As December unfurls, the madness of the holiday season sales and publicity campaigns rolls on. My small press, Inklings Publishing, is working hard to implement marketing plans we hope will yield a substantive winter season revenue stream.
Interestingly, these campaigns were planned way back in July and August. Graphics were ordered during the fall. Coordination with podcasters, bloggers, and other media influencers was carefully set up so that the cumulative effect of the various pieces would work to create exponential sales.
One of the most difficult pieces of this process is creating campaigns which will sell books and bring in new fans for our authors while at the same time not over relying on ‘Christmas gifts’ as the main push. The Christmas holiday has become, for businesses of all sizes, a huge time of potential revenue. Sadly, this means that many create their campaigns solely around the images of Christmas presents and Santa.
At Inklings, we really want to honor the fact that there are many other holidays, besides Christmas, that are celebrated during this winter time. Some also include gift giving; while others don’t have that as part of their celebrations at all. We also didn’t want to be seen as creating promotional materials that played to the diverse beliefs as a gimmick. The company truly wants to honor the fact that this time of year is not all about Christmas or christianity nor Santa Clause.
So, we decided to simply run our seasonal sales campaign as we would do at any other time of year. This meant having selected bundles of books at discounted pricing which we promote through our ads which have a seasonal look that encompasses only the winter theme. Our ads do not encourage shoppers to purchase these as gifts for the holidays. Rather, we encourage shoppers to consider spending their money on our discounted bundles and supporting this small press which is bringing new and exciting voices to readers everywhere.
It is my hope, as the owner and head of Inklings Publishing, that we are doing it right. That we can have good sales which will help the company recuperate some of the losses we have had during the past two years of pandemic times. Most importantly, that we are not playing up to the commercialization of Christmas. Whatever you and our other readers may celebrate during this time of year, or if you don’t celebrate anything at all, we hope you will indulge in purchasing our books. And as the winter quarter of our year continues, I continue to work with my team to engage our social media to bring sales and help our books find new readers.
It is an exhausting time not only because of the sales push, but because end of year inventory and financials must be gathered before, hopefully, we can all take a much needed two week break. That’s the goal. And each year that Inklings Publishing has been in business (eight total so far), we have closed our doors and refused to let any of our people work the last two weeks of December. Not until the first Monday after the New Year do we return to work. It’s important to me that my staff, and me, take time to rest and enjoy our families.
But, we still have another week of work to wrap up all the loose ends for the 2021 work year. So, back to the grind…