Tag Archives: bookbub

by | April 12, 2018 · 1:00 am

Once again, BookBub delivers

If only I could have a BookBub every week…I could have a free lunch. It’s been seven hours and eight days since the International Feature promo ran in UK, Canada, Australia and India, and I’m still getting $10-15 of sales and reads per day. It has long since earned the $38 fee and even covered the $50 I wasted on running a simultaneous BookBub ad (don’t do those, but more on that later).

Here is the pretty graph:

BookBub results April 2018

While I’m very happy with the result, the number of free downloads is less than it was the first time around. Last year I got 5,094 downloads in the first three days, and this time it was 3,501 over the same time. Unfortunately, I did not include in the last year’s post the buy through, or basically what I sold as a result. Not to make the same mistake, here are the results over the last 8 days:

  1. Shizzle, Inc: 9 copies sold at $2.99 and just under 8,000 KENP. Approximate return of $58.
  2. Indiot: 2 copies sold at $2.99 and 2,900 KENP. Approximate return of $18.50.

I have also ran the BookBub ad for full-priced Indiot, spent $50 and sold 9 additional copies, at a loss of $32. So after all of that and $38 for the BookBub, I have made a total of $6.50! In the black, baby!

I could still make more, if KENP continues to move along. With the last BookBub I was wide, which did not pay, since I got hardly any sales through Smashwords. I also did not get to enjoy the sustained spike in KENP, as you can see above. I’m continuing to run an AMS (Amazon Marketing Services) ad and so some of KENP could be due to that, but the ad has been running for several months, and there were hardly any pages read before, an equivalent of maybe a copy per week. That’s one problem with AMS – you can’t tell when your ad and click results in a borrow.

I do have a theory – the book was $0.99 during the last few months and maybe, just maybe, not deemed “worthy” by KU owners. Now that it’s $2.99, maybe it looks like a better value to borrow on a KU plan? The only way to confirm that would be to check the stats a month from now, when there’s no chance that any sales or borrows are generated by the BookBub afterglow.

I have promised to write a post about AMS and will do so next – I’m on annual leave right now but not going anywhere, only painting walls and canvasses.  Writers need hobbies too.

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by | March 29, 2018 · 1:00 am

I got another BookBub!!!

Oh, it’s nice to be back out in the sunshine of possibilities and hope! And how could I not feel sunny after winning the equivalent of self-published lottery for the second time in 13 months! I was writing the “thanks to Arnold” post just a few days ago and mentioned that I have neglected my marketing efforts, one of which has been clockwork monthly submissions to BookBub. So I fired off another one, and when I got the email back I almost deleted it on autopilot before realizing that they have accepted Shizzle, Inc for another BookBub International Promo. The last time I had almost 6K copies downloaded over 3 days, vs BookBub’s own estimate of 2.5K. This time they are telling me that on 2 April it will be sent to 250,000 subscribes and they estimate about 5K downloads. All at the cost of $38! The only bummer that I am yet to get the coveted US mailout.

By the way, this means Shizzle, Inc will be free in all Amazon stores 1-5 April, so why not download a copy for yourself 🙂

I will let you know the results of this promo, this is just a reminder for myself and all to persist – set a monthly calendar reminder to submit to BookBub and just don’t give up. I have submitted Shizzle, Inc nine times before I got the first one and an additional eight times to get the second one.

Good luck!

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by | March 10, 2017 · 11:30 pm

Drumroll…BookBub results! Spoiler…they are awesome!

I’m not one to wish that every day was Christmas or my birthday, but I wouldn’t mind reliving the 6 March 2017 a few times. Well, 7 March, actually, because even though my BookBub promo was international, in Australia the email didn’t go out until 1am on 7 March. I spent the entire prior day checking the stats and telling myself to just calm the hell down, while worrying that something went wrong. I didn’t need to worry – when I woke up the next morning, I could see that long-awaited spike. Over 2,000 copies were already downloaded in those first six or so hours, and the green line keeps moving since. It has completely dwarfed my prior stats, which were in 5-10 per day range (without advertising). Isn’t it beautiful?

That’s a total of an amazing 5,094 downloads over the first three days. The breakdown per country is as follows:

  • UK: 2,698
  • Canada: 1,172
  • Australia: 754
  • India: 329
  • The US: 139

Three things surprised me: first of all, that more than twice as many books were downloaded compared to the BookBub’s own estimate of 2,500. Secondly, even though the US was excluded from the promo, somehow 139 copies were downloaded via the amazon.com site. Thirdly, that despite including Kobo and Nook in the promo, I had no spike whatsoever in my Smashword sales. Maybe the data is delayed, and I will check again in a week, or maybe I should just concentrate on Amazon.

I’d spent the last three days marveling at the stats and trying to decide what to do next: should I make Shizzle, Inc full price and hope a few people actually buy it? Should I pull it from wide distribution and enroll in KU? Should I finish the third book in the series instead of going down the path of the new one? After much deliberation of myself, I kept everything as is and applied for the US promo in hopes that the excellent result will convince BookBub to give me a fair go. I’d also submitted Indiot as a $0.99 deal. I should know in about a week’s time if either deal is accepted.

