Bookbub Free Promo Results

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

I was so excited to get a Bookbub Featured Deal in this New Year! For those in the writing know, this selective book listing service is hard to get into. Authors may accrue a lot of rejections before getting picked.

With the ability to reach hundreds or thousands (if not millions) of readers, Bookbub is an amazing opportunity. I ended up submitting my young adult novel, Dragonfly Dreams, and it got accepted for a free promo.

Unfortunately, the date the promotion began happened right after New Year’s (January 2nd). I, naturally, had a stressful experience making sure all the price adjustments happened in time because of the holiday break.

In the end, though, I managed to pull it off (albeit with some trouble in a few international locations).

At the peak of Bookbub’s efforts, my book went up the Kindle Free charts to #9 Overall for Free; #1 in Children’s Asian American; and #1 in Children’s Christian.

I feel mixed about the end results. To be honest, I was hoping for a long tail of sales after the promotion. (This would translate to a large number of book purchases after the listing.) Sadly, I didn’t get the follow-through on buying that I’d hoped for. Perhaps this was because I’d given away the copies of my book? (Next time, I’ll aim for a 99 cents ad.)

However, I did get more exposure for Dragonfly Dreams and my author name as a whole. Who knows how that will pan out in the future? Here are a few stats on the promo:

Book Deal (free) from January 2nd midnight PT to January 3rd midnight PT
Approximately 10,000 downloads on Amazon
Approximately 2,500 downloads on other sites (Nook, Kobo, iBooks)
Five new book reviews after being featured

The takeaway? BB is still the way to go to get eyeballs on your work. Free promotions may work better if you have a series and not a standalone (but beggars can’t be choosers with Bookbub, so take what you can get). If you want to go free, keep your expectations low in terms of revenue. However, free definitely garners more exposure–and hopefully more loyal readers and supporters of your current and future books.

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Comments

  1. Jennifer Chow says

    Okay, I spoke too soon! Sales are now coming in–not in a gush, but at least word’s getting around. And Bookbub folks have recommended my novel to others!

    • This is really cool, Jennifer. I know it’s not easy to be on Bookbub, so congrats. You’ve done a lot to promote your novel and it shows.

      • Jennifer Chow says

        Thanks, Evelyne. I’ve had a few rejections with Bookbub before, so I was excited to get the feature. It’s been wonderful having more readers look at my work!

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