Should I Write Children’s Books About Holidays?

Children’s books about holidays – is this something we should consider? Is it worth it? (HINT: it just might be!!). So, in this article, we will find out:

1. WHETHER OR NOT we should be writing children’s books about holidays
2. HOW to determine if we should be writing children’s books about holidays
3. WHEN we should start writing our children’s book about specific holidays
4. WHEN we should publish our holiday book
5. What our TITLE should be of your children’s book about holidays

Whether or Not We Should Write Children’s Books About Holidays

Last night, I was looking for some sweet Valentine’s Day presents for my two little guys. We usually just get them a small stuffed animal and a few Hershey Kisses that we hide all over the house, so they can find them throughout the day (we adore the ones with the sweet little love notes on them). 

But as I was searching through Amazon, I noticed that a substantial number of Valentine’s Day-related book suggestions kept popping up. Especially these right here caught my attention, and I may or may not have purchased one of these for my two silly guys…

So with these books all over, I couldn’t help but wonder:

Should we be writing Children’s Books about Holidays?

Many of my readers and students already have, like these beautiful masterpieces right here. I love sharing them, so you may have already seen those in one of my other articles.

If you have watched my 3-part “Find Your Story Idea” videos, then you know that I’m a big advocate of doing our due diligence BEFORE diving into writing a children’s book. And because I had so many children’s books about Valentine’s Day pop up all over my Amazon search results, I decided to dig a little deeper. 

So in this article, I’m going to show you how I go about the research part, a process I ALWAYS go through BEFORE writing a new children’s book. We can go about this “research” in two different ways:

1. The MANUAL way, and the 
2. The AUTOMATED way

And I will show you both. So let’s dive right in!

How to Manually Determine If You Should Be Writing A Children’s Book About Holidays

For this particular article, I’m just going to focus on Valentine’s Day. But don’t worry! You will be able to take any book about any holiday through the same process I’m going to share with you today. 

Since I sell most of my books on Amazon, I generally also do my research on Amazon. So the first thing I will want to do is find some of the Valentine’s Day books that I think might be selling well. Usually, Amazon’s orange Best Seller banner is a great indicator that an item is selling well, like this one right here:

Once I have found such a book, I click on it and scroll all the way to its Product Details section, to find its Best Seller Rank, which is the number that indicates the book’s current position amongst ALL the books (or ebooks) offered on Amazon.

For our example, the current Best Seller Rank is #26, which is incredible. The lower the number, the more a book is selling. But to determine how many copies this book is currently selling, I love using this amazing and free tool right here: the Amazon Sales Rank Calculator. 

Since I’m looking at the book (and not ebook) version of this fun Valentine’s Day book, I first need to make sure the calculator is switched to the “Book” position. Then, I’m entering the book’s Best Seller Rank that we found above, which at the time of writing this article, is 26.

NOTE:

Amazon updates these best seller rankings hourly, so the numbers I’m seeing now won’t be the same you’re seeing at a later point in time.

According to this calculator, this Valentine’s Day book currently sells 634 books per day. To put this in monetary terms, we can now simply multiply these 634 books by the book’s sales price, which currently is $11.12.

Daily Sales in $ = 634 x $11.12 = $7,050.08

Before we get too excited, I want to point out three very important things that most new or aspiring authors don’t realize:

IMPORTANT: 

FACT #1: 
Because Amazon updates its ranking hourly, these numbers are only an estimate.  

FACT #2:
The daily sales in $ is NOT the dollar amount that goes into the author’s pocket! This is simply the total dollar amount paid to Amazon by its customers. Amazon, of course, will still have to deduct all the printing costs. 

FACT #3:
Please remember that these books are seasonal and won’t sell like this year-round! Usually, a holiday-specific book sells well for about 1-2 months per year, and will make very little during the other months of the year. So be sure to take this into consideration before making your final decision on whether or not to write children’s books about holidays! 

Now, of course this is just one single example! We will want to repeat this above process for at least 5-10 other books with the same holiday theme. Here, I usually try to stay away from books written by big-name authors or any well known children’s book series. I’m more interested in how many books authors like us could potentially be selling.

How to Automatically Determine If You Should Be Writing A Children’s Book About Holidays

As already mentioned above, I’m now also going to share a much easier and quicker way on how to determine whether you should be writing a children’s book about holidays or not. 

