Matt: Welcome back to all the brave listeners that have decided to listen to another episode of Publish & Prosper, which is hopefully quite a few of you. 

Lauren: It's not just another episode. It's episode number 40. 

Matt: Yeah. I don't know how significant that is, but I will say this - happy holidays. 

Lauren: Indeed. A very happy August holiday season to all of those who celebrate.

Matt: I also just threw up a little bit in my mouth. 

Lauren: I want to be so very clear about the fact we're recording this episode early. It's August 2nd. It's barely, by our own estimations, spooky season.

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: And yet here we are. And there are still people out there in the world who would be like, absolutely not. It's still summer. Don't you dare start pushing your Halloween agenda on me now. 

Matt: But isn't anything after Easter spooky season? 

Lauren: Well, my birthday is in July, so. I think anything after Easter - which I don't celebrate in the first place. 

Matt: I mean that’s, that's spooky as hell too. Your birthday. 

Lauren: Well, that's true. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That's absolutely true. But yeah, I'm a big fan of the like, you know, July 4th I expect to start seeing pumpkins and ghosts out in stores and everywhere else I go. 

Matt: Oh, I was saying after Easter. 

Lauren: Okay that's, I mean. As somebody who primarily decorates her home in Halloween decor year round. 

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: Yeah, obviously. I wish this stuff was in stores all year round, but at the very least July. But unfortunately, we're not even talking about the Halloween holiday season right now. 

Matt: Well we're not talking about - we're not talking about the good ones. 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: If you haven't figured it out yet, we are talking about the actual holidays in December, regardless of what you celebrate. But it's the time when everybody's spending money and buying gifts and doing all that crazy stuff. And we have this whole effort that is made by a lot of indie authors and entrepreneurs and solopreneurs and creators to ramp up their own sales and make their stores look good. Today, we're going to be talking about how to optimize your store for the holidays and spoiler alert. Yes, you need to start now, unfortunately. 

Lauren: You really do. And it's as I was outlining this episode, I was like, are we really talking about this? Is this really what we're doing right now? And literally in the like hour or two that I spent outlining this episode, I got four different emails from like different marketing newsletters that I'm subscribed to that the subject lines were ‘it's time to get started on your holiday campaign prep.’ 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I was like - 

Matt: Or download your holiday readiness guide now. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yes. And it was August 1st. But here we are. I then did go and went, okay, let's actually look at some real statistics on this. And actually, according to a McKinsey survey conducted last year, 50% of holiday shoppers started their shopping in October - 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: - or earlier in 2023. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So it's - this is not a joke. 

Matt: Well - 

Lauren: We genuinely. 

Matt: And you see Black Friday sales and things actually getting pulled forward, right? So I don't even know that there's just a true Black Friday anymore. And that wasn't even just because of COVID, like people were already shopping sooner. So brands and stores were already releasing the sales sooner. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: You know, earlier. 

Lauren: Yeah. Which actually is something, and that's something that I saw in a Forbes article too. Both of these, the McKinsey survey and the Forbes article, I'm gonna have linked in the show notes. They were talking about a key motivator of the pre-season kickoff were earlier sales events.

Matt: Why'd you read that like a Taylor Swift fan? Trick question, huh? 

Lauren: Because I'm incapable of - 

Matt: What do your bracelets say today? 

Lauren: Oh, what do my bracelets say today? 

Matt: Are they holiday themed? 

Lauren: Uh, no, I thought about that because I do have some from Jollywood - 

Matt: Oh god. 

Lauren: When I went to the Jollywood event last year. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: No, today's bracelets say Elder Emo, You'll Be Fine, and Modern Idiot.

Matt: Elder Emo, You'll Be Fine, and Modern Idiot. 

Lauren: Oh yeah. The point is that there are a lot of sources out there, including both of us, telling you that it's time to start your holiday prep. 

Matt: There's only one source though, honestly, that lets you know that the holiday season is upon us. And that's when the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland, California gets fully decorated like Nightmare Before Christmas. And that has happened already. So we are in holiday mode. 

Lauren: I'm going. 

Matt: Have you not been? 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: Oh my God. 

Lauren: I'm going this year. 

Matt: Yeah, you definitely have to go. 

Lauren: After Author Nation. 

Matt: Oh, it's so sick. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I'm so excited. Just putting it out there.

[4:51]

Matt: All right, well, here we go. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Holiday preparation for those of you that are selling direct -  

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: For the most part. This will also apply to a few other areas. A lot of this is gonna be focused on those that sell direct and have their own stores or website stores that they manage, but there will be some other things in here that apply if your books are being sold elsewhere, things you'll wanna make sure that you've tidied up before the holidays hit, and some things you might wanna consider doing just for the holidays, like special products and things. 

Lauren: Yeah, I'm actually gonna add a disclaimer in here up at the top that a lot of this is trying to focus on people that are selling books as products. If you want something that's a more general focus on holiday planning, holiday prep, whether it's getting holiday campaigns ready for social and email, best practices for prepping your store, customer service, promo campaigns, we have all kinds of resources like that available. 

I'm going to link a bunch of them in the show notes, blog posts, YouTube videos, webinars. We also have a free downloadable PDF that is a holiday guide. It comes with a checklist and all these things you need to do to help yourself get ready. We're not going to be covering a lot of that in this episode. 

Matt: All right, first thing you need to do is know what to expect from your publisher or publishing company or the platform that you use for your products, whether those are books or other things. Many authors, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, whatever, they sell multiple different types of products. They're obviously fulfilled by different companies at times. You might have your books fulfilled by Lulu with our direct plugin, but you may have the rest of your author swag fulfilled by… let's say somebody like Printful, which is also all print-on-demand, does the exact same thing Lulu does, just they don't do books. They also have limitations that might kick in around the holidays.

