Holiday Marketing Tips with Foreword Publicity

Join Laurie as she talks with Foreword Publicity, a PR firm for children's authors! Lori Orlinsky & Aly Bourque share eleven tips for holiday marketing in 2020, answer marketing questions, and share about some new services too!

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Transcript

Hello writers. I'm back with the PR firm Foreword Publicity because they have amazing tips for us this holiday season. So Aly Bourque and Lori Orlinsky. Thank you so much for coming back. 

Oh hi, Laurie, it's such a pleasure to be back. It's always so much fun to talk to you. I'm glad to be back with my name twin.

So you two have tips, so I'll just let you take it away because you're the experts. So go for it. 

Sure. Well, we are happy to provide tips and these are kind of tried and true tips that we know work based on things that we have done. And so one of our tips is a social media tip, and it's really as simple as running a holiday promotion and making sure that you create a coupon code, if you have the ability, on your website with the promotion and kind of spell it out. So let's say it's a Thanksgiving 25% off or Christmas, 25% off. If you can write like Merry25 or thankful25 and make sure it's something that people can remember easily, and that really tells what the discount is.

That's really important and share it on all your channels. Coupon codes make people feel like they're getting some kind of limited time deal. 

I love it and share it often because you always think people see your stuff, but they don't. I love that idea of tying it into something because it makes it more relevant rather than random out of the blue.

And especially, not giving a code like DXG051. you want to make it easy and simple. So if you're just casually in conversation saying, Hey, Lori and Aly are running on a sale or running a sale, it's Merry25. You get 25% off your book. Perfect. 

So do you have any advice for people who strictly sell from Amazon? Is there any way to do coupons or discounts or what could they offer? 

I don't believe there's any way to do coupons or discounts. Amazon's algorithm really depends on how well your book is selling when it does sell. Well, you start to see a dollar and a few cents come off. But I would say anytime you notice that your listing is on sale on Amazon.
Go ahead and promote that because it's a big deal. Amazon doesn't mark down super frequently, right? 

One thing you could do for Amazon during the holidays is try to search out for reviews. Of course, verified reviews are great, but sometimes someone can leave a review if they've read your books. So if you do a promotion during the holidays where you're trying to obtain more reviews, have them do a screenshot after they write a review and then host a giveaway for those that have left a review on your Amazon page. 

Oh, that's smart. Good one. Thank you. Okay. Okay. 

One other thing you could do related to numbers and holidays...you have the eight nights of Hanukkah, you have the 12 days of Christmas - do something fun and play on those days. So maybe it's every night of Hanukkah. You introduce it and say on one of these eight, there's going to be a special deal or special content that's coming every single night at 6:00 PM. And you get your followers excited about it. And maybe on day one, you get a free coloring sheet, maybe on day two, it's a buy one, get one. So get them excited. You can do it for the 12 days leading up to Christmas, any kind of holiday thing that has a number you can latch onto and make it relevant.

I love that. I'm totally going to take that idea and do it with my email list because I'm trying to warm them up and get them back engaged and emails are so important. You know, take some of these tips, put them in your emails, put these, share the coupon code, share the deals. If you have a great email following like Laurie knows how to help you build, share, share, share.
Love it. Cool. Thank you. So another thing that authors can do is collaborate with other authors on social media and host a holiday giveaway. And so when you do that, you're actually meeting more authors, you're meeting more readers. And so all in all, it's a great experience to do. And you can actually post a picture that has a holiday theme with all the books, from the giveaway on there.

And then you share it for about one week and it's really great. 

Okay. Are we talking eBooks? Are we talking physical books? 

You can actually do both, but we've done some in the past with physical books. And so whoever wins the giveaway, each author will mail their own book to the winner. 

Okay. Yeah. Cause I know it's always, how do we do this?

Great. And it's a great way, with giveaways, with other authors, you can require people to follow you. So it's a good way to get new audiences too. And kind of piggybacking what Aly just said, if you love to stage nice photos, put a red ribbon on your book and put it under the Christmas tree.