When doing my research, I always use a tool called Publisher Rocket. I’ve been using it for years, and also wrote a separate article on how I use it BEFORE the writing of a book (what I’m showing you right here), how I use it DURING the writing process, and how I use the tool AFTER I’ve already published my children’s book. 

To see how well this Valentine’s Day book is doing, I’m using Publisher Rocket’s Competition Analyzer feature, simply enter the book’s title, and hit “Go Get Em Rocket!”

As you can see, Publisher Rocket does all the calculations for us and returns a bunch of additional information. So researching 5-10 more books will be completed in no time at all. 

But again, be sure to remember what I already shared above about these numbers, as they are estimates. And because it is a seasonal book, it won’t perform like this year-round!

Once we have made a decision on whether or not to write children’s books about holidays, the next question we should ask ourselves is how far in advance we should do so. That is, how far in advance should you be writing your children’s book so it is ready for the holiday of your choosing? So let’s dive into this next.

When Should You Start Writing Your Children’s Book About Holidays?

In this section, we’ll be looking at:

• When to start writing your children’s book about holidays
• When to publish your holiday book

Within Children’s Book University, many of my students complete their book within 3 months. You can, of course, take as little or as much time as you want and need. But if you’re planning to publish your holiday-specific children’s book, you will want to have a timeline in mind. 

Let’s again take a look at the Product Details of our Valentine’s Day book:

Here, we see that a book that is meant for a holiday in mid-February had been published at the end of November, so about 2.5 months before the actual holiday. 2.5 months is the perfect amount of time to get all your ducks in a row for your book promotional wise, because this will give you ample time to collect the first few reviews for your book. 

So let’s say you’re planning to write a children’s book about Christmas. Depending on how long you think it would take you to write your children’s book, you can now create a timeline for yourself by working your way backwards, starting with December 25th, Christmas Day:

So based on this timeline, we now know that we should start writing our Christmas book at the beginning of July. Please note that I’ve added an additional 3 months to the timeline if you’re currently not enrolled in Children’s Book University (CHIBU), simply because it will take you a bit longer. But you can, of course, add more time if you need it. The important point here is that in order to be ready to publish our children’s book at a certain date, we will have to start the publishing process well in advance. Planning ahead will be your best friend. 

Once we have (1) decided on what holiday to write about, (2) have come up with a beautiful story idea, and have (3) completed our story, we now have to find the perfect title for our children’s book.

What Should Your Title Be For Your Children’s Book About Holidays?

How you name your children’s book is going to be very important, because that is one of the main ways for people to find us on Amazon. 

An overwhelming majority of aspiring children’s book authors (or just authors in general) do not know how important their title is to the success and discoverability of their book! Here, we will want to use keywords. And just as before, Publisher Rocket can help us find the best ones with its Keyword Search feature that will show us:

• WHAT keywords buyers use on Amazon
• HOW MANY people search for this keyword on Amazon
• HOW COMPETITIVE this keywords is

But to help you with the creation of your perfect title for your holiday children’s book, I have created The Perfect Title Formula, where I will share with you how you can find and create the best title for your book. It is absolutely free and consists of 2 videos. If you have already watched them before, now is the perfect time to dive in again so you can find the perfect title for your holiday children’s book.

Holiday Ideas

Here I’m sharing just a few of the holidays that are celebrated around the world and that you could be writing about. There are, of course, many more, but hopefully this will get your creative juices flowing. 

• Día de Muertos
• Oktoberfest
• Thanksgiving
• Diwali
• Bodhi Day
• Hanukkah
• Christmas
• New Year
• Chinese New Year

Final Things To Consider

When it comes to writing children’s books, I would love for you to start noticing trends and patterns – things that seem to appear over and over again. Because these are often a great indicator as to what is going on within the wondrous and colorful world of children’s books. 

And whenever you discover such a pattern, ask yourself how this may be applied to or used with your own children’s book. 

And before doing anything else, dive deep and DO YOUR RESEARCH! Whether that’s ‘by hand’ or with a tool like Publisher Rocket, you will always want to first validate (or debunk) your observations. That’s how we grow, both our knowledge as well as our own creativity.

I cannot wait to hear what colorful holiday you are going to write about. Here’s to our never-ending imagination! 

~ Eevi

You may also be interested in: