The holidays are quickly approaching. Are you ready? If you haven’t started planning yet but want to give your income and your business an end-of-the-year boost, now is the time for action.
First, let’s talk products. Here’s a few crowd-pleasing ones perfect for holiday sales:
Calendars: Great for sales, calendars are also a great option for client and customer appreciation gifts and to use as lead generation freebies.
Planners: Planners are a product that people just can’t seem to get enough of. You can create your own, or save some time by customizing our ready-to-go 2019 planner.
Journals: Timeless treasures perfect for just about any situation.
Adult coloring books: Create your own using holiday themes, New Year themes, or branded content that supports your products and programs.
Cards of all kinds: Card decks, note cards, and postcards are popular all year long. Create your own custom cards, or use our ready-made ones by adding your logo or message.
Your Holiday Sales Timeline
Once you’ve picked your products, it’s time for action:
OCTOBER:
Decide on products to sell. Make a list of customizations. Contact Vervante at [email protected] and request free quotes for printing, shipping timelines, etc.
If you’re just adding your logo to one of our ready-made products, upload print-ready file to your Vervante account, then order sample copy.
For customized products, finalize graphic design files and upload to Vervante account. Order sample copies for quality and proofreading checks. Have Vervante list your books and products for sale. We can list on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Vervante Bookstore online, etc. If you sell from your own website, set up shopping cart.
NOVEMBER:
Put marketing plans into action. Announce special promotions, early bird sales and specials. Promote, promote, promote!
Procrastinate much? For last-minute ideas in time for Black Friday, our ready-made planners, card decks, books, journals and calendars are easy and quick to set up and sell.
DECEMBER:
Confirm Vervante holiday shipping deadlines.
Attend book signings. Continue promotions, especially for New Year / 2019 products.
Announce surprise last-minute deals.
JANUARY:
Continue to promote New Year products.
If 2019 planners were a hit, think about removing dates from planner so it can be sold all year long.
Look back at your holiday sales experience, making notes about what worked (and what didn’t) to help with next year’s plans.
Our email inbox has been piling up with orders and requests for THE hottest product on everyone’s minds right now – planners! Interest is so intense right now that we felt like these products deserve a special email to keep you in the loop.
Planners are HOT. Everyone loves planners and they’re perfect for any type of business. They make great gifts, sell-out for holiday promotions, and are perfect for keeping your brand front and center all year long.
>> If you want a ready-to-go planner for 2019 to share or sell from your shopping cart – we’ve got it.
>> If you want a custom-designed planner for 2019 that fits exactly what you need – we can do that too!
We’ve designed our 2019 planners for universal appeal. They are 7” x 9”, can be done with hard or soft covers, and are spiral bound to easily lay flat for reading and writing. Inside is a mix of full-color and black-and-white pages that include stickers, monthly and daily planning pages, adult coloring pages, tracking lists, space to journal, and more.
Think of this planner as a baseline for your own planner, but feel free to get creative and make all of the changes you would like. Here's a few ideas to get you started: (Please note the photos in this email showing creative customizations by our customers).
Use one of our cover options - or replace it with one of your own
Change the color scheme to match your branding
Add your logo and/or message to the back cover
Choose hard cover* or soft cover
Change colors for the binding: Spiral binding for soft cover planners can be in black or white. Wire-O binding for hard covers can be printed in a variety of colors (black, white, blue, red, green, gold, silver and bronze)
*Minimum order of 25 for customized hard-cover planners
There's no limit to how many changes you can make!
If you’ve got a vision that involves lots of personalization – we can make it happen! There is no limit to how many changes you can make, including:
Inside pages: Create address/contact info pages, exercise and nutrition-trackers, recipe and shopping lists, journal pages, budgeting guides, writing prompts, weekly mantras, accountability check-ins, and more.
Stickers: You can use our stickers, revise them to fit your own brand, or opt for no stickers at all
Change the size
Print without dates for flexible anytime use
Add tabs for easy access to special sections
Add pockets for extra organizing power
HOW TO ORDER SAMPLE PLANNERS
IF YOU HAVE AN AUTHOR ACCOUNT: Log in and scroll to the bottom of the author dashboard. Click on “Order Samples.” The new planners are posted at the bottom of the page.
If you don't have an author account you can ORDER DIRECTLY FROM THE BOOKSTORE by using the following links. (Note: Vervante Author account user names and passwords do not work in our Bookstore):
Send an email to [email protected] and let us know what ideas you have for customization. We can either send you the InDesign files to make changes directly or our graphic design team can make changes for you ($75/hour graphic design rate).
Questions? Contact us at [email protected] or schedule a phone call with our publishing pros by clicking HERE for free quotes and guidance for submitting designs, customizing options, and getting your unique planners ready to go.