Aly just recently went to an event with Mrs. Claus and she staged photos where Mrs. Claus was holding books for us and books for our clients. And so use that as social content and say, 'Here's what's on Mrs. Claus' list this year. Do you want to get in on this gift?' And just people love the holidays.

And I think everyone's so sick of talking about the current normal. So let's get excited in advance, put a little Garland on it.  I live in Chicago. I might even take a picture of my book, like in the snow, on a sled. 

Oh, that's so smart. Thank you. Love it. And you know, speaking of Mrs Claus, another thing that authors can do is host a virtual book reading on Facebook.
So if you use a program like Be.Live, you can create a dual screen where you can be on the Facebook, live as an author, and you can maybe have someone dress up or maybe you can have somebody, like Mrs. Claus, there, reading your book. And so it will be a great thing to share for the holidays with children. And you can do any character.
I mean, you could even do, if you're a friends fan, like I am, you could have the holiday Armadillo. 

Okay. Do you have the number for that? 

Because I'm going to try and find I'm a big friends fan. So anytime the holidays come up, I always want to talk about the holiday Armadillo. It's my dream to collaborate with David Schwimmer.

Put it out there in the world. It'll happen. And, you know, that's another thing too. You had mentioned, we talked a little bit about emails, but I think it goes a long way too. You know what Allie and I did for Thanksgiving is we sent a note to all of our clients and all of our contexts. And we said, simply we're thankful for you.

And it could be a personal note. It could be an email blast - emails  are the new handwritten note. And so they make people feel appreciated. And so take them the time to wish them a Merry Christmas, a happy Kwanzaa, happy Hanukkah. No matter what they celebrate, make sure they know that you appreciate them and you're wishing them a wonderful season.
Yeah, totally. So we also have some New Year's tips. 2020 has been quite a doozy for us, so we're all gonna reinvent ourselves in 2021. And so with 2021, I think authors should start trying to look for a new ways and new marketing channels to promote their books. And so maybe take a month at a time to find a new way to market your book.

And by December, you'll have 12 new ways of how to market your book, whether it's establishing a YouTube account and do book readings there, or find read aloud creators. There's all kinds of ways that we can reinvent ourselves, especially in this virtual world for 2021. The world is ever- evolving too and read aloud wasn't a thing a year ago. And you know, people would just go into libraries and go into stores and listen to reading times. But now read alouds are so popular because of COVID. 

I get lots of emails asking for permission, which is nice because that's really prompted teachers, counselors, librarians, to realize they need to ask for permission, which is nice because they didn't necessarily before.

Um, but I wanted to just jump in and say, Amazon ads are so unreliable in my opinion lately. And I think a lot of people for a long time and really relied on them, but now it's all over the shop. So doing something like that, learning new channels and taking it slow, not all of them at once, makes a lot of sense and can make a huge difference.

Yeah. I would remember it to sprint. Excuse me, it's not a sprint. I'm like, it's a sprint Allie and I work fast, but it is a marathon. So when you're doing these new channels, Every there's a YouTube video for everything. So look on YouTube, see if there's, how to guides and really take the time and become an expert in this new channel.

And so after 12 months, not only would you have done it, but you'll kind of have that under your belt and have a little more expertise. And everything you add, you can shoot an email once a month to your email list and say, Hey, this is what I did. And here's where I am. And you'll capture your audience where they are, because they're all over.

They might really like YouTube or not be on it at all. Same with Instagram, et cetera. So remember to bring it back to them. And a great tip too, you know, for social and for emails is start thinking about bonus content for your readers. It's a different way for people to connect with you. So that might be creating coloring sheets and working with your illustrator.
You can do it on canva, some free sites. You can do - there's websites out there. You can literally type in on Google 'free word search generators', and do a word search about your book. Just come up with new things and then email your readers and say new content from such and such author. And also I think parents and teachers need some ways to find busy work for their kids.

And so these are literally busy work, but they're related to your book. And so for example, I have a bullying prevention book, so I might have a word search with different terms like bully and victim and health and things like that. 

That's smart that find the free things free. Yes. Free is the key word.

