Lulu’s 4 Step Holiday Book Selling Guide

For businesses selling products, the last three months of the year often account for a large part of their income. And if you’re an author or creator, you are a business selling a product. The holiday shopping season is so important. 

Are you ready? 

Now is the time to start ramping up your marketing efforts and making the extra push to get as many sales as you can. Today, I’ve got some tips and advice to help you meet your marketing goals and be prepared for the rush of orders.

Step 1: Planning for Holiday Sales 

I cannot stress how helpful it is to create a Google Sheet or Excel spreadsheet to act as a calendar. Both platforms offer templates for calendars you can use, or you can just create your own. No need to make it complicated; you just need to be able to quickly and easily lay out your marketing plan (emails, social media posts, discounts, etc.). 

Here’s an example of an October Calendar I made quickly using Google Sheets:

Simple, clear, and easy to edit. A calendar like this allows you to visualize how long a discount will run, when you’re posting content, and align those with common shopping days. 

What does a Holiday Marketing Plan look like?

It looks a lot like your normal marketing plan, with a couple of key differences. First, you’re marketing with very specific dates and deadlines tied to your goals. And second, you’re using discounts. 

If you sell directly to your readers, then you’ll be well positioned to exert a large measure of control over discounting and promotions. Sending your target audience to retail sites puts you at the mercy of their discounting. It also makes it that much more difficult to focus on your target market, as you won’t be gathering any data about the buyer.

First things first: you have to get the attention of would-be buyers before you can even think about a sale. Landing social media ads at the right time, getting emails to your subscriber list before they do their shopping, and properly teasing any promotions you’ve planned are the first steps in holiday marketing success.

While you’re planning regular posts and when your discounts will begin and end, you also want to consider the tone of your messaging. The holidays are a great opportunity to have a little fun with your marketing tone, using encouraging and enthusiastic subject lines or social media posts. And more than any other time, be upfront about the content. If you’re emailing them a coupon or a reminder about a discount, just say it! 

Email Marketing

There are arguments for and against upping the number of emails you send leading up to the major holidays. Again, the decision should be based largely on the marketing plan you already have in place. Remember that 3-5 emails a month is generally considered the most effective number, so if you’re already sending more than 5, you might not want to bump your sends. If you’re only sending 2 or 3, maybe you double it up.

Remember too that you’ll want to tease out any coupons or discounts you’ll be offering. That might mean you send additional emails with those teasers, or you change up the style of your sends to promote your sales (instead of promoting content).

Once you’ve got a schedule lined up in your calendar, you’ll need to draft the subject and teaser text. If your email sending tool doesn’t provide a means to create a custom teaser, be aware that your first 50 or so characters of the email will fill that space.

Here’s an example of a recent Lulu email in my Gmail inbox:

Our subject line is short here, so there is added room for the teaser. If the subject line is longer, the teaser is shortened. 

Now here is that same email in my Outlook mobile app:

Yes, I did a desktop version of Gmail and the mobile version for Outlook. Because it is crucial that you consider how your emails will look on various screen sizes and with various email applications. You need to view your emails the same way your readers will—that means looking at a variety of sizes and apps. 

Notice how here the subject and teaser are stacked? Outlook and some other mail apps will do this, meaning you have a lot more control over the teaser. Keep all of this in mind while building your emails. If you can select the text, do so and make sure it acts as a true teaser. If you cannot add the text manually, be sure the first line of your email text is acceptable for the teaser as well.

Always send a test version of your email to yourself and check it in a browser and on your mobile device.

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The Business of Printing BooksPaul

Step 2: Timing for Your Marketing Push

Timing is crucial. Starting early gets your message into your readers’ minds and inboxes before they start shopping.

Here’s an interesting comparison of Google Trends data from 2025:

Both of these charts track September 1 through December 31. Notice how the searches for “books” stayed relatively steady, while “gifts” spiked heavily on and after Black Friday. It’s worthwhile to think about your search and keyword strategies during this time period too. People’s search activity is going to change, and you should adapt your own marketing strategy to match that.

You want to make the majority of your sales around the end of November.

The calendar is going to play a big role in organizing your time and marketing efforts. From where I sit, I’ve seen hundreds of individual authors, small publishers, and book businesses manage the holiday rush. One thing is true for all of them: getting the message out early leads to stronger sales in November. 