These are things you're gonna need to be aware of. If you're utilizing print-on-demand products, first off, everybody knows those are not going to ship within 24 hours. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Print-on-demand for anything takes at least a day to two days to create or produce. Sometimes that production timeline will get pushed out for the holidays because of the massive amount of volume coming through to these print-on-demand providers, including Lulu and everybody else on the planet that does print-on-demand. 

Understanding what your production timelines might look like, what they might balloon out to during the holidays is really important so that you can convey that to your customers and readers and fans. And most of these brands, like Lulu and others, they will - or should - post ahead of time what their production times are looking like. So we try to get out ahead of that, I know Printful and some of the others do as well. So you should have a pretty good idea at all times what the production timeline looks like. And then the carriers themselves, FedEx, UPS, they will also post what their shipping times are looking like. So you'll have a pretty good idea of what you're able to communicate to your customers. 

Lauren: Yeah. Which I think is a really important point that I want to underline in what Matt was just saying. Not only is it okay for you to be transparent and openly communicate with your customers about this stuff, but I would highly encourage you to do so. We live in a world that is very like overnight shipping or nothing, but also at the same time. 

Matt: Yeah, thanks Amazon. 

Lauren: Yeah. Well, yeah. But also at the same time, one of the other, one of the studies that I was looking at, I think it was the McKinsey study, had a poll in there that was actually like some of the data suggested that the younger generations of consumers - so like Gen Z, Millennials, and like, I think Gen X too - were actually more concerned with quality than expediency when it came to their products. 

If they had the option between getting a book overnight, but it's gonna come and it didn't have time for the glue to dry on the pages, so the spine is all wavy and there's glue sticking out the edges and pages are falling out. They don't want that. They would rather have to take a couple extra days and they're gonna get a high quality product from their order. 

Feel free to communicate openly with your customers and say like, hey, I use a print-on-demand service. You might even want to say like, here's why I do that. Here's why it's better for the environment. It's more cost-effective. Be transparent about what you're doing and be transparent about like, hey things take a little longer around the holidays. Bear with me if it takes a couple extra… and we all know, both from COVID and then just how life is in general these days, we all know that shipping is a very mixed bag of - at all, at all times. 

Matt: It's a straight dumpster fire. 

Lauren: Who knows? 

Matt: It doesn't matter what service you choose. 

Lauren: It doesn't matter. And - it doesn't matter. I mean, I got a book yesterday and about ten minutes after I had picked up the package from my package locker, and was literally like, sitting flipping through it at my desk, I got an email from Barnes & Noble letting me know that my package was going to be delivered tomorrow. And I was like, okay, helpful. Thank you. 

So, you know, it's a gamble when it comes to shipping right now. Everyone knows that, everyone's had that experience. So don't hesitate to be transparent with your customers about stuff like that. They will appreciate that honest communication more than they will you lying and saying it's definitely coming tomorrow when it's not actually coming for another week. 

Matt: Along those lines, you should make sure that you are subscribed to these production facilities emails. So if you're using Lulu, if you're using Printful or whatever that might be, make sure you're actually opted in to get emails from them because if you're not, you're not gonna know about some of these things. They may have a last minute change up in production times.

Or the opposite might happen, where they're able to open up another facility or areas in a facility that would expedite shipping or production and shipping times. 

But the point is if you're not subscribed to the emails from the companies that you do business with, you're not going to get these updates. You're not going to know some of these important things. And along those lines, if you're eligible for discounts or things through these providers that you use, you're going to need to be subscribed to other emails as well to be able to get that information.

We talk to people all the time that are like power users of Lulu. And we're like, did you get that email? They’re like what email? Are you subscribed? No? Like, you've been using us for six years and crushing it and you - okay, very good. 
Lauren: Okay, love that for you. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: We could talk about that forever, but I feel like we made the point. Stay in the know, know what’s going on, and communicate openly with your customers as much as you can. 

[10:58]

Lauren: Another very important thing that you’re going to want to do for holiday prep is to prep your products. And I mean that in a lot of different ways, so we’re going to run through a couple of different things here. First of all, if you've been procrastinating on doing any maintenance on your existing books… You know, if somebody said to you recently, oh, hey, I noticed a typo on page two that would be easy to fix. You just haven't like, sat down and had the time to do it. 

Or if it's been a while since you've actually seen a print copy of your book. Hopefully you've ordered proof copies of your books when you first made them available for sale, or before you made them available for sale. If it's been a while, if it's been more than six months since you've seen one because they're going straight to your customers, maybe you want to just go ahead and order another sample copy of each of your products. 

Just to give it a quick once over and just to take a look at it and say like, does everything look good on here? Did I fix that typo that somebody pointed out to me? Is the spine a little off? Am I looking at the cover now and thinking, oh, you know what, I actually probably could have tweaked this little design on the cover, or something like that. Now is the time to do it. Definitely now is the time to do it. You wanna have the best possible versions of your book ahead of your holiday sales. 

But also, if you wanted to get a little bit more robust than that, and if you were thinking about releasing a special edition of one of your books. Now is a great time to do it. Special editions are fantastic holiday gifts. If that's something that you've been thinking about, I mean, it doesn't have to be like a whole thing. It doesn't have to be that you're rewriting anything, or doing anything brand new, but maybe you just wanted to release a hardcover edition of something that you've only released in paperback before. 

Or maybe you want to splurge on a new cover design. And so you want to have a cool new cover designed for a hardcover edition, or your existing paperback, or whatever. You could also do - this gets a little bit more complicated - but you could do something like add an exclusive holiday themed epilogue as a bonus chapter in the back of your book. 

Whatever you want to do, whatever you can think of that makes it a little something extra, a little something special that you would want to do that would entice people to buy that specific edition. And it's also something that, you know, we've talked about this before, gives you an excuse to remarket it to your existing fans and followers. Like, hey, I've got something new for the holiday season. If you're interested, check it out. 

Matt: Yeah, we love special editions. And oftentimes people don't do them because they're worried they need a really good reason to do a special edition. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Which, you know, it helps if there's something that you can align it with a particular date in history or something relevant to that particular book. But this is also a great reason to do a special edition. And they're fairly easy to do. 