There's a lot of free resources out there. You just have to dig for them.

 So another thing you can do with the new year is you can look at the calendar and there are national holidays that are like fun holidays like National ice cream day, National hug your cat day. And so write those down. 

Of course, Allie loves National Hug your Cat days, because of her AlyCat series.

Yeah. So with the AlyCat series, I'll do hug your cat day, ice cream day, because it's a theme in one of my books. And so that gives you content to post about and it's themed and it's fun. And you can even ask a question in your posts. Like, 'What is your favorite ice cream?' That way you are establishing a communication with  your audience and building that relationship.
I love, I didn't know, but one of my books is about the tooth fairy and there are two national tooth fairy days, one in February, one in August. And so that is my best selling day because  I really  promote it. I latch onto dental health month. So any, I mean, you can literally find national squirrel day.

There is a day if you have a book about a left-hander or you're a left-handed writer, I'm left-handed for example, I use that content. I talk about my writing process on national left-handed day. And so there is a day for everything. And if there's not, you can probably create one. Yeah. 

You actually can create one! I know an author, Diane Alber, who applied and got National Scribble day. 

I've heard of her. Yeah. 

So I think it's in March sometime, and she has a really big following with teachers. And I honestly don't know the process, but when you say make your own, you can literally!
We're going to have to come up with National Foreword Publicity day, Publicize Your Book Day - PR for children's authors. Cause we need it.  

Another good one is, you know, if you've been hustling your book for a while, and you're just kind of tired of seeing that book cover, consider changing either the imagery on your book cover or the background color. I know Aly has changed the background color and it kind of gives your book -this is if you're considering a reprint or if you have the ability to print on demand- it just freshens things up. You'd be surprised what a new perspective you have, because you've got a new product essentially to promote. 

That's so true. Cause I, I really do get tired of my own stuff.

 I put this on Instagram yesterday because I had to approve my books,  with the Vietnamese publishers and, I was going through it really carefully. For whatever reason, there was a lot of mistakes. And as I was reading it, I was like, Oh, this is a good book! I got to fall in love again.
So that's great. Like read the book, redo it. So do you go, did you go back to your illustrator, Aly, and have her redo it? 

I had my publisher take out a few things to make it more simplified. So the background doesn't have as many colors and I found that with a simplistic cover people are more willing to buy it where it's not as busy.

So that's really great. Another thing you can do, if you're going to reprint a different color or cover, you can ask your audience and your readers for their input, you know, and say, You know, have two and say, which one would you prefer? Or, um, what color should I go with for reprint? Any kind of questions to help them feel like they're a part of your book journey, which is great. And I've seen really cool cover reveals these days, the one where you put a square, you post a square every day or every hour on Instagram. And by the end of it, you have 12 squares that are your book cover. I've seen some that are like black, and then it says, scroll, right? And then it erases a little bit and you post 10 posts and it kind of brings out a little bit of the book cover.

So it gets people excited and creates that fun two way conversation. Very creative. I've seen some amazing posts like that. You just have to really spend the time, I guess, and figure out a fun way to do it, but people will respond if you do. They they love being a part, as Aly said of your book journey.

And that's why we always counsel our clients, as you'rengetting ready to release your books, start introducing people to your characters, tell them the character traits, tell them a little bit. We have a client who writes in from a tree house that our husband built her. And so we encourage her to go behind the scenes to show them what you're writing in.
This is so cool. This is so she writes in a tree house. And so we always tell her, do a behind the scenes, look at your writing space. I mean, anything that people want to get to know you beyond just the name on the book cover. 

I want a tree house. Amazing!

She lives in Iowa. We'll ask for some pictures.

And she said, when it snows, it's so pretty. She, you know, it's heated. She looks out, I was going to say, and her husband made it. I'm like, sign me up for that husband and hide out in there. But Lori was talking about having your characters introduced, but you can also do that after you've published a book.

So for those who have not read your book, you can introduce the characters one at a time, take one a week and then give them qualities that the reader can relate to. I love that because so many people think about marketing after, and then they feel like it's too late. And so now where do I start?

