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All Pennwriters Courses are conducted in a “live” presentation format utilizing the Zoom platform. If a conflict arises based on the required meeting times, please contact the instructor and Online Courses Coordinator to find a possible solution. ALL sessions will be recorded.

Marketing, Promoting, and Selling During the Holiday Season is a course for fiction and nonfiction writers who are published or who want to publish. It’s never too early or late to start your Holiday Selling plan! This course pairs nicely with the Christmas in July course, but authors are NOT expected to have taken that course or to have a published holiday book/novella/story/article in order to take this course. With some tweaks the holiday selling principles can be applied to the business of books all year long.

Description:

• THE Season: The holiday season (which encompasses way more than Santa and Christmas) spans October through early January and provides deep and wide opportunities for you to position your work to sell. This course teaches you how to package your writing both digitally and physically for the holidays. It also provides space and support to experiment with making videos and graphics that sell. You will create a plan and begin to implement ideas for holiday-specific, in-person, and/or virtual events. You’ll build on your skill at creating energy around your latest and greatest as well as your backlist which can be easy to overlook. You’ll create a plan for collaborating with your peers so you can all build toward a successful season. AND, even if you haven’t published yet, if you’re putting yourself on social media as an author, there are plenty of ways to utilize the tools of the seasonal selling trade to build your platform.
• If one of your goals is to access the selling/buying stream that comes from readers acquiring books for gifts and for themselves during the holidays, then just hoping people will stumble over your book is not enough. Don’t let another holiday season go by as readers purchase ereaders and stacks of paperbacks without knowing how your books would be the highlight of their gift list.

   

  Author Benefits/Takeaways—Participants will:

• Learn that selling for the holidays does not neccesarily mean they’re featuring seasonal content. They will learn how to position non-holiday books for the season as well as more festive pieces.
• Receive printed materials sent right to their mailbox. These will be used during and after the course to offer initial and continued support.
• Experiment with tools like Canva to make graphics and sales/marketing materials.
• Identify the aspects of the holiday season that fit their world view, goals, and books. They will use these discoveries to create graphics, videos, and posts that get at the heart of what makes their work unique and perfect for a gift.
• Identify current skill and interest level in various aspects of “selling the season.”
• Plan for virtual and/or in-person events that will bring attention to books in a way that fits with their goals, values, and interests, and strengths.
• Plan for and begin to grow their newsletter subscriber list through holiday topics and opportunities like Bookfunnel promotions.
• “Meet” with Kathleen and classmates in a private Facebook group between Tuesday sessions to share and get support while making videos, graphics, and plans for the season.
• Finish the course with a actionable catalog (or the beginnings of one depending on the time an author devotes to the activities) of graphics and/or videos and plans that support holiday selling.
• Finish the personalized, collaborative course understanding that the holiday season is universally important, but specific to each author and her audience. That understanding will lead to connecting with readers who want what they write during the time of year they’re most apt to buy!

BIO:

Bestselling, award-winning author, Kathleen Shoop, PhD, writes historical fiction, women’s fiction and romance. She has written six holiday novellas and novels that provide readers with seasonal magic while introducing them to her non-holiday titles in the process. Shoop’s writing has garnered various awards in the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and Readers’ Favorite. Kathleen has been featured in USA Today and the Writer’s Guide. Her work has been used in university courses and appeared in Writer’s Digest, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Chicken Soup for the Soul and Pittsburgh Parent magazine. Kathleen is co-coordinator of 23 Mindful Writers Retreats, co-coordinated the Pennwriters Conference 2023, and is a regular presenter at conferences and in classrooms.

E-Mail:            kathleenshoop@gmail.com

Website:          www.kshoop.com

Facebook:       https://www.facebook.com/people/Kathleen-Shoop/100057696591811/

Instagram:       @kathleenshoop

Twitter:           @kathieshoop

TikTok:           kathleenshoopauthor

Amazon:         https://www.amazon.com/Kathleen-Shoop/e/B0051FCVQU