Calendars, Calendars: Tools for Your Marketing Plan
The first quarter is almost gone, so I knew I had to bring you our downloadable, printable Literary Holiday Calendars for the next three months of literary holidays you can use to fill in your book marketing schedule, aka, your editorial calendar. And speaking of editorial calendars, did you know that Yvonne was credited with being the first to apply the concept to blogging?
She started her first blog, Lipsticking, back in 2004, as a tool for building relationships with readers of her first published book, Dickless Marketing: Smart Marketing to Women Online. (Not her first book, her first published one — but that’s another story.)
Her idea to use an editorial calendar for her blogging flowed naturally from her days as a writer for a local business magazine. The value came from eliminating that blank screen feeling and the question, “What should I write about today?”
If it was Tuesday, she wrote a “listicle” post; Thursdays were for her “Smart Woman Online” interviews (with an occasional smart man, as well), using the emailed questions and answers technique; and so on.
Not just for book marketing
We met pioneer blogger, marketing expert, and author Andy Wibbels — I think it was at the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) conference in early 2006 — and in talking about our blogs, Yvonne’s use of the editorial calendar idea must have come up. Because later that year, Wibbels attributed the idea to her in his book, BLOG WILD! A Guide for Small Business Blogging.
Note that Wibbels was not writing about book marketing. The value of having an editorial calendar for your marketing efforts applies to any business.
And that includes the new small business that every author must realize they are running — from the moment they decide to write and publish their book.
Now more than ever!
Nowadays, that problem of “what to write today” has become more complex, with lots of “where to post it” and “which type of content” (text, graphic, audio, video) options added. We get lots of questions about book marketing and spend a lot of time with our clients, helping them understand what they need to do.
Because there are so many options and each author has unique capabilities, interests, and audiences, we’ve been working on a training program that will provide flexible tools and resources and incorporate our Taylor Swift Model of Book Marketing ideas. One sequence that I’ve been working on this week is designed to help you, first, choose and prioritize a manageable list of marketing strategies from the many available, using a fillable form checklist/worksheet.
Second, gather content from your existing work and then expand it using:
- an AI “mega-prompt” customizable for your book, genre, or business niche to generate ideas and drafts for up to a year’s worth of content
- and a content “repurposing grid” to turn each usable piece into multiple formats, such as a text blog post into multiple quote images, an infographic, a script for a short video series, and so on
And third, armed with an array of focused and ready-to-produce content items, you can plug them into a fillable form editorial calendar and never again be stumped for an answer to “What should I publish today?”
Here’s a copy of the current draft intro page for the editorial calendar:
Back to Book Marketing
As I wrote this post, I realized that our Literary Holiday Calendars are yet another tool for grabbing timely content ideas that you can flesh out and plug into your editorial calendar. So we’ll probably need to include these in our handouts for our Market Your Book Like a Rock Star: The Taylor Swift Model of Book Marketing training program.
And once again, if you’re not an author yet (GASP!!), you can swap out “Literary” and replace it with whatever word or phrase describes your business niche. Chances are good that Google or your favorite AI assistant can find you plenty of holiday lists to populate your calendar, too.
Without further ado, here are the Q2 Literary Holiday Calendars:
Please tag us when you’re celebrating any of these holidays in your work. We’d love to see how you use them and support your efforts with a like, comment, or share.
And if you’re interested in the Market Like a Rock Star training we’re working on, make sure you — and all your business acquaintances — are subscribed to our newsletter. That’s where we’ll announce it first.
Sources:
- https://buildbookbuzz.com/2025-literary-calendar/
- https://onthecobblestoneroad.com/book-themed-holidays-2025/
- https://theliterarylifestyle.com/social-media-literary-holidays-calendar/
- https://theretiredschoollibrarian.com/literary-holidays-and-technology-related-holidays/
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