Hi All, I'm thinking to release my debut romance book a few days before Xmas and am seeking feedback on whether that's good, bad, or doesn't matter. Thoughts against: will it get lost in a rush of releases or general holiday distraction? Thoughts for: last minute gift idea; people will be on vacation and want things to read; it’s available for those with new Xmas gift cards to spend on my book; will it stand out because everyone is smarter than me and doesn’t release a book that week? Thanks, Randi
I'm sure you already know that a lot of writers release stuff over the holiday season because book sales (especially e-book sales) go through the roof during that time. How is your book going to stick out? Given that it's the holiday season, how is that going to affect the way you price your book? Are you going to be working with Amazon? Would you consider releasing your book right now? What's so special about waiting for the holiday season? You don't need to answer those questions here; they're just something to consider.
Thanks for the reply. I could release it by early December, probably. I was intending to do some pre-release promotion that made me want to push it back, though I actually haven't decided what promotion to do. So one question becomes whether having it out before then helps so much that the lack of pre-release promotion doesn't matter?
Unless you already have a big group of devoted fans eager to buy your book, I think that Christmas isn't going to do you any good. The gift and vacation reading scenario are unlikely to work, because people will want to buy books by authors that they're already familiar with. And books aren't so expensive that people will have to wait for a windfall of gift certificate money to be able to afford one. I think that the only hope that a self-published book has is extensive and clever promotion; don't give that up just to make a particular calendar date.
Are you really going to buy a book as a gift because it's a month newer? Some people have already started their Christmas shopping anyway.
I think the real point for me is that waiting until the end of the year gives me almost 2 months to do pre-release promo. The question then became whether to get it out early January or in time for Xmas. I suspect it's not going to matter due to being a debut, publishing glut, or other issues I haven't thought of.
Last January, I sold about 600 copies of my books (about 95% ebook and 5% print). Last month, I sold about six. I'm deliberately holding some new releases until December this year because it's always the best selling period of the year. Well, that and because I haven't come up with a good blurb for them yet .