When an author wants to sell more books, build credibility and get more attention as a speaker, author or expert in their industry, it’s common knowledge that becoming an Amazon bestseller is one of the quickest ways to success.
In fact, there’s an entire industry built around helping authors become Amazon bestsellers. Authors can purchase services that practically guarantee helping them become bestsellers no matter what type of book they write, with promises of wealth, influence and star status that are almost irresistible.
But there’s a secret behind all of the buzz about becoming an Amazon bestseller that no one is talking about. And a lot of misinformation that we feel should be addressed.
In fact, bestseller status:
Is a lot easier to get than you think
Doesn’t mean you sold a lot of books
Won’t guarantee future book sales
Can be achieved without blowing up your budget
When we started working with authors almost 20 years ago, bestseller status on Amazon had credibility and true value as it was achieved using the traditional method of counting book sales.
Over the years, however, Amazon’s methods for assigning bestseller status have changed and we’ve seen how achieving it can be relatively easy with only a few sales. In fact, since Amazon algorithms update nearly every hour, by coordinating friends and family to all purchase the book within a very short time frame, you have a very good chance of achieving “bestseller” status.
We’ve even heard of authors creating large batches of email addresses using different names then purchasing their book using those various email addresses within a short time frame to become a “bestseller.”
Hey, we even read a true-but-hilarious story about how this author became a bestseller on Amazon in five minutes and with only $3.
Don’t get us wrong, bestseller status is great. We just hate to hear stories of new authors blowing their budgets to get bestseller status by outsourcing expert help and purchasing large amounts of their own books when they really just need to learn a little bit more about how Amazon assigns bestseller status – and how they can work toward it on their own.
While we believe that good writing, quality printing, and access to a database of dedicated readers are the keys to a successful experience as an author, we’re happy to share how many authors are achieving bestseller status – and how you can too.
It’s all about the categories
Here’s the secret about Amazon bestseller status – it’s all about the categories. When a book or ebook is first listed on Amazon, selecting categories is one of the first steps. Choosing the right ones can lead to bestseller status. Choose the wrong ones, and no matter how many books you sell, you’ll never achieve bestseller status.
Amazon assigns bestseller rankings to books based on how many sales or downloads they have over a period of time as compared to all other books on the Amazon market. You can find that number in the Product Details section on the book’s page. It looks like this:
Here’s what those numbers mean:
If you’re in the Top 100 in your Amazon category, you will see a “best-seller ranking” below the title.
A book at the #1 spot in any given category will get a “#1 Best Seller” banner featured next to the title.
Dominating a category is obviously key for bestseller status. So you can see how carefully choosing the right category is essential. Choose a broad category means you’re in competition with a larger pool of books. But choosing a much more niched category decreases the size of that pool and the size of your competition as well.
For example, if you’re writing a gardening book, you could choose the category of “gardening.” But if you are able to niche down even further using categories that pertain to the type of gardening, geographical locations, or even select fruits or vegetables, etc., you’ll be even more niched and have much less competition for bestseller status.
How to choose Amazon categories
Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t list its categories, so you’ve got to do a little research to choose the ones you want to use. Start by researching other books that are similar to yours and see what categories they are using. You can see this in the Product Detail section (as seen in the image above).
Make a note of the ones that fit your book best, then try to niche down even further. Do this by clicking on one of the categories in the books you are researching. A page will open listing best sellers in that category. And the categories will be shown in a column on the left. Often there will be even more options for narrowing your category and you can explore those by clicking on any of the selections.
Here’s an example: In the image here you can see how we were able to niche down 6 categories from Kindle ebooks to Reference to Writing, Research & Publishing to Publishing & Books to Authorship.
By researching books similar to yours, and their rankings in categories that are “super-niched,” you’ll be able to select categories that can boost your own status.
We hope this peek behind the curtain at how Amazon bestseller status is achieved – and what it really means – has been enlightening and helpful. Here at Vervante we offer free listing services for Amazon and if you want to learn more about choosing categories with the most potential for bestseller status we can help. Just reach out to one of our Amazon retail specialists at [email protected] or set up a call using this link.
First, let’s talk products. Here’s a few crowd-pleasing ones perfect for holiday sales:
Put marketing plans into action. Announce special promotions, early bird sales and specials. Promote, promote, promote!
Our email inbox has been piling up with orders and requests for THE hottest product on everyone’s minds right now – planners! Interest is so intense right now that we felt like these products deserve a special email to keep you in the loop.
>> If you want a custom-designed planner for 2019 that fits exactly what you need – we can do that too!
When an author wants to sell more books, build credibility and get more attention as a speaker, author or expert in their industry, it’s common knowledge that becoming an Amazon bestseller is one of the quickest ways to success.
Here’s an example: In the image here you can see how we were able to niche down 6 categories from Kindle ebooks to Reference to Writing, Research & Publishing to Publishing & Books to Authorship.