The Magic of BookBub

The Magic of BookBub

Peter Ralph

Table of Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1 − BookBub – clearly the King of eBook promoters

Chapter 2 − BookBub – a remarkable journey

Chapter 3 − The incredible influence of BookBub

Chapter 4 – BookBub’s selection rules for a Featured Deal?

Chapter 5 − Indie authors/Traditionally published authors

Chapter 6 – Curation

Chapter 7 – A post mortem on Featured Deals

Chapter 8 – Featured Deals and editorial reviews

Chapter 9 – Authors and the value of editorial reviews

Chapter 10 − Two behemoths

Chapter 11 − The influencers

Chapter 12 − The big picture

Chapter 13 − Categories

Chapter 14 − BookBub then, and now

Chapter 15 − What do self-published authors need?

Chapter 16 – How can indie authors increase their chances of winning a BookBub Featured Deal?

Conclusion

About the author

Other Books by Peter Ralph

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Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

DISCLAIMER AND COPYRIGHT

Foreword

For authors, getting accepted for a promotion (a Featured Deal) by BookBub can be the difference between continuing to write and tearing up their thesauruses. BookBub is the nine-hundred-pound gorilla of book promotion sites with more than 7 million email subscribers. There is no other book promotion site that even approaches 1 million email subscribers. Time and time again, indie authors apply to have their books accepted for a promotion, and time and time again, BookBub rejects most of them. However, enough are accepted to leave those rejected with the hope they might be accepted next time. Some authors blog that they have been rejected more than twenty times while others just give up.

The following example highlights the power of BookBub. If a book exclusive to Amazon (KDP Select), categorized as crime fiction and normally priced at $4.99 was discounted to $0.99, the Featured Deal would cost $1,024. And the author could expect to sell 2,860 copies and earn approximately $2,000 in royalties. However, the amount earned is usually far greater because of the BookBub halo effect. The BookBub halo effect is the favorable impact that the Featured Deal has on the sales of the author’s other books, subsequent sales of the promoted book at its normal price, and KENPs read by Kindle Unlimited (KU) subscribers. KENP stands for Kindle Edition Normalized pages and authors are currently paid 48 cents per 100 KENPs read by KU subscribers.

For reader subscribers, BookBub curates the titles promoted so only those trending, and that would appeal to subscribers appear in its emails.

BookBub endeavors to split its promotional opportunities equally between traditionally published authors and indie authors. It is not always successful in achieving this goal, possibly because there are certain categories in which indie authors are not prolific. Conversely, indie authors appear to be far more successful in winning Featured Deals in the romance categories than traditionally published authors.

It is common knowledge that Amazon dominates the eBook market with a market share somewhere between 65 and 74%. BookBub is equally dominant regarding eBook promotion. In just six years, it has grown from a startup in the U.S. to a business with more than 7 million subscribers catering to readers in the U.S., U.K., Canada, India, and Australia. Regarding size, it has no competition. An acceptance for a Featured deal by BookBub can make an author.

Chapter 1 − BookBub – clearly the King of eBook promoters

Three years ago, I knew little about Amazon. I knew it was a major public company and a dominant player in the publishing industry. What I didn’t realize was how complex, and diversified Amazon’s business was. I had no idea of the complexities of its website, and even now, I rarely go a day without discovering something new.

I also knew less than zero about eBook publishing, and the more I learned, the more I realized how little I knew. I gleaned much from reading books and blogs by Mark Dawson, Joanna Penn, Jackie Weger, Orna Ross, David Gaughran, Joe Konrath, and Nick Stephenson. However, my level of knowledge is not remotely comparable with any of the above-mentioned experts. In my quest for knowledge, I also ran across many fast-buck merchants and con artists. Fortunately, my background and experience enabled me to sniff them out without too much trouble. Some were so bad that to compare them with used-car salesmen would be totally unjust – to used-car salesmen, that is. I might not have much publishing or marketing expertise, but I do have a finely tuned BS detector.

After I published my first eBook I started reading about promotion sites and, of course, couldn’t help but notice how expensive BookBub was – and, accordingly, paid little attention to it. Who said ignorance was bliss? By early 2015, I had some idea of the power of BookBub and applied for my first Featured Free Deal (free meaning the book I was promoting was free). BookBub rejected my proposal. Undeterred, I applied again a month later. Again, I was rejected. Two months later I tried again, and once more was rejected. At this stage, I was starting to wonder.

