Results from Bookbub

Daffyjkl

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I am considering trying Bookbub. What are other writer's sales results from a Bookbub promotion? Is it recommended?
 

BJ Bourg

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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.
 

Daffyjkl

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Thanks for the feedback. Definitely sounds like it's worth trying. I'll submit over the weekend.
 

Al X.

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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?
 

Al X.

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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.
 

WriterBN

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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.
 
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Al X.

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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 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?
 

WriterBN

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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?

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.
 

Arpeggio

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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.

May I ask how many reviews resulted from this, there must have been at least one or two?!
 

Al X.

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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.

Thanks WriterBN, that helps a lot. I may try it but I also just got accepted for Bookbub Ads, which are very similar to AMS ads in process. I will play around with that for a while and see what I can accomplish. Actually, their author and genre targeting process is a bit slicker than AMS.
 

WriterBN

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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.
 

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Newbie here. I'd appreciate people's thoughts. I'll try to keep it as short as possible.

My book is non fiction, has been out since the beginning of 2017. It's my first book and I was told to expect no sales. By running 2 Amazon ads I've sold 730 books thus far. From the feedback I've gotten I get the idea that that's uncommon, and it makes me hopeful. Thing is, I'm not sure how uncommon that is, nor if it's an indicator of where my sales will go in the future. Did I just get lucky? Will they increase? Will I wake up one day and sales will just stop? I do plan to up my promo game - in the process of learning how, now.

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?

I'll add that the title of my book is an Ad within itself, and I believe that's part of the reason for it's success. Apologies for being vague, and anonymous - but I need to right now. Soon as I'm comfortable here I'll be spillin my guts all over the place :).

Any thoughts/help appreciated.
 

WriterBN

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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.
 

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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.

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.
 

Al X.

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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 think you may be right. I dabbled around with it and the CPC ended up being close to a dollar a click (gulp.) So far I got one whopping sale.
 

braveboy

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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 ?
 

WriterBN

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Okay.. I'm a newbie... What is CPM and CPC ?

CPM = cost per mille (1,000) impressions
CPC = cost per click

Basically, CPC gives you far more control over your budget; you're only paying when someone actually clicks the ad. With a CPM system like Bookbub's, on the other hand, you pay each time the ad is displayed, even if you never get any clicks.

There are also reports that the ad appears below the "fold" in their e-mails if viewed with a web-based client like Gmail, so you may be paying for ads that the reader never even sees. However, I haven't verified this one way or the other.
 
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BJ Bourg

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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.

The countdown deals can only be set in the US and/or the UK, so if you apply for a BookBub deal, you would have to apply for a US-only BookBub and that reduces your chances of being accepted. I applied for an international BookBub deal and had to manually set the price across all countries to $0.99, because Amazon wouldn't allow me to set the countdown deals for the US and then manually set the other countries to $0.99. Although I had to settle for the 35% royalty rate, I made my money back on the same day of the deal.
 

BJ Bourg

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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?

No, it's not important at all. BookBub will advertise the deal price, along with the regular price of your book, and their members will see the discount they're getting. I've just wrapped up my third BookBub deal and I have absolutely no complaints. I've made many times over what I paid for the ad each time.
 

BJ Bourg

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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?

BookBub lists an average download rate for each category and at each price point, so you can check out where you book would fall in those numbers. When I got my first BookBub, which was a $0.99 deal for a boxed set, I sold well over 3,000 books in one day, which was the average for my category. If you're moving 142 copies in a week with little to no promotions, I've got to image you'll move plenty with a BookBub ad. (By the way, when I say "ad", I'm talking about the "deal", not the pay-per-click ads they've recently started--I don't fool with those.)
 

BJ Bourg

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May I ask how many reviews resulted from this, there must have been at least one or two?!

A little less than 100--I think it was actually 97 or 98. About 50 came in almost immediately, like within days, and the rest trickled in for several weeks.
 

BJ Bourg

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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'm all-in with Amazon. I applied for a $0.99 BookBub deal and they accepted it. About a week before the deal was supposed to run, I went and manually reduced the price of my book to $0.99. (Although I was paid at the 35% royalty rate, I made a killing.) About a week after the deal, I went in and manually returned the book to its regular price. Two months later, I applied for a FREE deal on a different book and they accepted it. I then went into my KDP dashboard and ran a FREE promotion, setting it to begin a few days before the BookBub ad, and I ran it for the full 5 days. Following both deals, I saw a huge spike in KENP reads.

If your book is available on multiple platforms, I hear you have a better chance of landing a BookBub deal. If they accept you, you would have to get with each of your distributors and have them reduce the price of your book in time for the BookBub ad to run. I hear some places take longer than others, but I'm only familiar with Amazon, and they're almost immediate. Of course, I don't take any chances. They say it can take up to 72 hours for your changes to be updated, so I usually give myself about 96 hours.

Hope it helps.
 

BJ Bourg

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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?

You won't get a BookBub deal with a $1.00 price drop. They require at least a 50% deal. With a $3.99 book, you'll have a better chance landing a FREE deal. If you have follow-up books in the series, you'll make your money back in a hurry. If you have a boxed set that's $6.98 or higher and you apply for a $0.99 deal, you stand a good chance of getting it.

Best of luck!