Marketing question...

GeneralUzal

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I am considering a book release on Memorial Day weekend. Does anyone here have any experience related to such a consideration and how the holiday affects US marketing for a new book release?:confused:
 
It's my view that holidays are good times to market something within an existing brand/franchise to your fans; but a poorer time to market something totally new. When you've something new you want peoples attention focused upon that, not upon the celebrations or other events, or upon the mass media attention of other existing franchises who already have their audiences attention.

Unless your item has a very strong connection to that date which might benefit such a release date. That said its only 6 days or so away, I'd have expected if that's the launch day that you'd already have some marketing in the works before now - marketing and launching something isn't just about springing it upon the market; but about building up to the launch. Marketing it before that period so that when the launch day comes you've already got people interested and wanting to pay or at least show interest. If you start on the launch day then chances are it will be a muted affair and you'll have to build up the hype and marketing after that.
 
This is actually Book Two in a series of three. It has already been mass marketed for a release date sometime late May with the exact date "tbd" on several reader sites and social media. I did this on purpose to have the flexibility of dates to possibly take advantage of the holiday. It has been difficult to find market analytics regarding the matter.

Thanks for your response.
 
Traditionally, holidays (including the summer) were bad for internet traffic - simply because most people would be away from their computers. Most websites would always see a drop in traffic over any holiday period.

However, that was a while away - I'm not sure how much mobiles have changed the picture. I would suspect that social browsing would be the main beneficiary of this. I'll keep my eye out for stats.
 
I still see dips in forum activity at weekends and holiday periods. Whilst for things like facebook and twitter I suspect there is little actual effect, at least based upon studies of my brother he's checking his phone/facebook/twitter every few moments all day every day (which apparently is normal now)
 
There is definitely a decline in Internet traffic on holidays and weekends. In my business I manage the traffic to over 1.5 million domain names and we can see it really clearly.

What I'm curious about is how you are able to reach out to the readers that purchased book 1 in your series. Did you build your website to encourage them to sign-up for a newsletter?
 
Some kinds of forums and in some countries there is more traffic during business hours either because people have a "Real Life" tm at home or poor internet at home. I see it on my Tech Websites.
 
Interestingly I used to see peaks at the weekends, especially Sundays. Obviously they're not full on holidays, but in micro a similar thing.

This seems to have smoothed now though.
 
The increasing popularity of smart phones may change this trend. My daughters, in their 20s, keep the fancy phones with them all the time.
 
I am considering a book release on Memorial Day weekend. Does anyone here have any experience related to such a consideration and how the holiday affects US marketing for a new book release?:confused:

Do you mean Memorial Day (May 25) in the United States? If you're thinking international distribution, then is it worthwhile to research the major holidays of other countries too? Because of time zones, the "weekend" in California is already Monday morning somewhere else. I'm getting dizzy now.
 
American Holidays mean little here (in Ireland) despite the efforts of supermarkets to have us buy stuff for Thanksgiving and Independence Day (they have not tried to market Labour or Memorial day yet). They have totally Americanised the Merchandise (food, toys, outfits, pumpkin stuff)/Marketing for Halloween and made it disgusting compared to traditional Halloween / Samhain. Originally nothing to do with pumpkins, ghouls, ghosts etc (The supernatural elements seem to have come in with corruption of Eve of All Saints as pre-Christian Celtic original was harvest festival with story telling, feasting etc).
I'm reminded of the Simpsons Greeting Card day episode.
We EVEN get marketed BOTH Mothers Day! (The US one is a different date to UK / Ireland).

Grr!
 
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In my day job, I work with a lot of clients from India so I have learned not to expect any timely responses around Diwali or other major holidays. That said, the film industry times the release of "blockbusters" around holidays like Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas when a lot of people have time off work and are looking for something fun to do. I wonder if book sales are better just * before * a major holiday because people are planning ahead for something to read while on the airplane, at the beach, or exercising to lose weight before squeezing into the fancy dress?
 
After working at an Ad Agency, your question would actually depend on whether you are doing a hard campaign launch vs. a soft campaign launch.

Hard campaign launch is where you have done pre-adverts, hip, release the book and a full blown campaign and blasts the day of launch. Big bang. Usually gets you traction for a good week, then drops off and you have to move into the soft adverts.

I have seen hard campaigns work great if there is a big driving force of manpower and money behind them. But they always fall and you have to move into a steady stream of soft adverts.

Soft campaign launch is where you release the book and have a steady ad campaign over several months and build traction for the book.

The soft campaign is what I personally like, it gives you time to spread your advert dollars over a few months, and also give you time to do any course corrections that you may need.

