Holiday Promos

[idontknowyet]

At the 20books convention one of the speakers talked about how profitable the holidays are.

Do you run promos during the holidays?
Are they normally profitable?

[alhawke]

IME, I sell less books during the holidays. I would never launch a new release in the last two weeks of December. The reason for lackluster sales, I've guessed, is that there are tons of promos and sales from big publishers going on at that time. Ad sales go down too. In fact, I've considered turning my ads off late Dec.

The exception is if you write books that fit that time of year. If you wrote a book about Santa, for instance, xmas is for you. But for Indies, in general (with exceptions, I'm sure) the holidays is a bad time. It is for this reason that January is usually the best time for me.

[idontknowyet]

By the holidays i mean between xmas and new years and black friday/cyber monday.

I've heard those days can be extremely profitable.
The weeks before xmas the competition is too high and everything is too pricy.

[Paul Gr]

The no. 2 best seller in my local bookstore, one of a national (UK) chain of book stores, is 'I wish it could be Christmas every day.'

[Maggie Ann]

I actually sell way more in the summer. Heaven knows why.