Step 3: Put Your Marketing Into Action

You’ve got a plan, and you’ve got a calendar. Now comes the stressful part: put your plan into action and observe it to see what’s working. This is when you start to tease sales, remind your followers of printing and shipping times, and make certain they’re aware of your newest products.

With your amazing content ready to go out from your social media, email, and blog, you will need something I’m sure you’re familiar with: a distinct Call to Action. For the holiday season, the CTA you use should be some form of ‘buy my book’ or ‘get my book at a discount.’ 

Shoppers in the holiday season are looking for both the perfect gift and the perfect deal. How you choose to reward your customer will directly affect the actions they take. If you want to sell one specific book out of your catalog, giving it the steepest discount and the most real estate on your social posts will be necessary.

Thinking in Terms of Rewards

As a self-published creator, your time and funds may be limited. You’re probably not able to make marketing your book a full-time job, so your marketing strategy needs to be simple.

For the holiday season, I can help you with that. Think in terms of rewards. Holiday shoppers are always looking for good deals. 

Rewards are a perfect way to boost sales. This can and often does mean discounting. But it could also mean creating product bundles with multiple books or offering unique variants.  

You might also work a book release into your holiday schedule and combine the large round of initial sales with the holiday push. I wouldn’t do that; it sounds stressful. But you could. 

Here are a few ideas for rewards you might consider:

1. Steep discount - Make your discounts all lead toward the end of November
2. Ebook - give away an ebook preview to entice readers
3. Cross-promotion - work with another author to offer their work along with yours and vice versa
4. Extras - a t-shirt themed along with your book, mugs, pens, notebooks, or any other kind of extra that might entice a reader

Site Updates

Alongside your reward-based marketing efforts, it doesn’t hurt to make minor cosmetic changes to your site. A festive header can serve double duty: both pointing to your holiday cheer and including shipping deadlines or discount codes.

Make sure this content focuses on fulfilling the customer's needs—in your case, likely offering your book or calendar as a gift. There’s no need to try to be tricky or even clever. Tell your customer exactly how you’ll reward them this holiday season when they buy your book.

Comparing Lulu's Shop

Step 4: Monitor Success & Go All Out for BF/CM 

I’m talking Black Friday and Cyber Monday here, though that entire weekend is a good opportunity to realize the investment in holiday marketing from early October onward. 

Let’s start by recapping some of the efforts you’ve been making during the weeks leading up to Black Friday:

• You’ve drafted and scheduled email and social media with a focus on your holiday gifts and the ways you reward buyers for choosing you
• You’ve updated your author website with some holiday-themed images and made clear for anyone who visits what you’re offering for the holidays
• You’ve planned discounts and giveaways to encourage and reward your customers, with the discounts ramping up near Black Friday
• You’ve kept your focus throughout all of this on the need your book fulfills for your buyers

Now you just need to get those sales rolling in during the busy consumer holidays!

You’ll need a mini-plan for those few days so you don’t have to post or email on the fly.

Let’s say you’re going to run a 30% off sale on all books on your website to boost Black Friday sales. Here’s how we might plan that:

1. Schedule the sale to begin on Thursday and run it through the following Tuesday (unless you plan something like 35% off on Cyber Monday).
2. The week before Thanksgiving, schedule an email to your subscriber list every day for 3 or 4 days straight (maybe Monday - Thursday). Each email should be unique, but the focus should be on reminding recipients of the sale. Include a link to the book(s) on your site.
3. Pepper similar notices into your regular social media posts, but don’t convert all of your posts to advertising.
4. On the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, send out a very pointed and direct email that informs them of your sale. Send another similar email Friday morning. Doing a third mailing Monday morning is a good idea, unless you’re doing something unique on Cyber Monday.

Setting Real Expectations

Nothing about holiday marketing (or marketing in general) is easy. I’ve broken down some basic ideas and schemes you can use for your holiday marketing plan, but none of these guarantee success. The absolute surest thing you can do is work every day to make connections, grow your contact list, and create content. Luckily, you’re using print-on-demand, so you’re not spending anything up front on a stock of books.

Remember that your fans want your books, and slant your marketing efforts toward getting new people, who maybe don’t know you or your content, to give your stuff a try. Don't neglect your fans—they might want to stock up on your books as gifts. But they just need to know when to shop for the best discount. It’s people who’ve signed up for emails but never bought anything, or followed you on Instagram but never clicked through, that you really need to convince this holiday season.