If you have the existing book files already, you can do something really cool like a cool new cover, do it with a dust jacket and make it a really nice special edition with a variant cover, or there's some pretty easy things you could do to make this a completely new product that people would probably love to purchase for themselves or as a gift for others. 

Lauren: Yep. One of my best friends literally earlier this week sent me an Instagram post of a book that she and I both really, really loved, that I know for a fact that she has at least three copies of. It is being released in a different paperback with a - it's the exact same book, just with a different cover and red sprayed edges. And I know she's going to buy it. I know she's gonna buy it. She says she isn't but I know she's going to. So people do it. People will buy special editions of your book. They don't have to be brand new editions. It could just be a little something extra that makes it exciting and cool. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Also, I think it's really important to remember when you are getting ready for holiday sales, that around the holiday season, people are buying gifts. They're not buying for themselves as much as they are buying for other people. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You know, if a customer is coming to your website, or a potential customer is coming to your website, they might not be a reader. They might not be somebody who's coming as a fan of you or as a potential fan of you to your website, but they know somebody who is. 

Especially like, if I'm buying… if I'm buying a gift for one of my friends that's a big reader. And I go to some author's website that I don't really know anything about this author, but I know that they really like this author. What I'm looking for on their website is something special, something unique, something that I don't think they would already have, something cool that I can be like, hey, this is a special something from this author that I know you like.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Which could be a special edition or it could be some other additional product.

[15:22]

Matt: Yes, and other products as we talk about things that you can add into your portfolio for the holidays. Another good one is calendars. So believe it or not, people still love, yes, paper calendars that you would hang on a wall or put on your desk or whatever that might be. 

Lauren: They sure do. 

Matt: And this is... Lauren has calendars. 

Lauren: Lauren has calendars? You use a paper planner too.

Matt: I do use a paper planner, yeah. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Or a notebook planner, yeah. It is made from paper. You're correct about that too. 

Lauren: I mean, as opposed to a digital one. 

Matt: Or a wooden one or a cardboard one. Plastic. Anyways. Calendars are actually super easy to make on Lulu. I mean, all you need are twelve to thirteen of your favorite photos. They could be book covers from your back catalog. It can be images from your latest book. Could be anything really, literally. Like, we've seen authors do calendars where it's pictures of them and their dogs and you know, other silly things. 

And again, if you have fans, if you have people that really enjoy your content, they love to also see stuff like that. Like, what do you do on a daily basis? Or what do your dogs look like? Or, you know, stuff like that. Like what are your hobbies? And it's crazy. We sell or we see the creation of and the sales of a wild amount of calendars around this time of year. 

Lauren: If you're a fiction author and your book takes place in a real place and it's somewhere that's accessible to you, go take twelve photos of iconic scenes from your book, put that in a calendar. If you're a nonfiction author and your book has twelve tips for how to do something, or twelve motivational quotes 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Or twelve. I mean, literally like, go on Canva, make an 8.5 by 11 or an, I guess an 11 by 8.5 canvas with a solid color background. Pick a font that you really like and center a quote on it. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Make twelve of those and that's your calendar. It doesn't have to be some very elaborate thing. They're very easy to make.

Matt: Yeah, we have the templates on our site too, that'll handle all of the dates and everything else. You don't have to worry about any of that. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: You just need to come with your images and what content you want to have in it. The rest of it's a breeze. So it really is one of those easy products that you can get into very quickly. Won't take much time at all. And so even if you only sold just a handful, it barely took you any time to create this product. And now you would know whether or not people want them and make a little bit of extra money in the process. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You could do the same thing, or you could do something similar by creating like, a custom notebook or a journal. Again, fiction authors do something like a reading journal or a reading log. That's especially a great thing to do around the holiday season because if people are going to set their like, 2025 reading goals and they say I'm going to read 52 books next year, I'm going to read one book a week in 2025. You've just created this really cool little reading journal for them that they can use for that. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Nonfiction authors put together like a little guided journal. It doesn't have to be a whole big thing, but blank pages with one sentence at the top of each spread of pages that prompts people to think about something from your book that ties in with your book and gives them the space to write about it. 

Matt: Yeah, because on the back end of the holidays, you have January. And people love to start new habits in January, right? 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: So if you have a nonfiction book that deals with something like, let's just say content marketing, you could create a journal or a guided journal or notebook that you sell during the holidays. It sort of accompanies your book, but maybe it is… how to become a better content marketer in 2025. And then each page has these prompts in it to help them live out some of the things that you've talked about in your book. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Those are all great ways to make some extra money and get more content out in the world for the holidays. 

Lauren: Yeah. And that's also something that you can think about if you're… especially as a nonfiction author, if you're promoting your business, if your book is something as a lead magnet, and you're trying to figure out like, how am I going to use this like, nonfiction business book as a gift idea? Like what, who's going to buy this gift? 

Absolutely, if you have customers that are coming in and saying like, I have a friend who I know is really determined that next year is going to be the year that they're going to start their own business. And you can say, okay, great, awesome. I've got this six week online course that you can buy as a gift for somebody. And I'll throw in this book with the six week online course. 

The book is the physical gift that they can give to the person they're gifting it to and say like, here's this book and then also you're gonna be enrolled in a six week course that'll help you start your own business.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That's a great gift. I would love, I mean, I don't wanna start my own business, but something along that lines of I signed you up for this cool class that'll help you achieve this goal that you've set for yourself. I would love that as a gift idea. 

Matt: You could start a bracelet business.

Lauren: I could start a bracelet business. I'll get right on that. 

Matt: What would you call it? 

Lauren: I don't know. I'd have to come up with a pun. I need time to workshop that.

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Yeah. Circle back on that. Ask me again. In our next episode.

Matt: You’ll put a pin in it for later? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: It wouldn't be something simple like Bracelets by Lauren?

Lauren: No. No, I got to be punny with that stuff. 