So it's never too late. Right? You can just do it. And so Lori and I, now we're adapting to these ever-changing times right now. And so within our firm, we have added a few more services so that authors can reinvent themselves and adapt and we can guide them. The services that we're now offering, in addition to our initial services are just so much fun.
We're so excited about them. So the two services, it talk about our satellite media tours and read alouds. 

And so satellite media tours are so fun. It's when you see spokespeople on different morning shows or afternoon shows in different markets, whether it's LA Chicago, Salt Lake City, and they are doing a bundle.

So they're talking about. Holiday gifts, they're talking about Father's Day gifts. They latch onto a theme, and then they work with them and they invite our clients to be a part of it. And so you're guaranteed exposure on whatever the network is, that times they duplicate it on the stream.

And so this is your clip to have, you can send it. If I was on a book tour in Salt Lake City, I can send it to everybody in an email. I can post it on Facebook and say, Look, I was on a book satellite media tour and it lends a lot of credibility to be recommended by a product spokesperson.

And there is a fee to facilitate it, but we generally find that we only recommend them to our clients when they're in really strong markets.  A lot of times we try and negotiate exclusivities. So if someone's doing a father's day gift guide, maybe they've got a razor and a golf ball, and then maybe there's just one book that you can read together with it, as opposed to a whole bundle of X, wherever you're competing.

And it's just so nice to be. And one thing with that is because there's no, let's say it's a five minute segment. The person that's doing the product review will hit on your point. So they'll tell people what it's about. They'll tell them where to get it, and they'll tell them the age range. And so you'll get your most important messages in there.

We have a lot of clients doing this for upcoming holiday season. 

So now if somebody listens to this and they think I want to do this, like for Christmas 2020, are they too late? 

I think we could probably work with some of our... and maybe work to see they do go to multiple markets. So you may have missed one market, but it's okay.


They travel all over the place and lately some of these content creators are doing it through zoom anyway. So you might be okay. You can reach out to Foreword Publicity. We just booked a client for the LA market. I know there's a bunch of markets coming up. 
So do you mean like a virtual market? Like how we used to have in-person go to the market.
I mean the market, like the state, the region.
 Okay, gotcha. Sorry. But I love that. I used to go to the market as a kid in the, before times, there was the Christmas market I really liked.


 What's the read alouds? 

The read alouds are so much fun! So we work with YouTube creators who will read aloud your book to their audience. And it's so important for kids and readers to hear adults reading aloud, it helps with their fluency, their literacy skills. I mean, it's proven to help them be ahead of the game when they start school. And so what we do is we work with these creators and with permission from the author, they read aloud the book and a lot of them will dress up as one of the characters in the book. So they'll like snap their fingers and they'll turn into a fairy or they'll snap and then turn into, you know, a different wizard. And so it's so much fun. And often these read alouds come with an animated background, music sound effects, all of these things that entice readers to stay in that read aloud zone and finish a book and it can be watched with an adult. 

It can be watched independently, of course, with a parent or Guardian's permission to watch it. Another great thing about read alouds is that. You can actually speed up the reading or slow it down or pause it. So if a reader needs more time with a page in the story, you can pause it. You can slow it down. You can do different things to help with their fluency.  And it's really great outreach for our clients to give them that virtual perspective. Favorite book, whether the kid wants the parents usually to read again, read it again, read again.

Just watch again. Yeah.  I might be guilty of, I don't know if you guys have ever been in this, but if your kids call you out for skipping a page, Oh, you're like, I didn't skip it. And then they make you start over. But some of the read aloud creators even go as far as create some educational material worksheets for teachers and it's great.

And you then own this content so you can market it. Let's say you're going to libraries and stores, instead of saying here's a PDF of my book to preview to see if you'd like it, send them the read aloud and let them have it in an immersive way. One of the read aloud creators that we work with is a Hollywood voiceover actress.