Meanwhile, I’d updated my Super Duper List of Book Marketing with the results. When I first announced that after 18 months of trying I was offered a BookBub promo deal, a few people on Twitter mentioned how expensive BookBub is. Well, just compare the cost and the result to anything on that list – no other company comes close. If you are so lucky as to get a deal with them, just take it. Take out your credit card and just ask “How much?”

You won’t regret it.

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by | February 22, 2017 · 11:30 pm

I GOT A BOOKBUB!!!!

Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I actually screamed when I got the email – Josh thought someone horrible happened. Instead, something almost miraculous did.

For those of you that may not know, BookBub is the holy grail of e-book advertising, for both self-published authors and traditional publishers. It’s head and shoulders above any other online marketing tool, and I have tried them all, as you may already know if you’ve seen my Super Duper List. The only one that I haven’t tried was BookBub, not because I couldn’t afford them, but because they didn’t want me or either one of my books. Believe me, I’d tried. I have been applying on nearly monthly basis for about eighteen months, and have been getting stock-standard rejections. I have tried different categories. I have tried getting BookBub followers (I have 27 of them now). I did everything I could to increase the number of reviews (Shizzle, Inc has 82 reviews). I even tried replying, begging for feedback. Still, “not at this time” was all they said.

Until now! Look at it! Look!!

bookbub-offer

I have confirmed and paid – Shizzle, Inc will be one of BookBub’s Featured Deals on 6 March! As you can see from above, there’s a catch, though – it was NOT selected for the US market, which is only, you know, my target market, but hey! I got my foot in the door, and every time I’d managed to do that before, I eventually got the rest through. The subscriber list will be Humor and it’s 200,000 strong. The estimated number of downloads is 2,500, which is not too flash, but let’s see what actually happens. The cost is $36 USD and I hope for at least a few buy-throughs to Indiot. But mainly, I hope that sometime in the future I get the whole world covered in free copies of Isa Maxwell’s Escapades.

It’s a sign. I mean, I don’t believe in these things, of course, but what else can it be? I have a crisis of confidence, take a three-month hiatus, return, and finally land the coveted prize. Oh, wait. It’s persistence. That’s right, that dogged persistence does eventually pay off. Maybe not the first or seventh time, but you never know, it could be the next one.

Just keep going. I will too.

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by | May 24, 2016 · 1:00 am

Follow me on BookBub for a chance to win a $20 Amazon gift certificate!

Yes, that’s right – I am holding a Rafflecopter giveaway for a $20 Amazon electronic gift card. Why am I doing this? As usual, there’s method to my madness, or at least that’s what I keep telling myself…

I want to get a BookBub promo, come hell or high taxes, and I am hoping that getting followers on their website would help me do just that. BookBub rejected Shizzle, Inc (Isa Maxwell escapades Book 1) for the 4th time, despite it gathering over 40 reviews and currently ranking in top 100 of the entire Free Kindle store. The high ranking is due to a promo, which netted almost 2,000 downloads in two days. I will have a review of all my May permafree promos after the end of this month, but for now, thank you eReader News for this:

Ranking on 22 May

Still, to get to my goal of 100,000 downloads by the end of the year, I will need to catch that elusive BookBub promo prize. It alone can potentially net me 20 thousand downloads for a very reasonable $70 (chicklit category is the smallest one). So instead of wallowing over another rejection, like I’d originally planned, I’ve made an action plan of how I can win over those stern BookBub editors. I find action plans in general soothing, but this one, in particular, is Aloe Vera for my burned ego.

This is what I’ve done or will be doing over the next month:

  1. Enticing people to follow me on BookBub with Rafflecopter giveaways. Yes – more than one. I’m starting with a $20 certificate and will report on how many, if any, followers I will get. If it’s successful, I might try a $50 gift card next time.
  2. Revising my book covers to look like a series. This seems to be one of the factors people mention – professional-looking covers with great typography. I will be keeping my designs almost the same, but taking the “rip” effect across the series and getting a professional to help choose the typography.
  3. Re-editing Shizzle, Inc yet again.
  4. I’ve revised the blurb for Shizzle, Inc and the editor will check it as well. If anyone has any comments on the Shizzle, Inc blurb, I’d appreciate them!
  5. Already added Indiot to my BookBub profile.
  6. Updated my bio everywhere, including my Amazon Author Page. What do you think? It used to be one pathetic sentence…
  7. Already added a”follow me on BookBub” button to the right-hand side menu on this blog, using these directions and my own image widget directions.
  8. Added a “follow me on BookBub” link to my email signature. I don’t use it that much, but why not? Set it up once and never have to think about it again. My signature also has links to both of my books on Amazon now.
  9. Created this ClickToTweet link, which I can add to posts, author bio, etc. You can create your own on Click to Tweet website, free of charge.
  10. Will get even more reviews via the continuous free giveaway and using a NetGalley co-op.

There. I can apply to BookBub again on 10 June, and you better believe it – there is a reminder in my calendar to do it once a month.

I have a gut feeling about it. It could turn out to be gas, but once again – time will tell.

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