Matt: Hmm. Okay. 

Lauren: Speaking of - speaking of bracelets - 

Matt: Elder Emo Arm Accessories. 

Lauren: Oh, now we're getting somewhere. I mean, Elder Emo Accessories. 

Matt: Oh, there you go. 

Lauren: We could start working on that. You know, that being said, you could consider adding additional products to your store that aren't book-related.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: You know, obviously we're biased because we work for a publishing company, but you can also add other print-on-demand products that tie into your book products on your website, stickers, t-shirts, whatever. We've talked about this before. I know we have. 

Matt: Yeah. It's a safe bet that you'll find it somewhere in this last 38 episodes. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

[20:50]

Lauren: So, segue into our next topic. I've got a couple of different audits that I want you to do to get yourself ready for the holiday season. And the first one is going to be to audit your site.

Matt: Audit's such a terrible word. 

Lauren: I know. 

Matt: Can we just say, like, review? 

Lauren: I was trying to think of like, a catch-all. Sure. Review your site. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Much better. Okay. 

Matt: I hate the word audit. 

Lauren: Oh, I like the word audit. It makes me feel like I'm doing something productive instead of just browsing. 

Matt: You've never been under the watchful eye of the IRS. 

Lauren: Oh no.

Matt: I can tell. 

Lauren: No, no, no.

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: That's true. 

Matt: Let's use review. 

Lauren: We'll dissociate the word audit. 

Matt: Mom, if you're listening, I've never been under the watchful eye of the IRS either. 

Lauren: That's so ominous. Well, Okay, you should do a major site review then. 

Matt: There you go.

Lauren: In general, not just related to your book products on your site. You know, you're going to test all your links, place test orders - actually test all your links. I wanna be so clear about that. Don't just look at them and be like, yes, everything is linked. Everything looks good. Click on every single link, make sure it leads to the place that it's supposed to. Nothing's broken, nothing's outdated. 

Matt: That's a good point because there are times where - I don't care how long you've been doing direct sales or running your own site - there are things that happen outside of your control, potentially by the platforms, they roll out a new piece of functionality and unbeknownst to you, a link might break. They might change where a certain piece of content lives. 

And so again, you might not know this unless you're periodically reviewing your site anyways, which everybody should be doing, but definitely before the holidays.

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: If you're expecting to drive people there to purchase things and add new products, you definitely wanna make sure you're double checking all those links. 

Lauren: Definitely something that you want to keep in mind. But other things that you're going to want to look at more specifically on your website related to book sales and holiday - you're going to want to take a look at your graphic assets on your website, especially if you're doing something like a new book edition. If you're doing a new cover, if you're doing a new book format. 

So if you're using graphics on your website right now that show off a paperback edition of your book and for the holiday season, you're doing a brand new hardcover, or you're doing a special edition with a different cover design or something, you're going to want to make sure that your graphic assets on your website match whatever products you're promoting for the holiday season. 

You might want to think about something like doing holiday branding on your website that's pros and cons to doing that. But if you want to do anything holiday specific, that's something. And also if you're going to do paid holiday campaigns, whether it's a social campaign or paid ads or something, if you're using specific graphics for that, you might want to have those same graphics on your website. 

Matt: Yeah. But it is back to the messaging, the copy. It's the perfect time to update the copy around your book or books - 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: To speak specifically to gift buyers. Right? So again, it's not always going to be people during the holidays coming to buy for themselves. They're looking to potentially buy gifts for people. So, having copy on your - whether you're nonfiction or fiction. If you're nonfiction, it's easy. Change the copy to be big and bold. It says, hey, this book makes the perfect gift for the solo entrepreneur in your family who's looking to grow their business. Okay, that sounds like a great gift. Let me check that out. 

Or if it's fiction, you know, and you do a series, it's like, hey, for the ultimate fan of whatever the title of the book is, right? Or whatever the series is, we've got this special edition. It's available during the holidays only. That ultimate fan in your family is gonna be so bummed if they don't get this for the holidays.

You can really update that copy to play and pull onto the people who are purchasing gifts for fans of your work. Make sure you're taking that opportunity and really driving home that FOMO.

Lauren: Yeah. And it's gotta be something that is accessible to people that are outside. 

Matt: Hold on a second. Let me back up. I hate that I just said that it's such a stupid marketing buzz term. For those of you that don't know FOMO just means fear of missing out. So you want to play on that. You want to drive home that idea of exclusivity and some of the other things that would drive them to buy that product right then.

Lauren: Do you feel better now? 

Matt: I do. I hate I just said it to speed the process up and I realized I don't care how many seconds it saved me from not actually saying fear of missing out. I just can't bring myself to use dumb marketing buzz terms. I hate it. 

Lauren: Okay, I understand. It's fine. But that is actually a really good point because, I mean, maybe not FOMO, because I think FOMO is a term that a lot of people recognize - 

Matt: And now you're gonna say it every five seconds. 

Lauren: - even outside of the marketing sphere. But that's something that you wanna keep in mind with your site messaging, again, with the idea in mind that you are speaking to gift givers and not necessarily the recipients of your product. You wanna make sure that you're speaking to them in a language that they will understand.  

So like if I'm a romance author on a website and I would normally be promoting my book saying like, hey, if you're a fan of… the grumpy one is soft only for the sunshine one, and they are forced to fake date when they wind up in close proximity, and it all turns when they walk into the hotel room and find out there's only one bed. Like that is speaking to a very specific audience of people. Matt's making a face right now like what words did you just say? 

Matt: What are you talking about? 

Lauren: I'm not explaining any of it to you. 

Matt: But nobody's going to understand. 

Lauren: That's not true. That's not true. Romance readers understand exactly what I just said. 

Matt: That was supposed to be marketing copy for somebody's website?