And so, Oh my gosh, she reads better than anyone. She did voices for different films like Madagascar and it's just really brings books to life in such a unique way. I know my daughter's in second grade and every Friday is fun Friday. And so they let the kids pick a read aloud to watch the video on YouTube and they zoom it and the kids really look forward to that.
Oh, that's so fun. Those are great new services. I do too! I think you'll be getting a lot of work for those. What's really what I have found. I mean, my kids are older, they're 12 and 10, but yeah, that whole concept as a parent where you say something. 

And you'd been saying something to them over and over again. And I just, it kind of goes over their head, but like, Nana and Papa come over and they say something and your kids are like, yeah, well, this is one of the really loud, we read to our children, it's the same voice over and over, but with someone else does it, they're just totally  totally like engrossed with it, just when they're reading it, just make them put their headphones on, okay, I'm done that's enough.

I don't listen to it. 

Well, and you mentioned older kids cause I have a 12 year old as well. And they're really in that stage where of course they're reading Harry Potter and whatever else, a lot of them, but they also like to curl up in bed and listen to what I read to the six-year-old. They just like to do it like by accident, right. It doesn't look purposeful, but they like that. And then those read alouds will get the attention of a wide range of kids. Even if the books are really targeted to small and it's safe content, and you don't have to worry that your kids are riding their brain, watching kids, unbox toys, like my kids watched those toy unboxing videos.

Yes. They're fun. But. And then they do all the toys too, right? Like why can't I be like, right? 

Yeah. Yes. My kids are already like planning to start their own channels. 

Well, I was trying to encourage my cause at least then you're doing something you're not watching it, but they don't really want to learn. 

I don't know how many times I've seen one child open up a chocolate, egg, probably too many to count. It's to the point where I don't ever want to look at a chocolate. Oh, my goodness. That's so funny. 

Okay. I asked, really last minute on but I did ask on my Facebook page, what should I ask these ladies from Foreword Publicity? So the one question from Lauren was 'If I had money to spend on one thing, marketing wise, what should it be?'

That might be too hard to answer. I don't know. What's your best...Aly and I usually have the same response. I can go first and then I will say I would go on a virtual book tour. Aly's nodding because we, again, virtual book tours are so great right now, especially when you can't travel. So virtual book tours, just to recap, it's your book going on tour.

So every day for one, two or three weeks, your book visits a different heavy hitting blog and their blogs that talk about whether it's children, literature, whether it's YA - whatever your genre is. And it is so great for SEO. So eventually when you Google yourself, these blogs come up at the top.

They're great. You can use the blogs and share them on your social media as content. You can email them to your email list.  I think if there was one thing, you know, it's hard, again, it's always hard to pick one thing, but that would be the one thing that I would do. I have a book coming out in May and I already locked in my book tour because they are hard to get into.
And we're very fortunate that we have great relationships with the companies that run the book tours. Not only do they give us a discount that we pass along to our authors, but many times they will finagle a spot for us.

 And so somebody's listening to this now, are they looking at three to six months out?
Or I would say probably now I'm here with the holiday season. Um, you're looking probably about two months out, but we can always make things happen quicker if we need to where we can be miracle workers. Right Aly? So if you have a Christmas book and you're like, Oh my goodness, it's four weeks to Christmas. We can beg and plead and try many to see if I can fit you in. 

Well Lori took my answer there for a virtual book tour, but my second answer would be a social influencer outreach, which you would send your book to social influencers, like bookstagrammers, and they would read your book, review your book and tag you and share it.
And it's really great because most of these bookstagrammers have young children. And so it's just introducing your book to a whole live range of an audience, all over the world. And that's something that you can keep in all of your social media channels. You can, if with permission, you can put it on your website, these pictures.

ere. And we work with some great influencers. You know, we want to work with the influencers that have an organic following. Sometimes these influencers have 30,000 followers, but you might see them have 20 likes. So we look at those kinds of things. We look at their insights to see if they're,  if they're posting regularly and they have an active following.
And so, it's better to reach out to those who have an active following an organic reach than those who appear to be bigger than they really are. 

Yes. I know exactly what you mean. 

