Does anybody have any experience or knowledge of getting books selected for Book Bub? I'm interested in submitting one book that's currently in KDP select, but when I look at their criteria I see that they're more likely to select books in wide distribution. But if I take the book out of KDP select, the lowest I'd be able to go on price is 99 cents, while if I kept it in I could make it free. (I'm trying to use the first book as a lure to get people to read the second book in the series, so I'm not too worried about price). So - is it more likely to be selected for a Book Bub promotion if it's free at one source, or if it's 99 cents at many sources? Anyone know?
You can make a wide book permafree on amazon but its a faff Basically you upload it to Kobo, ibooks etc make it free there, then wait a day or so before reporting the lower price on amazon and asking them to price match - if you've got an arc group ask them to report the lower price too. There's no absolute guarantee that they will but they normally do. They sometimes revert it after about three months meaning you have to go through the price matching rigmarole again. that said there's not much odds in book bub selection between it being 99p or free - except that they'll charge you more for a 99p book. It's been my experience that bookbub selection requires persistence above all, they rejected my loss leader Blood Tide 5 times, then accepted it without rhyme or reason
yeah it ran ages ago back end of last year... I saw more uplift on kobo and ibooks than on amazon Tbh I'm not overly fond of bookbub featured deal for promoting a loss lead as its damned expensive and you don't always get your money back through read through... I'm leaning more to using freebooksy/bargainbooksy to push the loss lead , and applying for featured deal on books temporarily discounted. Admittedly I write thrillers, you might find that there is a greater read through hunger from the romance market
So what's going on with your Amazon numbers? The listings are still showing the book as unranked, which usually means zero sales... but you've had sales and they just aren't showing up on the ranking? Or was it completely free for the promo and those numbers don't apply to your paid rankings? Or...? And do you have a theory about why you're getting better results at Kobo and ibooks? Most self-publishers seem to rely on Amazon... what's different with you, do you think?
It was free for the promo, and free downloads don't show on paid ranking (that goes to what I was saying about them reverting the perma free, that book has been seesawing between 99p and free ever since I released it... which is annoying since its supposed to be free and is free on all other channels)... mind you I have had some sales at 99p (though not masses by any means - I haven't promoted it as a paid item) so its clearly not true that zero rank equals no sales On the second point I don't think its true that most self publishers depend on amazon - it depends very much on whether your business model is wide or select - I've been wide from the start. A lot of well known authors have substantial sales on kobo, google, ibooks and so forth. I've also done a lot of kobo promo whereas I haven't done much with AMS because of the state of flux with the changes and the difficulty in accessing AMS uk In terms of bookbub it is well known that their subscribers aren't all kindle users - the logic goes that if you are a kindle user and you read a lot you are probably in KDP select so there's not much point in being on the book bub list since all books (in the KU programme) are free to you anyway... thus a lot of people who signup for the book bub list are nook, kobo etc readers or read on phones with Ibooks or apple... David Gaughran has an article about it which I'll link if I can find it later
I can't find the David Gaughran article - although I've probably got it favourite somewhere i'll have a look later. I did find this with Adam Croft who is essentially saying the same thing https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2018/12/17/how-to-be-successful-when-publishing-wide-with-adam-croft/ (the bookbub bit is towards the end of the interview) Adam's numbers are a lot more impressive than mine (or anyone here I suspect)
By some miracle my book was accepted by BookBub first time round, but a quick look at their pricing for Featured Deals made me gasp. I also don't get how I would make any money if I'm listing the book for free, yet being charged $643 for the promo. Or for a sale price of $2, the charge would be $1609. Perhaps I'm not understanding this correctly. Is it a fixed fee regardless of how many books are sold?
yes its a fixed price - if you go with free you need to get some decent sell through on the rest of the series- most people reckon £1.99/$2.99 is the sweet spot you ought to get about 3k sales on the popular genres (although of course there's no guarantee) if featured deal is too expensive you could also look at ads which sit at the bottom of the email - which is a CPC or CPM payment but their visibility and thus conversion is much less
