be easy to feel discouraged and the holidays may feel like a daunting time to publish with big name authors publishing at the same time, but there is no better time for exposure than the holiday season.