Lauren: That was - that was trope language copy that is promoting a book to a reader. That's my point. If my mom saw that on a website when she was looking for gifts for me for Christmas, she'd be like, I don't know what this means at all. And I don't know that Lauren's going to like any of this. But if my mom was on that same website and saw a copy on that website that said perfect gift for fans of the 90s classic animated movie, Anastasia, she'd be like, oh, I gotta get this for Lauren. 

Matt: Well, that's probably a bit too specific as well. But I think the message here that Lauren's trying to convey is what I just said, just make sure you tailor that copy to fit potentially gift buyers, not necessarily directly the fans of your work, whatever that stuff Lauren said prior to that. If anybody understood that, please email us and let me know. 

Lauren: I just - one person. One person tell me you understood. You know what? My friend Anne absolutely understood that - 

Matt: She doesn't count. If she's your friend, she doesn't count. 

Lauren: Oh man. Okay, if you say so. 

Matt: Man, I wonder about you sometimes. 

Lauren: That's okay. You may have noticed that I just did this in there. This is another place where comp titles are really useful. When you're talking about gifts, gift ideas is the perfect place to be like… perfect for fans of...

Matt: I would caution one thing there though. I agree with you, but make sure if you're gonna use a comp title to sell your own, make sure you use like, a big, big, big, big, big name one. Don't use a comp title of somebody who is just a few books into their writing career that might be a little niche or something, because the average gift buyer is not gonna recognize that, and you really want to play, again, up to this idea that this is something that's highly qualified for a particular person. 

So in the case of nonfiction, if your book is… let's say it's content marketing based and you want people to understand that it's a great gift for people who are into content marketing or reading about content marketing, you might say, you know, for any fan of Seth Godin or some of the other, like the big name.

Lauren: Yes.

Matt: I would use that. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: To the point where you don't get in trouble by Seth Godin. But if you're just saying for fans of Seth Godin or whoever you want to… but again, use a big name, because that's going to appeal to a wider range of gift buyers than if we went super niche and said something along the lines of for fans of Austin Church - no offense, Austin, we love you, but the average gift buyer might not recognize that name. And so you kind of missed the point there. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Okay. 
Lauren: Absolutely. And normally I would caution you against doing that with comp titles. This is the exception. 

Matt: It's the only time. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: This is the time you want it to be something that's recognizable.

Matt: Cause again, you're just trying to capture the attention of somebody who wouldn't normally be on your site anyways, but you want them to understand that your book is probably a great fit for that person they're shopping for, which is how they landed on your site to begin with. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: The only way they're really going to truly understand it is by a big name that is pretty widely recognized in most households. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Yeah. Otherwise don't do that ever. 

Lauren: Just definitely make sure that it is actually an applicable comp. Like, there was like a five to ten year period of time where every single book in the market was the next Hunger Games, and for fans of the Hunger Games.

Matt: Right. 

Lauren: Like, there are a finite number of books that are actually comparable to the Hunger Games. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Like, let's not. So proceed with caution. But, agree with Matt 100%. Find the biggest name close comp that you can when you're doing that. 

[29:17]

Lauren: But I want to shift gears a little bit and I want to talk to the people that are -

Matt: Are you going to use the King's English or are you going to talk in some crazy gibberish? Some romance language that only like, a handful of people understand at the Ripped Bodice or wherever you hang out. 

Lauren: You know what? The Ripped Bodice absolutely does sell merch that has like, tropes on it. Anybody -

Matt: You just like saying the word tropes. 

Lauren: I do. Actually, I don't, I don't. I think it's overused. 

Matt: You say it a lot for somebody who doesn't like saying it. 

Lauren: It's an overused buzzword.

Matt: It is. 

Lauren: But. 

Matt: So why do you keep saying it? 

Lauren: Because people understand what it means. Okay, fine, whatever. Shifting gears a little bit, cause we have - 

Matt: Let's shift gears.

Lauren: We have been talking a lot about people that are selling direct. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: I want to speak a little bit to people that are either not selling direct or are also selling their books through retail distribution in addition to selling direct. 

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: So you want to check your product pages everywhere you can. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: Everywhere you can. If it's like, you know, separate from your own website, we've done that already. Great. Or it's not applicable to you. Great. Either way. 

Matt: And I'll go a step further actually, before you continue that, just to make this make a little more sense. If you do not have your own website, well, shame on you. But if you don't, okay, just anywhere where we talked about website, replace that with author page on whatever channel it is you sell on. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So whether that's the big crappy Zon or it's somewhere else, you've got an author page. Just make sure that you're doing all the things on that page that we talked about doing on your website. Make sure photos and descriptions are up to date, links work, you know, all of those things. 

Lauren: Yeah. And I want to emphasize that if you are selling on the Lulu Bookstore and you are not utilizing your Author Spotlight, you should be. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Even if you only have one book, I can see people being like, oh, what's the point of that? I only have one book. Why do I need an additional product page for that? Because you can put your links to your website, your links to your social media, your author bio and author profile, photo.

Matt: It's a free landing page. 

Lauren: It is a free landing page. 

Matt: It's a free author website. 

Lauren: Why wouldn't you use it? 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: Why wouldn't you take the time to set it up? So if you are not already using it, if you're not sure, it is not something that populates automatically. You have to turn it on in your Lulu account. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: So if you're not already doing that, I would highly recommend that you go do that. And if you are already doing it, just take a minute. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Go check it, make sure everything looks right. And now, so not just on your author spotlight, but on any of your book product pages, go take a look at them. Is the formatting correct? Did something go wrong somewhere and your entire cover copy is all written in one big paragraph all squished together because somehow the line breaks didn't copy over correctly? 

Or it's supposed to be italicized, but instead you've somehow wound up with the little like, carrot I and then slash I like as the actual copy in the text instead of formatting correctly. 

Now is the time to go through all of that and just make sure everything looks good. Everything looks right. You're happy with how it looks. If you listened to our recent book description episode - which has a lot of downloads on it, for the record. Some people in this room. 

Matt: I see what you're doing here, okay.

