The Authoritative Guide of When to Publish Your Book (And When NOT to Publish)
As an indie author who is deeply involved in the indie-publishing industry, one of the never-ending topics of debate among indies is when is the best time to publish a book (and, perhaps more important, when is the best time not to publish a book).
This is especially important as we go into 2020, with many indies figuring out their publishing schedules for next year and thus needing to know when to publish certain books to maximize sales potential. And with NaNoWriMo coming up in a few days, many NaNo authors are also thinking about when they’re going to publish their NaNo novels once they finish them.
Everyone has different opinions on what months and seasons are best, yet most of the data is anecdotal at best and outright false at worst.
That is why I have undertaken the Herculean effort of explaining which months you SHOULD publish and which you should NOT publish unless you want your entire career to crash like an airplane. Each point I make below has been validated by objective, scientific data which has been independently verified by my best friends and buddies Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. (If you can’t trust Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, then who CAN you trust?)
Anyway, here it is, the authoritative, definitive, unquestionable list of which months of the year you can publish a book in to ensure it will be a #1 NYT/Amazon bestseller, get millions of five star reviews from fans, get a huge movie deal that will make you billions of dollars, make your enemies cry in despair, and make you happy, wealthy, and content for the rest of your long life:
January: Do not, and I repeat do NOT, publish in January. Being the first month after December, no one has any money in January for books after all of the gift-giving, travel to see family, and big family meals everyone had in December. Any book published in this month is 99.99% guaranteed to fail regardless of genre, subject matter, audience, age range, or color of paper.
February: Don’t publish anything here, either. Aside from the fact that February has only 28 days–thus limiting the amount of book sales you can get–everyone is too busy spending their money on chocolates, flowers, and elaborate Valentine’s Day dates to buy books. (Even romance books suffer here, so don’t think you’re special snowflakes, romance authors.)
March: Don’t even think about publishing in March. You might think that everyone has recovered from January/February, but you’re dead wrong. March is the beginning of spring and people start to go outdoors more often, rather than stay cooped up indoors reading books all winter. Any books released during this month will fail, but special mention goes out to the week of spring break, in which no one reads anything at all for a whole week.
If you want to kill your career, this is the month to do it, but otherwise avoid it.
April: April is the best month of the year to publish books.
April Fools!
April is actually the worst month of the year to publish books. Between people not being sure if your book is actually a book due to the specter of April Fools hanging over the entire month, taxes being due, occasionally Easter (though some years Easter happens in March, which is yet another reason to avoid March), and the warm spring weather continuing from March, literally no one in the country reads any books during this time.
If tempted to publish during April, remind yourself that it’s a month that begins with deception and also is when you’re supposed to pay your taxes. That will hopefully keep you skeptical of your easily-confused instincts until May 1st rolls around.
Speaking of May:
May: You’ve survived the Ides of March and the Lies of April. May, therefore, should be a safe month to publish, right?
Wrong! May is worse than March and April combined. For most parts of the country, May is when school ends for the summer and is often when the weather starts to feel more summer-like. No one has time to read when there are graduations to plan, graduations to attend, and warm summer days to look forward to or enjoy.
Books remind graduates of school, which is often triggering to young people, so publishing a book aimed at young adults in particular this month may even be considered insensitive to young people and will probably get you canceled.
Don’t do it.
June/July/August: Also known as the Black Hole of Publishing, anything published during these Three Horsemen of the Publishing Apocalypse will not only fail, it will retroactively cause all of your past releases to fail as well (even the successful ones).
Only authors and publishers daring enough to market their books as ‘fun beach reads’ have a chance at surviving this brutal season, but for the rest of us mere mortals, it is best not to publish anything at all. Especially aimed at teens or kids, who are too busy enjoying summer vacation to care about books.
September: The Publishing Apocalypse has come and gone and you’ve managed to survive by hiding in the bunkers of your post-apoc author friends (who are all crazy preppers in real life). Safe to publish those books you’ve been sitting on during summer, right?
Ha, no!
September is the worst month to publish. Everyone is going back to school or is back in school already. Students, parents, teachers, and school faculty in general have no time for reading anything other than homework, if even that. They most certainly don’t have time for your books.
October: Everyone is too scared by all of the spooky skeletons to read. Also, candy is delicious.
November: Everyone is either too busy writing their own book or else gorging on turkey and pumpkin pie to read anything published this month.
If this is an election year, then be prepared for the worst month of the year ever in terms of book sales. I have experienced negative book sales during election years in November, my current record being -100 books sold during the last presidential election (and no, that wasn’t returns from readers who had already bought my books. Exactly 100 book sales were taken from me during the last election because people aren’t reading during that month because I dared to publish a book during November).
I expect 2020 to be even worse because there’s no way I can write a book that’s even half as entertaining important as the current US presidential election. So don’t publish.
December: December, also known as the Second Black Hole of Publishing.
Common wisdom suggests that December is a good month to publish books because books are popular Christmas gifts.
Wrong! December is the worst month to publish books because people are too busy buying presents, going to awkward family gatherings, throwing snowballs, and living in fear of Santa Claus’s omniscience to read anything. Even Christmas-themed books are doomed to failure here (Hanukkah books may stand a chance, but I wouldn’t risk it).
Don’t even get me started on New Year’s, as most people are too busy ringing in the New Year to read your book (although a lot of people will make ‘Read more books’ one of their resolutions for the New Year, resolutions, as we saw above, none of them will fulfill because no one has time to read).
There you have it, folks. According to my objective, scientific data, you should literally never publish a book, ever, at any time during the year lest your book bomb and your entire career explode. Your best bet is to keep all your books safely stored on your computer hard drive, or even better, unwritten in your mind where they will never fail.
As for me, I will keep publishing books and failing because someone needs to be an example to new authors about why you should never publish any books at any time of the year, ever. You’re welcome, publishing industry. You may now give me a Nobel Peace Prize for saving the careers of countless new indie authors, although I will also accept a check for one million dollars in its place. It’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.
SERIOUS NOTE: This was obvious satire based on the different bits of advice I see bandied about in the indie author community about the best times of year to publish. The actual answer is that you can publish almost any book at almost any time of year and it has about an equal chance of selling as well as it would at any other time of year. Every author is different and every book is different, so your best times of year for sales may be my worst and vice versa.
It’s not rocket science, folks. Just publish your books when they’re ready. It will be fine. Really. You can trust me because I’m friends with Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, and if you can’t trust Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, then who CAN you trust?
