BookBub

Unquestioned Best

Bookbub is a league of their own. It has absolutely destroyed any newletter I've used, which shouldn't be surprising. Resulting in over 300 sales for my books which tend to underperform anyway, it was still hundreds of percentage points better than any I'd run before, though over all the cost per sale was higher than some. Getting a featured ad is tough, but keep trying, don't give up.

They Set the Bar

What else is there to say? If you can get a BookBub, you take it and you sit back and enjoy the rain of money.

Hands down the best

There's a reason BookBub is the gold standard. Nothing else comes close to getting their level of results. No, it's not a cash cow for everyone. Free works better than paid (always has). But in a world where most promos barely break even, BookBub consistently returns several times more than what it costs. (Their Chirp deals are even better because there's no upfront cost)

Worth It!

The New Release for Less paid promotion provided an excellent return on investment for my contemporary romance novel, Now and Forever. I would definitely purchase this type of advertising again. Even though I spent more money, I sold the most books.

Yes, Always

I'll always take a BB deal because of maximum visibility. It's been a while since one of my books was chosen for one, but the last deal had enough downloads that it was worth it. I hate that it's so hard to get into BB, but I'd definitely go with them again.

Active Part of My Marketing

I have sold over 53,000 books and I would venture half come from my ads on BookBub. I started with this platform in August 2018 and saw an immediate explosion in sales. It can get expensive, but can be well worth it if you can target the right author and readers.

If you do your homework you'll give this site a big miss!

BookBub has 20 million subscribers. It is basically a site to promote Featured Deals for HarperCollins and Random House. Seventy percent of promotions are for traditional publishers which leaves about 12 places daily for indies of which 6 are allocated to romance. The titles chosen for indies are invariably priced at FREE or $0.99 and are really sponsored loss leaders for traditional publishers. They claim their editorial team only chooses quality books that are error-free. Anyone who's read their recommendations would know this claim is fake. As far as using their advertising platform goes, it's a surefire to eat your "hard earned" dollars.

Great for featured deals

I have done both new release for less and featured deals. The US Featured release is amazing. The new release did not earn back it's fee immediately, but I have noticed the sales of the new release have continued to come in a much higher rate than previous new releases, and the series is doing better after the new release for less promotion

Essential

Without a doubt, BookBub is a vital promotion site. Keep applying for featured deals and if you get one, build a promotion around it. I more than recovered my costs with a featured deal for a free book as readers went on to buy my other books.

THE BEST

Look here when promoting your book. They have a tough editorial review with a very limited number of books accepted, but if you get accepted, you'll see your 99cent promo often earn you over a thousand sales and your free promo earn you tens of thousands of free giveaway "sales". Totally worth it if you're gonna promote via newsletter.

Huge list size

If you're looking to kickstart an Amazon free book promotion, Bookbub is perfect. You can choose how much you want to spend as a daily limit, choose your genres, choose your audience by selecting similar authors, design the ad yourself or let them use a template, and then make the ads live whenever you want, with the option to pause if you want to change anything. Not cheap, but they're worth it for the extra information you can see: number of impressions, clicks, click-through rate, budget spent etc

Super expensive

Super expensive for not a great ROI on ads - only do this if you have FREE books. If you have a 99c book, it really decreases the number of clicks. DON'T DO ANYTHING OVER 99c.

Keep submitting!

It may take a while to be accepted but it's always worth it. Bookbub Featured Deals has always been a game changer for me. Yes, there are a lot of traditional books but they do take indies. And it's not always wide releases - all 6 of my featured deals have been KU. Well worth the cost.

Expensive but worth it

After numerous rejections, I finally got a Featured deal last year and it was well worth the investment. My book went to number one in military thrillers. The Kindle Unlimited pages read and reviews spiked in the days and weeks following. I have also done two new releases for less deals. I did not get the same results as the featured deal. So Featured Deal, well worth it! New Release for Less, I would still do, but the expectations should be tampered down.

Ribbons of Death

Yeah, ONE Star. It's not a mistake. This site really flies only on the <so-called> recommendations of well-established authors and their agents/publishers, who get a hefty cut of author's royalties. If you are a vanity-author with tons of money, go for it. I went for it twice. Once when the book was still with a publisher. It cost me $600+ that was back in 2016. The Publisher <gracefully> declined to spend any money on this promotion. The cost was all MINE. The book earned just over $700 US. The Publisher took more than half of that and I was left with a huge loss. I went indie after that. The second time was on my own, spent $1200+, got back about $350 in sales. Same loss. Yes, there are authors out there who have success promoting with BookBub. SOME - and you should read that as <very few>. Don't believe everything you read about <huge success> when it comes to indie authors. Most, and that includes me, are struggling just to get the next book out.

Bookraid is better

I'm not a big fan of BB. It's really overpriced and it takes a lot of time (and money) before you understand how it works. If you're rich and if you wonder what to do with your money, use BB. If you expect any return of investment, choose BR.

BookBub New Release is Bad

The New Release promo is overpriced and peculiar. I am still not sure who they actually emailed the books to. Regardless, paying $1.46 per a click is not good business.

Worked for me

It took me a while to get my first BB featured deal, but I've had 5 now, and each one has been worthwhile. I DO think it depends on genre (I write epic fantasy), and works best if you have a series. I have done 99c promos with them and always earned back my ad spend within a week, and then with read-through to the other books in series, (currently 4), the big initial outlay has turned into a decent profit. I always advertise book #1 in series, and on every ocassion it has reached the #1 spot on Amazon in the highly competitive Epic Fantasy category, in multiple countries.