I highly recommend it.
Back in January, they accepted (that's the hard part--being accepted) my 99-cent promo for a boxed set originally priced at $7.98. I forget the exact numbers, but I had over 3,500 downloads on the day of the promotion and ended up with more than 8,000 sales for the month of January alone. I also got tons of KENP reads, watching them jump to 100K pages per day for about a week. Sales and "page reads" were strong for some time afterward, but slowly decreased over time. I just recently dipped under the 20K-per-day mark in page reads and my sales have slipped to about ten e-books per day.
Of course, these numbers don't help much. Here's what you really need to know:
I paid $1,024 for the ad, which was in the mystery category, and it ran at the beginning of the month (4th, I think).
I made more than sixteen times the cost of the ad in January.
I made more than eight times the cost of the ad in February.
I made more than five times the cost of the ad in March.
It looks like I'm back to pre-BookBub sales for the month of April, with about 400 e-book sales so far and a little more than 420,000 KENPs read. Luckily, I was accepted for another BookBub promo that's set to run in two weeks. This one is a FREE promo for the first book in a series of three (I'm working on the fourth), so I'm not sure what to expect (except for the averages listed on their website).
Any who, this has been my experience and I hope it helps.
Take it easy!
bjb
P.S. I'd love to see results from authors who've run FREE promos with the Bub recently.
Wait.. What am I missing here? You cite $.99 and free promos, yet you are obviously in Select, as you are getting KU reads, which is incompatible. Are you doing Select promotions, and timing them with Bookbub promotions?
I'm really confused.
That's the point, really. You can schedule a promotion when in KDP Select, for either free days or a Countdown, after you've been accepted by Bookbub or another promotional site and have the promotion date locked in. Otherwise, simply running a Select promotion is generally useless these days. The key part here is being accepted by Bookbub; they have a pretty high rejection rate.
You can do a manual price reduction when not in Select but, as you noted, it won't show as a discounted price.
I need to think about this a little bit. The books I want to promote are currently priced at $3.99. If I go below $2.99 then I'm ineligible for 70% royalty from the Zon, which is presumably where the bulk of the sales will be. Would you suggest it's more productive to go low and eat royalty, vs. offering a mediocre deal?
I highly recommend it.
Back in January, they accepted (that's the hard part--being accepted) my 99-cent promo for a boxed set originally priced at $7.98. I forget the exact numbers, but I had over 3,500 downloads on the day of the promotion and ended up with more than 8,000 sales for the month of January alone.
If you do get a BookBub promotion, even at $0.99 (which is pretty much where you have to be these days) and 35% royalty, you'll easily make money off the ad. it helps to have a good back catalog (and preferably, a series), so you get extensive sell-though.
Those are pretty good numbers for nonfiction (or for any self-published book, really). I'd say go ahead--don't even hesitate--and apply for Bookbub. It doesn't cost anything to apply. If they do accept you and you can't schedule a Countdown, you can always lower your price manually.
I was referring to a Bookbub promotion to their e-mail list, not the self-serve ads, but it's worth trying either way.
Just be careful: BookBub's system is CPM, not CPC, meaning you pay for impressions and not clicks. Most authors I know who've tried it say it's not worth the cost.
I was referring to a Bookbub promotion to their e-mail list, not the self-serve ads, but it's worth trying either way.
Just be careful: BookBub's system is CPM, not CPC, meaning you pay for impressions and not clicks. Most authors I know who've tried it say it's not worth the cost.
Okay.. I'm a newbie... What is CPM and CPC ?
Thanks. I'd need it to coincide with the countdown deal in order to get 70%. It's only 35% if I drop the price to $.99. Is it possible to pick choose your dates for BB if accepted? Or do they just assign them?
I'll add too that I can't do this right now anyhow, as I have one final edit that my book has to go through. In 6 months time I found quite a few errors, and have to do one more revision before I feel completely totally confident.
Okay I have a question on this.
If I understand the process, you submit a 'deal' where you offer a discounted price, and pay (a rather healthy) fee to get your books promoted. The question is, how do you manage the discounted price? If you simply go to the market sites where your books are listed and reduce the price, a promotion effort in the list price won't be reflected. Is this important?
OK, went off in a different direction there , but this thread has inspired me to see if Bookbub would accept my book for a promo. I want to make sure I've got this right and ask straight up whether you guys think it would be worth the investment (that's why I offered the info in that first paragraph). My understanding is that if I DID get accepted by BB, it would be best to do it at a time that I can run a KDP countdown deal. I ran one last month leaving my book at $.99 for the entire week. I sold 142 books that week. Would I be crazy to try and do a BB promo? Or do my numbers say I'll most likely come out winning?
May I ask how many reviews resulted from this, there must have been at least one or two?!
Wait.. What am I missing here? You cite $.99 and free promos, yet you are obviously in Select, as you are getting KU reads, which is incompatible. Are you doing Select promotions, and timing them with Bookbub promotions?
I'm really confused.
I see, but the whole point of doing a Bookbub promotion is because I've pulled out of Select and am going wide. I guess I'll give it a shot with the manual price reduction and see where it gets me.
I need to think about this a little bit. The books I want to promote are currently priced at $3.99. If I go below $2.99 then I'm ineligible for 70% royalty from the Zon, which is presumably where the bulk of the sales will be. Would you suggest it's more productive to go low and eat royalty, vs. offering a mediocre deal?