Lauren: If you haven't listened to that one, or if you did listen to it and you wanted to update your book description, now's a great time to do it. You might also wanna consider if there are any temporary holiday related keywords to add to your book description. So like we were just saying with your website messaging, if there's anything in there that you wanna put in some copy that says the perfect gift for your favorite romantasy reader. That's - now you want to stick that in there. You can always take it out after the holiday season is over. Matt didn't flinch at the word romantasy, that's great. 

Matt: You've got me conditioned. 

Lauren: I know. I'm actually not a romantasy reader. I can't actually get up on my soapbox about that one. Oh well. Definitely take a look at all this stuff. It's worth it. It's worth taking the time. And you also want to make sure that your book is showing up everywhere it's supposed to. So take the time - I'm not going to use the A word again - take the time to review all of your product pages on all of the different places that your book is available for sale and make sure that everything looks good and right on all of those pages. It's worth the time. 

It's also probably helpful for you to have a resource. Have a Google Doc where you have links to all of your book product pages so they're easily accessible for you throughout the holiday season. 

Matt: Definitely. 

Lauren: And also throughout the rest of the year. It's just a good thing to have. 

[33:29]

Lauren: All right, social media? 

Matt: You're gonna review your social media or audit it?

Lauren: Did you want to go through, do you want me to go through and change the copy of the outline? Will that make you feel better? 

Matt: It's just such a formal, intimidating, rude, aggressive word, audit. I mean, where are you going to use that ever where it's got a positive connotation? I'll wait. 

Lauren: No.

Matt: Okay. Well, let's review our social media. 

Lauren: Let's review our social media. 

Matt: Yeah. Just like everything else, right? All of the touch points that we have out there for our fans, followers, readers, and potential new ones we should be reviewing those. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: And so as such, now we come to the social media stage. 

Lauren: A lot of this is going to be same same, make sure that your by links are readily accessible in all of your profiles and bios on every single social platform that you use. Again, don't just confirm with your eyeballs, actually click on every single link in your profile, in your bio, make sure they're working, they linked to the right landing page. 

If there's one particular place that you want to link everybody to. If you're trying to drive all traffic to your website, make sure that link is the top link. Like, that's the most available one. Make sure everything is as accessible as possible. You want to make the customer journey as easy as possible. 

You also might want to take advantage of the different platforms that have pinned posts available. Like Instagram and Facebook, you can pin - and other ones too, but those are just the first two that come to mind - you can pin a couple of posts at the top of your page, so that no matter what has been posted more recently, those ones are saved and displayed at the top. 

Which is a great marketing opportunity if you wanna highlight, you know, on Instagram, if you wanna do the top three products that you're promoting this holiday season, have those be your like top three pinned posts. Or even if you're just doing one, and maybe your top three pinned posts, one of them is your book cover with just some like, about the book and about the author info, and then one of them is a carousel of testimonials or reviews from readers that loved it. 

And then one of the other ones is this book is the perfect gift for dot dot dot fill in the blank. Make use of that space. It's really valuable space. It's yours. Make sure that you're using it. Reviews, testimonials, take the time to find some good ones. If you don't already have them, they are great marketing opportunities, particularly for this time of year. 

Matt: Yeah. I love that tip about pinning them on your profile using that functionality. 

Lauren: Thanks. While you're on your social media, if there's anything that you have the opportunity to update from your standard social media branding that ties into the holiday season. And I'm not saying like, put a Santa hat on your profile picture. That's not what I mean. But if your products, if your brand, if something about you in general can tie in really well with the holiday season, this is the time to capitalize on that. 

Like Matt said earlier, right after the holidays is New Year's. And there's all this, whether it's New Year's resolutions or these are my goals for 2025, or it's like hashtag New Year New Me, whatever it is, if your books can help people with those goals. That might not be something that you would have in your social media messaging or your social media branding year round, but this particular season, this time of year, you are gonna wanna do that. You are gonna wanna capitalize on that.

Sidebar pro tip if you are gonna change up any of your messaging anywhere whether it's on social media, whether it's in your book descriptions on your website, whatever - set yourself a reminder for January to go back and change it. 

Matt: I've literally gone to websites before like, we’re talking March, April, May, and their holiday copy is still there. And it's like wow. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: Yep. We are not leaving the Christmas lights up till January in this household. Definitely make sure - and maybe even in that Google Doc where you're keeping track of all of your different product links, keep track of all the changes that you make. Have somewhere that you make a note to yourself of just everything that you've modified so that you can easily go back and change it all back again. 

[37:25]

Lauren: Last thing that I want to talk about with social media is figuring out creative ways to drive new fans and followers to your social media. And this is actually kind of an evergreen idea, but if there's ever a time to try it, if it's not something that you want to do all year round, holiday season is a great time to experiment with connecting with other authors, influencers, people in your industry, whatever the case may be. 

One of my favorite tips is to try to put together a collaborative giveaway. So, you know, get together with four or five, six other authors in your genre or in your industry or whatever, and say you are each going to donate two copies of your books to a giveaway. So now it's six different books, two copies each. Each of those authors promotes the giveaway to their audience on their social media. 

Especially if it's a platform like Instagram where you can use the collaborative posting thing to have it just, it's one post that shows up on everybody's respective feeds. And then it gets promoted to all of your followers. So you're cross promoting it to everybody. And you say, you know, we're giving away this one super bundle of all of our books, and it's going to be one for you and one for a friend. So it's a really fun like, holiday gift. You'll have a set for yourself and you can give the perfect holiday gift to one of your friends. 

And in order to be eligible to win it, entrants must be following each of the authors that are tagged in this post. So you get a bunch of new followers. And then you might even want to include a rule like tag a friend in the comments that you're going to give these books to if you win, and then you're expanding it even further beyond that.

Not everybody that enters the giveaway is going to continue to follow you after the fact. You're always going to lose some of those initial followers after that push. But it's a nice opportunity to get your content out in front of other people. And it's definitely something like, I know I've done it before, where I've seen a giveaway of five books and I recognize three of the five of them. And it makes me go, oh, what are these other two that I haven't heard of? Because I like these three. So who are these two that I haven't heard of? I'm going to go check out their books and see more about them. 

