Do they know it’s Christmas?

Seasons greetings! Too early? My inbox suggests not. As most of us grapple with the back-to-school mood of September, Christmas has been here by email for a month. Like swallows heralding summer (remember that, anyone?) the first releases of the festive period began to appear in early August. In the past fortnight they’ve been arriving at a rate of around two or three a day. Only 114 shopping days left, everyone!

Before you eye-roll, let’s look at why some Christmas releases landed and others barely registered. Most that I’ve received promoted bucket-list small-group trips, GOAT stays for a family getaway, perhaps the seasonal plans of landmark hotels. All of those made sense. Another which recommended holiday cottages in the West Country? Not so much.

The former, the editorial thinking goes, are big-ticket items where demand is high and supply is short. That’s not really something you can say about Cornish holiday cottages. Should readers miss out on the PR’s suggestion of three-bed Dinkley Dell they have other options. A better fit for wider-market subjects like holiday rentals or winter-sun packages are newspapers’ late-availability round-ups in mid-November (for trips during the Christmas period) and mid-December (for New Year getaways).

Actually, there’s more to think about for Christmas releases than that. As a journalist who focuses on newspapers, where turnaround from commission to publication is often a few days, I tend to blank out early festive releases aimed at round-ups. Reader, if they came from you, I apologise. The truth is, I barely know what I’m covering in October let alone in December, although I and my editors are certainly thinking about seasonal long reads; I’ve two winter features for newspapers on the backburner.

By contrast a magazine editor and I have been talking since mid-August about ideas for a Croatia special to run next spring. Right now, magazines will be putting to bed their November issues and finalising Christmas content. I reckon you’ve got, ooh, three weeks tops to land ideas for seasonal splurges. Conversely, newspapers are only just starting to think about November breaks.

If it’s handy to know publishing schedules, it’s critical to understand your audience.