If you are doing a free e-pub, do all your days at once, it is not about getting sales after, it is about getting up in the algorithms of the vendor and search engines that will keep you in the eyes of the public long term. Long term means sales over the long term.

You need to figure out your who is target market, and If those type of people will be around and will they be focused enough to give your campaign the attention. Most families are busy doing activities on holidays.

Okay Ciao, Ciao
 
After working at an Ad Agency, your question would actually depend on whether you are doing a hard campaign launch vs. a soft campaign launch.

Hard campaign launch is where you have done pre-adverts, hip, release the book and a full blown campaign and blasts the day of launch. Big bang. Usually gets you traction for a good week, then drops off and you have to move into the soft adverts.

I have seen hard campaigns work great if there is a big driving force of manpower and money behind them. But they always fall and you have to move into a steady stream of soft adverts.

Soft campaign launch is where you release the book and have a steady ad campaign over several months and build traction for the book.

The soft campaign is what I personally like, it gives you time to spread your advert dollars over a few months, and also give you time to do any course corrections that you may need.

If you are doing a free e-pub, do all your days at once, it is not about getting sales after, it is about getting up in the algorithms of the vendor and search engines that will keep you in the eyes of the public long term. Long term means sales over the long term.

You need to figure out your who is target market, and If those type of people will be around and will they be focused enough to give your campaign the attention. Most families are busy doing activities on holidays.

Okay Ciao, Ciao
Great advice there JL
I'm writing a series on another blog of mine about marketing with no money. I made the decision to market my own book with no money and to see if I can actually bootstrap the marketing of a book purely from the royalties generated from sales. Call it an experiment. I'm having a lot of fun doing this and so far sales seem to be quite consistent. I think that the biggest upticks will come from when I build exposure from one website to another over time. In other words, start small and contact the bigger sites as I gain traction.

The challenge with all marketing is to track every activity to work out where the seams of gold are located. I built a tracking system last week and it's already providing some really interesting data on twitter, facebook and linkedin. I'll continue to develop the system so that I can get more granular data on what really works. I'll keep everyone abreast of the results as time goes by.
 
Ad agencies also take planetary movements into account. Yes it is a factor, and I've seen it over and over again at every agency I have done work for.

Like, Mercury retro-grade, this coming one starts May 19th through June 11. Mercury is the planet of communication and when it is retrograde then all communication is messed-up. Not a good influence to do a book release under, since the belief is that that is the negative energy will be carried throughout the life of the book. For the most part, this holds true especially for SF&F. Since we are in the realms of the supernatural and space.

The best influence for book release is usually between 2 eclipses. They always come in 2's, a solar, and two weeks later a lunar. You are ushering something out, (writing, the completion of your book) and ushering something in, (the book release).

It's woo-woo cosmic, but then again we like that kind of stuff.

Ciao, Ciao
J
 
Ad agencies also take planetary movements into account. Yes it is a factor, and I've seen it over and over again at every agency I have done work for.

Like, Mercury retro-grade, this coming one starts May 19th through June 11. Mercury is the planet of communication and when it is retrograde then all communication is messed-up. Not a good influence to do a book release under, since the belief is that that is the negative energy will be carried throughout the life of the book. For the most part, this holds true especially for SF&F. Since we are in the realms of the supernatural and space.

The best influence for book release is usually between 2 eclipses. They always come in 2's, a solar, and two weeks later a lunar. You are ushering something out, (writing, the completion of your book) and ushering something in, (the book release).

It's woo-woo cosmic, but then again we like that kind of stuff.

Ciao, Ciao
J
I wouldn't have thought that an Ad Agency would pay attention to this sort of thing....go figure!
 
I have a lot of marketing questions. Does it pay to pay an ad agency of some kind to promote your e-book? I have written seven science fiction and fantasy books, I but have no idea how to promote them. Any suggestions on where to begin?
 
Does it pay to pay an ad agency of some kind to promote your e-book?

No - all they could do is put your book in advertising spaces. From a marketing standpoint that is absolutely not enough - advertising has to be targeted, not simply at the right demographic, but also try to catch people in the sales funnel.

I have written seven science fiction and fantasy books, I but have no idea how to promote them. Any suggestions on where to begin?

IMO, unless you've had a good editor, then there are likely to be serious flaws in them that will kill readership. My personal suggestion would be to get at least one of your books fully edited - it's the best investment of money from a marketing POV, as you want the best product you can produce and to stand out from the mass of self-published material out there.
 
I have had two people edit my books in detail and several others look at them /read them / critique them, but I suppose I could always use another opinion, especially that of an editor who has worked in the publishing industry. Do you know where can I find an affordable, experienced editor if I need one, and one who works only with science fiction? And can you give me an estimate on how much such an editor might cost? I appreciate the advice.
 

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