Matt: And don't be afraid to work with somebody or approach somebody that has either exponentially more followers than you or exponentially less followers than you. It's not always about the actual number of accounts. It's about what turns into book purchases for you. So you could be partnering with somebody who has 75,000 followers and you only have 900. That person with 75,000 followers though, might only turn into a couple of book sales for you. You never know.

Conversely, or inversely, your 900 followers might turn into 50 book sales for them. So I would never look at somebody's follower account and use that as a reason not to approach them or want to work with them. Everybody's audiences are different. Their purchasing habits are different. The percentage rates of conversion are different. So I would look more at the quality of the work from that person, if it is somebody that you want to be, you know, identified with out there in the public on social media.

Lauren: Two points to that. First of all, if you are going to look at any metrics on their page, don't look at their follower count, look at their post engagement. Because if they have 75,000 followers, but they're only getting 50 likes on each post, that's going to tell you more about their accessibility and quality and the quality of their followers. 

But more importantly than that, there might be invisible metrics that you're not seeing, which is why I agree with Matt, that you should discard that information. You should reach out to people based on whether or not you want to try to work with them. Because you might find yourself in a situation where you're saying, okay, this person has a reasonably engaged audience of 75,000 followers and I only have a thousand, but I have a very engaged 25,000 person email subscription list that they don't have. So we're going to partner on this Instagram giveaway. 

And then in exchange for that, where I'm hoping that I'm going to get at some of their followers from that, we're also going to do a newsletter swap where I'm going to shout out in my newsletter that, oh, this is one of my favorite books of 2024, or this is a book that I'm giving to everyone in my life this holiday season that is a big fan of this - 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Or loves this, or wants to do this. Those are great opportunities that I would definitely, if it's something that you've thought about doing before, if it's something that you've wanted to try, but haven't found a reason to, or if it's something that you've had success with before, but you haven't done it recently, holiday season is a great time to try something like that. 

And then, and just another idea on that, especially - this is good for people that if you're not really big on social media, but maybe you do have a really good email subscription list, or maybe you have friends that have a really good email subscription list or something like that. Try to look into different ways to have your book included in a gift guide roundup. 

So like, you know, best gifts, best books of 2024, like some kind of roundup. It's a great earned promo opportunity, whether or not you fabricate it. So two ideas for how to do this - I know, hear me out, hear me out, I see your face, hear me out. 

Matt: Of whether or not you fabricated.

Lauren: Right, no, so here's what I'm saying. So there's two ways that you can go about doing this. You can do it the way where you actually just pitch your book to an outlet that already does these every year. 

Matt: Right? 

Lauren: So let's say there are bloggers, reviewers, Oprah, whoever. 

Matt: You're making the assumption that there are any of those left on the planet that are not pay-to-play. 

Lauren: Yes, I am. 

Matt: So I'll tell you that - 

Lauren: The big name ones - 

Matt: - where she's heading with: this is correct. If you can find a legitimate organic non-paid list of the best books for the holidays, whatever, then yeah, by all means, try to get on it. But I will tell you right now, it will be very hard to find one of those. Now, and this is you're going to go into this too, I know,the pay-to-play ones, there's nothing wrong with that. 

Lauren: No, no, there isn't. 

Matt: So - go ahead. 

Lauren: But that's actually not where I was going with that. 

Matt: Oh, well, you should. 

Lauren: Okay, well.

Matt: I will. 

Lauren: Do you - go ahead, you go, you finish that. 

Matt: You finish yours first. 

Lauren: No, I'm going in a separate direction. You finish yours. Talk about pay-to-play, go ahead.

Matt: Well, so it's going to be very hard to find any entity that is doing a list of the best holiday gifts for book readers, right? That is just purely based on merit, quality, where you would submit your book and they'd be like, oh yeah, this is great, we'll list it. They just don't exist. I mean, there may be one or two out there of that and good luck getting on there. But there are quite a bit of the pay-to-play ones, right? There's tons of bloggers and brands and other, I mean, there are brands that aren't even in the book industry - 

Lauren: Oh yeah.

Matt: - that they'll do a list of the best books for entrepreneurs because maybe it's an entrepreneurial company. Nonetheless, there's a way that you can usually pay. It's just like paid advertising, it's no different. So I don't see anything wrong with it. And most people know when you see a list like that, like the top ten best hotels in Boston, nine times out of ten, they paid to be on that list. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: But nonetheless, I would look for some of those, too. I don't think anything's wrong with that. And if they've got a good reach and a well-known brand, then why not? 

Lauren: Yeah, I know. I don't disagree with that. 

Matt: No notes? 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: That worries me. 

Lauren: Do you want to know where I was going with that? 

Matt: Yeah, actually, I do now. 

Lauren: If you don't succeed in pitching yourself for one of these, or you don't find one that isn't pay-to-play and you don't want to have to pay to be included in this… make your own. Do the same thing that you would have done with the giveaway. Get together with eight to ten other people in your industry, or people in your genre, and say, we're gonna put together a list of ten of our favorite gifts for people that are content entrepreneurs. Why not? It's email content, it's blog content, it's social media content. Why not? 

Matt: Yeah, why not? 

Lauren: Yeah. Matt doesn't believe me. 

Matt: No, I didn't. 

Lauren: I think you should try it.

Matt: I didn't say that. 

Lauren: Why not? 

Matt: Try it, yeah. 

Lauren: Try it and see how it goes. And if you do try it this year, let us know. Email us, let us know about it. But I'd be very curious to see how that works. I'm sure people do it. I'm sure that's not a unique idea. 

Matt: I don't know. Maybe. We’ll see.

Lauren: I don't know. It's hard to know. 

Matt: I'm sure there's some variation of that that will work for sure. 

