Why Bookbub is the only game in town that matters
In this post, I thought I’d share with you how I’ve got my book to hit the international bestseller charts on Amazon, Barnes, and Noble and other retailers.
There’s a lot of bad advice out there
Indie authors often ponder how they can sell their books. There’s a tonne of promotional services out there, many of which are scams and many that promise the world but, deliver very little.
I’ve been an indie author for a decade now, and I’ve tried pretty much every promotional service there is. I’ve tried every marketing strategy you can think of and listened to the advice of countless other authors, but I’m here to tell you that there is only one sure-fire way to hit the bestseller charts and get those orange badges.
What is Bookbub?
So, what is Bookbub exactly? Well, it's a promotion site, the promotion site for books. Landing a US featured deal is like winning the lottery and it took me 4 years of persistent trying to get one of my books chosen for one. Since then I’ve been lucky to land three more in the past five years.
The official description is: ‘BookBub is a book discovery service that was created to help readers find new books and authors. The company features free and discounted ebooks selected by its editorial team, as well as book recommendations, updates from authors, and articles about books.’
An author needs to sign up and create an account before listing their books to their Bookbub profile. (Follow me by clicking HERE) Once that's done you then need to add the links to the various storefronts (if wide) that your book is sold on. If you're a Kindle Unlimited author, you will only need to add the Amazon link.
Bookbub sends out emails every day listing books that it chose for a featured deal and depending on what type of deal your book will be put in front of millions of subscribers. I've written about other services before such as Fussy Librarian etc, but Bookbub beats all of those by a wide margin in terms of guaranteed return on investment.
What also makes Bookbub stand out is its use of expert editorial teams to choose what books would make the best fit for that day’s promotion. By using data, they assess what type of books are in demand and which ones have the best chance of success. This is why not everyone is chosen, and believe me, Bookbub could choose to accept every single book submitted and make an absolute killing financially in doing so.
Bookbub notifies its subscribers about free and deeply discounted eBook recommendations selected by its expert editorial team, from bestsellers to hidden gems.
How to get chosen
Every author wants to know the secret and Bookbub knows this. They have several guides on their site about what gives your book the best chance of being picked but with so many authors clamouring to get a deal the chance you'll get picked is low. As I said, it took me 4 years of trying to get one!
Your book needs to look professional by having a good cover that fits your chosen genre category and of course good writing.
Many authors speculate that the number of reviews a book has helps it get chosen, but I don’t think that’s the case. None of the books I’ve had chosen has had over 100 reviews. In fact, one of them only had six and still got picked.
So how to get chosen? Well, I’ve found it helps a lot to be a wide author. Bookbub itself, states that it prefers wide books to ensure a book gets as large a reach as possible. I stopped being KU exclusive a few years ago and lo and behold the number of Bookbub deals I’ve landed has increased!
During the application process, I don’t think it hurts to mention that a book was part of a planned promotion, something that I also think helped it be chosen. My promotion was for the book to be on sale for 0.99p/c.
Cost and Results
For the promotion I got (Fantasy genre) it cost me just shy of £450 or $700, very pricey and a cost that I have to admit makes my palms sweat a bit, but as they say, you have to spend money to make money. The latest promotion went out on June 4th and at the time of writing this, I have covered my costs, made a nice bit of profit and the book is still sitting at the number 1 spot for Fantasy anthologies in the USA, Canada and Australia on Amazon.
Sales wise here are the totals so far (6 days since promo) -
Amazon (All nations) - 1,867
Wide (Apple, Nook, Kobo, Google) - 497
Total - 2364
Not a bad number and sales are continuing with every passing hour. On the initial promo date, the book shot to the top of several genre lists and bagged a best seller badge on Amazon in multiple countries and categories. What was of even greater interest is that my other books began to shift units as well, even the full-priced ones! Audiobooks too began to sell.
In summary, Bookbub is the only promotional service that I will use. All the others have lost their impact in recent years and the ROI on them is often terrible. Bookbub is the only one worth investing in and the only one that has delivered solid results every single time.
Another benefit I'm hoping for is that sell-through for the Sundered Crown Saga will continue and that readers enjoy the boxset enough to buy the rest of the series and maybe try some of my other books.
I won't know the full impact of the Bookbub deal for another few weeks at least, as some of the stores’ data recording is a little slow, but overall I am very happy with the results of the deal.
Have you had a Bookbub featured deal? What was your experience of it? Let me know in the comments below.
