BookBub Deals

Are they worth it?

Every self-published author (let’s be honest, traditional too) wonders how they’re going to market their book. Every author has a vastly different budget. From social media ads to influencer partnerships, and even a mass push of ARCS—marketing is part of the gig.

At the time of publishing my debut novel The Magnificence of Death, I had no idea what I was doing or how it might play out. I wrote the book years prior, had written quite a few more, spent months and months in the query trenches and had completely lost my self-confidence. I posted a chapter a night here on Substack for six weeks and then published the book to Amazon and called it good.

I had no marketing plan besides posting on my social media platforms and curating a somewhat cohesive feed. That was my strategy.

You might be chuckling, but it worked. Somehow, miraculously, it worked. I didn’t pay for Facebook ads, or hire booktok creators to share about the book. Every sale was genuine word of mouth.

It wasn’t until the nine month mark that (after watching a few friends run a successful campaign) I decided I needed to do a bit of marketing. Sales were starting slow bit by bit, and one random Sunday night I applied for a BookBub deal.

So here’s my experience…

It starts with an application on their website after setting up an account. From my understanding, your book has to be uniquely positioned to get picked for a deal. BookBub has more information on their website about their selection process, but just know that application does not guarantee a deal. I’ve had friends apply a few times for certain titles before landing the deal. I was fortunate that TMOD was selected so quickly. Within twelve hours of applying, I had an acceptance email with a link to payment and the date they planned on running the deal.

When you apply there are a list of genre’s and each one comes with a different price tag depending on the readership. The price also varies depending on the price of your deal. The steeper the discount on your book, the steeper the discount on the advertisement. You can check out that chart HERE.

The process is fairly simple, you apply, you get chosen, you discount your ebook over your selected days and BookBub does the rest.

For context, I ran a three day deal where I priced The Magnificence of Death for FREE. It was placed in Fantasy, and it cost me roughly $424USD.

Looking back, I should have discounted the title to .99 or 1.99, but to be honest, I didn’t think about it when I placed the application. I wasn’t considering the deal strategically, I was just thinking it would be nice to push it into another thousand hands. Publishing TMOD for me was also cost efficient, I had already made all my money back and so I felt like I could afford to run a paid ad with no profit.

But with that being said, since it is a selection process, next time I will be maximizing my effort for a better gain.

Over the course of three days I “sold” roughly 22,000 copies of The Magnificence of Death. I woke up screaming when every second that ticked by another hundred copies was downloaded. It was an insane three days and the whole time I was thinking “holy shit this totally works.”

Where this kind of sucked for me was that I gave all the copies away for free (again, not a big deal but it could have yielded some income) and secondly, I didn’t have another book up for pre-order or another book for readers to flock to. It was a powerful tool in pushing my writing into new hands, but combined with a pre-order for a second book (or even better implemented with a series) it could have yielded greater results on my end.

So I caution you to really consider your game plan when applying for the BookBub deal, because once you submit you have to be ready to pay the fee and rock n roll. I was floored with their reach, and to be honest, it did garner me new followers on social platforms, as well as on Goodreads. Actually, a decent amount of reviews have flooded in since then as well. Which is always a plus!

Some points to consider:

BookBub could be a powerful tool to move your rank on Amazon, but just know that if you list your book for free it will only rank on free rankings not on the actual rankings its usually in. TMOD reached the number one spot in the kindle store for free titles, but that did not transfer to paid ranking spots. If I had placed TMOD at .99 or 1.99, it could have ranked quite high.

Consider all options when it comes to list price. Free book deals cost considerably less, and they also might have a greater reach considering more readers will download a free book rather than just a discounted book. If I had run the same advertisement over the three days for the same book but only discounted it to 1.99 instead of free, it would have cost me over $1,000USD.

Match the deal with an upcoming release. I have a duology coming out in the late fall, and I will be applying for another BookBub deal on the cusp of the second book’s release to drive pre-orders and to push the first book into new hands. Maximize your investment! You have the ability to push your book into thousands of hands, how can you turn those downloads into lifelong readers??

All this to say—BOOKBUB WAS TOTALLY WORTH IT. For me, the FREE tier was definitely worth, considering where I was at and the fact it was my debut novel. I will probably do BookBub deals for every book I write now, but will be approaching it with a more careful strategy next time to maximize the reach.

I hope this is helpful to those of you on the fence. Obviously I cannot speak to other’s budgets, but if you have the opportunity it is well worth the cost, especially considering it comes with such low effort. It’s not a recurring ad on Instagram you have to monitor, it’s not a partnership you broker with an influencer. It’s essentially an emailed link to readers inboxes.

I am so grateful platforms like this exist for those of us who begrudgingly partake in this side of the job!