Lauren: Yeah. Well, test it out. I mean, everything in here, this is, you know, holiday season is one of those times a year where I hate to get… I hate to say that it's just like a big ball of spaghetti, but it really is that time of year where this is, this is where you just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

Matt: I don't know that we want to perpetuate that. Well, okay, that's Lauren's take on it. I do think I have a different approach to that because I have to.

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: I mean, if I went to the Lulu marketing team and said, hey, let's just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. 

Lauren: Oh, you're right. That's a very - that's a scary idea. 

Matt: Right, we'd be bankrupt by February. So, or maybe sooner. So I get what Lauren's saying, as an individual author, creators, sometimes you are able to take that approach to certain things. And sure, holiday could be one of them, but probably uncharacteristic for me. I will say it's probably better though, if you have some sort of plan, even a plan for how you're going to throw all that stuff against the wall and see if it sticks. 

Lauren: Do you want to know something so funny? The first - well, it's funny to me - the first draft of this outline before I started changing things around in it, the first section of it was called: plan ahead, no, I'm so serious, even Matt plans ahead for the holiday season. Like that was literally the title in the yellow highlight of the first section of this outline. 

Matt: Yeah, you don't have a choice. The holidays are a great time if you plan accordingly, you can move a lot of volume during the holidays if you get it worked out. And you might not be successful your first holiday as a direct sales author or even in distribution, but you go through that first holiday season, you learn from it, you take notes, and then the next one could be an amazing one for you, but. 

Lauren: Yes, absolutely. 

Matt: Most businesses that have some sort of retail arm or built on retail. I mean, most of them do a very significant portion of their yearly revenue in the fourth quarter of the year, the holidays, so.

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: It does take a lot of planning and strategy, but - 

Lauren: - it really does. It really - 

Matt: I mean, you can throw some stuff at the wall and see if it sticks... 

Lauren: I'm - okay, maybe I mean more along the lines of this is the time of year to try. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: The things that you haven't found the time to try before the things that you've been considering trying, but haven't. 

Matt: Sure. 

Lauren: This is the time to try it because you want to find what's going to work. 

Matt: Yeah. And sometimes again, like we said, you just need an excuse, right? 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: We talk to people all the time and they're like, I don't have any reason to do a special edition of my book. I don't have any reason to do a promo or put these three titles together as a trilogy, selling bundled as a trilogy. You don't, you really don't need a reason. But if you, if you're one of those people that’s like, I need a reason to do this. There's your reason, the holidays.

Lauren: This is your reason. 

Matt: Like, everybody experiments during the holidays with some sort of promotion or sale or product type or variation or you name it, so. 

Lauren: Yep. Absolutely. 

Matt: Yeah. 

[48:01]

Lauren: We could probably, we've been talking about this for an hour. 

Matt: Gross. 

Lauren: And we probably could keep talking about this. 

Matt: Well, right now, this episode of this podcast is like your neighbor that starts putting up their Christmas lights in September, so. I don't like that feeling. 

Lauren: I know, I don't either. I'm going to go home and put up my Halloween decorations, just to make myself feel better. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Not that I really have any, but it'll make me feel better to put up like the three Halloween decorations that are the only ones - everything else just stays up all year.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: So, and the only thing that I put up around Halloween time is something that says Halloween on it. 

Matt: Mmhmm. 

Lauren: All the ghosts and the skeletons and all that, they stay up all year. 

Matt: So you basically just change your front door mat and that's it? 

Lauren: No, my front door mat has said Come Back When You Have Tacos for a full five and a half years. It was one of the first things I bought when I moved here and I've yet to find one that I like better than that. 

Matt: Mm, okay.

Lauren: I stand by it. 

Matt: Is that a pun?

Lauren: Not on purpose. 

Matt: Eyy. 

Lauren: Not on purpose. Anyway, an hour later, and I honestly don't know how much I'm going to be able to cut out of this, because I do think there was not a lot of filler in this episode. So who knows how long it’s going to be? But -

Matt: Too long. 

Lauren: Too long. But we just threw a bunch of information at you, a bunch of suggestions, a bunch of action items. And now we're going to take a month off. So you're going to have plenty of time to take all of the things that we just talked about in this episode and go put them into practice and go try them and test them out, because we will be putting this podcast on pause until we're back in October. We've got a lot of holiday planning of our own to do, and also a lot of traveling to do. 

Matt: That's right. 

Lauren: So much traveling. So we're taking some time. We will still be around. You can always email us at podcast@lulu.com if you have questions, if you have topics that you want us to dive a little further into in future episodes. If you want to hear more about something, want to hear less about something. If you want to come hang out with us on social media, you can check us out at Lulu social media. 

Hopefully by the time we get these next episodes, we come back and get those squared away, it's going to be with video. So I think I'll be fired if we don't get the video started by the next episode that comes out after this one. So, stay tuned. 

Matt: Let's also point out that part of why we're off in September is because we have so much travel. There's a few events. If anybody is going to be making their way to NINC in St. Petersburg, it's an author event. We'll be there, would love to see you. And anybody who is interested in learning more about growing their business, their brand, things like that, there's a really cool, smaller event that we're gonna be at in Orlando put on by Lou Mongello, it's called Momentum. You should check that out. And if you wanna register for Momentum, you should, and you should use the code MATT200 and it'll save you 200 bucks. And then you could come hang out with me in Orlando, maybe go to Disney World. 

Lauren: I won't be there and I'm devastated. This is the event that I'm so - like out of any event that's happening this year, this is the one that I'm like so upset that I'm not gonna be there for. So if you are gonna go, check it out, report back, let me know what I missed. 

Matt: It's supposed to be a really cool event. 

Lauren: It sounds awesome. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But unfortunately I have a fundraiser that weekend, so I won't. 

Matt: Boo. 

Lauren: I know. 

Matt: Whatever, all right. 

Lauren: I know. Well. 

Matt: Have fun, everybody. 

Lauren: Until then, thanks for listening. Have a great time and we'll see you in a month.