And those two, yeah. Outreaches are a perfect, if you want to say wine and cheese pairing, you know, they compliment each other so well because you're hitting the bookstagram audience in two different ways.

So you would think if you're a person that really follows children's books, blogs, you're going to see this twice. And marketing is usually the rule of two or threes. When you see something two or three times, you're more apt to take action. And so hopefully people would be more apt to actually go check out your book and hopefully purchase it.

And can I ask, do you offer these services, a la cart? So if somebody heard one of those things that you just said, could they just sign up for one. 

Absolutely. They can contact us. We typically bundle services because it ends up being more cost effective and works better together. But yes, absolutely. Any of the services we offer can be done on a la cart basis as well.

And I'm curious, do you feel like the blog tour is better? Like, so to me, I guess that whole, you know, getting your book on the news feels like you're somewhat, like, it feels so good. So when you were talking about that circuit is the blog tour better because of the SEO and sort of that written word lasts longer than the videos?

I think so because SEO is such a hard nut to crack it, unless you're paying a digital agency to really do the ins and outs of your website. It's so hard - if you Google best books for bullying, the only people that are going to come up are the Simon and Schuster's of the world that put thousands, hundreds of thousand dollars into the backend.

And so book tours really elevate that SEO for you and give you that credibility. And so hopefully when you approach a store, when you approach a library and they Google you, they will see that you're on these relevant book tours and it gives them more credibility in their minds. Gotcha. Gotcha. Cool. Any last wisdom, tips, advice, Merry Christmases. Happy Thanksgiving. 

Oh, yes, we definitely are so thankful for all of our clients and our influencers and all of the people that have helped us. You know, we started this a few months ago, just out of a passion for helping others and helping authors. And it has grown so much and we are so thankful for everyone who has supported us and we just love our clients and we love what we do.
You know, we stay up till all hours just working on this because we truly. Yeah, Lori's laughing cause she was up till 3:00 AM working. I have a choice, not because she was fine when you're doing something you love. I've, I'm still in the corporate world for now. But I'm kind of planning my exit strategy and when you have your own company and you're doing what you love and you believe in your clients, you just want to keep working.

It's not a have to, it's a want to, and that's it.

This season in particular, I feel like if you have something that you love this year, like that's, what's keeping us going, right? Yeah. That's what I do to you. And I have a smile and a bounce in my step and it's 2020, and it's a pandemic. And then I talked to other people there, like you need something you love, I feel like to get you through.

Yeah, this is great. A great passion project turned actual business. We're so thankful. We also handle a lot of the marketing for Mascot Books right now. So they have outsourced some of their children's books and cookbooks and why a novels to us. And so it means a lot that in just such a short time, they've trusted us with so many clients and  we get to work with people all over the world.

We have a client in Canada. Of course you're in Canada. We're talking to people in Kenya. It's just, it's so neat. It's really blossoming here. When our clients win an award or get a really good review, Lori and I are  so excited, we'll text each other. If she finds out middle of the night, she'll text me.

And then, we call our client the next day, once they wake up and it's like, we want to throw a party for them, just send gifs, like back and forth to each other. I'm like the friends characters jumping around, like, yay. It's so genuine. We just really care and we really love what we do. It really comes across.

So thank you so much for bringing these tips to everybody. Oh, sorry. Lori - we are offering, if anybody's interested, if you're on the fence about marketing book publicity, if it's right for you, reach out to us as Laurie was just going to say on our website, we're offering free consultations. And so we'll spend 15 to 20 minutes and we'll talk to you about your book, what your goals are and how we can help you.

Got it. Cool. And remind us your website. So I think there were some issues with the spelling last time. Cause I don't know that we set it. It's www dot forward. publicity.com forward is F O R E w O R D publicity. That was it. Thank you. And of course it will be in the show notes and all of that 

Happy Thanksgiving to both of you have a great long weekend.

We're so thank you so much for having us - you're so well-respected in the author community. Gosh, you can see, you know, people love you. And so we're, we're thankful to talk to you and, you know, we would, we always recommend if anybody has any questions about self-publishing and emails, we always send them your way.

Thank you.
Take care.