The holidays can be very stressful for authors, especially when you have new books out during this time. On top of the whole figuring out what gifts to purchase, and who to buy gifts for, getting your holiday cards out on time, planning meals and visits, or vacation time, and the dreaded day job if you have one, promoting your books can put them over the top stress wise.

So, what can you as an author do to keep book marketing stress at a minimum during the holidays?

1. Create a holiday book-marketing plan and stick to it. Figure out exactly what you want to do to promote your books during the holidays. Choose up to three things you’re going to do every day to promote your books and then do them.

Tip 1: Use Evernote to create a daily checklist and then check off each item as you complete it.


Tip 2: Use Evernote to create a reminder for your daily checklist so you don’t forget to do the items.

2. If you’re offering a free holiday story on your website, hire someone on Fiverr to create the cover for $5.00 if you don’t know how to create a cover. Oh, and remember your holiday story can be as short as five pages, don’t think you have to write a fifty page novella to do this!

3. Set up mailers to go out once a week in November, December and January to your mailing list. All you have to do is add a cover, blurb, excerpt and buy links. Do this for a different book each week. If you don’t have a lot of books, then change up the excerpt each time and make sure you indicate in the subject line that there’s a new excerpt. You can also do other things with the weekly mailings such as offer free desktop wallpapers or bookmarks, or announce a new contest etc. If you have a WordPress blog, you can use a free plugin called MailPoet which allows you to schedule mailings!

4. Delegate, delegate, delegate! Ask family members, and or friends to help you with all the different holiday things you need to get done. Give your husband a shopping list for gifts for family members and send him to the mall or wherever. Or if you have teenagers, you can send them, as long as it’s not for their gifts of course! If you’re having a family dinner at your house, try doing a potluck where everyone brings something for the dinner so you aren’t required to cook and prepare everything!

5. Practice self-care every day. This means continuing to work out, eat healthy, getting plenty of sleep, drinking enough water and all the things that you do during the rest of the year rather than putting them off to market your book, or the myriad other things that you do during the holidays.


6. Learn to say no at work and at home. During the holidays there are always going to be those who are also looking for others to pick up extra work for them. As an author you have more than enough extra stuff of your own, so if you know staying after work for an extra two hours is going to put you behind and stress you out, then


say no to your co-worker. Don’t make excuses, just say no. This goes for anyone who may ask you to take on extra work that you don’t have the time or energy for and that is going to stress you out if you say yes.

7. Hire an author promotions company like HeartFelt Promos to


help you promote your books during the holidays so you can sit back, relax and enjoy! And life will be definitely sweeter and smile on you!!! Trust me LOL I know ‘cause I’ve been with HeartFelt Promos for more than a year now and haven’t had a worry in the world. Plus, my sales have increased, and that’s the best promotion possible!


These seven tips will help you to stay on top of all the stuff that

happens during the holidays and allow you to promote your books in a relaxed and easy manner as well. Remember, you don’t have to do everything (even if it feels like you do). Make your holidays more fun and more relaxed by taking advantage of these tips to avoid not just book marketing stress, but all stress during the holidays!

And don’t miss my very special Christmas offering: the Soulmate Series! Both books are the sweetest, most romantic stories you could hope for during this happy time!