Here I was wanting to pay a promotional business nearly $400 to promote my novel for one day but was continually being knocked back. What type of business knocks back revenue? I know some authors get depressed by these repeated rejections. I did not, but I was mystified. I didn’t know it at the time but later found out that rejected authors had created a BookBub rejection club on the website Kboards. Authors posted on Kboards about their rejections, peeved that BookBub had rejected them, but more annoyed they were not told the reason. Some had been rejected more than twenty times.

On my fifth attempt, I was accepted. Again, my naivety came to the fore, and I had no idea how lucky I’d been. I was paying nearly $400 to promote my novel for free and had won the lottery, even though I didn’t know it.

On the day of my Featured Deal, my novel, The CEO, had nearly thirty thousand downloads. In the ensuing days, sales of The CEO at full price increased significantly, and my other novels were bought in volumes never achieved before. I had one day where twenty-five thousand KENPs were read by KU subscribers. In the ensuing months, I received more than seventy-five reviews, mainly positive, and added a significant number of readers to my email subscribers list. At a minimum, with the increased sales and KENPs, I got back eight times my investment. Finally, I understood why authors were so desperate to get a BookBub Featured Deal.

I immediately applied for another Featured Deal (I was greedy) and have made another seven applications over the past sixteen months – all rejected!

Here follows a copy of the standard rejection email:

"Thanks for your submission. Unfortunately, our editorial team has not selected this book for a BookBub Featured Deal at this time.

Due to limited space in the email, we’re only able to feature about 20% of the books that get submitted to us. Our editors review all the submissions that meet our minimum guidelines for a certain category and price point, and select the books within that group that they believe will perform best with our members. Other books the editors reviewed were better fits for our readers’ current tastes.

While this book hasn’t been selected for a Featured Deal, here are some tips to make future submissions as competitive as possible:

- Submit your book for a Featured Deal at a lower price point

- Submit other books from your backlist

- Re-submit your book in a few months, when it might be a better fit for our readers

- Review more tips here: https://www.bookbub.com/partners/submission-tips

Please wait at least four weeks before resubmitting this book for consideration.

In the meantime, we’d encourage you to claim your BookBub Author Profile and add your books to our website. It’s completely free to claim your profile, and it’s another great way for BookBub readers to discover your books on BookBub. You can claim your profile here:

https://partners.bookbub.com/author_profile_claims/new

Best wishes,

BookBub Partners Team

http://insights.bookbub.com

@BookBubPartners"

Authors are understandably disappointed by this response. They want to know if their books are no good. Are their covers crappy? Even after editing and proofreading, were spelling mistakes and typos missed? Didn’t their book have enough reviews? Why was Bill Brown’s book selected rather than mine, when mine had twice the number of reviews and a higher Amazon ranking? Was it because a traditional publisher like Random House or Harper Collins published Bill Brown’s book? Was it because my novel is enrolled in KDP Select? There are a plethora of questions, but BookBub declines to provide any answers, which just serves to add to the frustration.

However, it is equally understandable why BookBub does not provide detailed responses. Approximately 260 applications are rejected every day. Can you imagine the work involved in sending 1,800 detailed emails to rejected authors every week? Even if BookBub provided this service, there would be a percentage of authors who’d disagree with BookBub’s reasons and would want to carry on the exchange. It would be impractical and too costly for BookBub to change its current policy.

I have read many blogs about why BookBub reject books, some by the experts previously mentioned. They all suffer from the same shortcoming – they are subjective. Unfortunately, judging someone else’s writing, what is the best book in a category, what is trending, or what would appeal to readers are four of the most subjective tasks known to humankind. What follows below, in no particular order, are the five best novels I have read, with the number of one- and two-star Amazon reviews they received in brackets.

The Firm (51)

The Green Mile (28)

The Godfather (22)

Exodus (38)

The Book Thief (729)

Clearly, a lot of readers hate the novels I love. I know this is sacrilege, but I hated reading John Steinbeck at school. When Oprah started reading excerpts from his books and swooning, I decided I was wrong and had been too young to appreciate the great writer’s words. I bought Cannery Row, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath and read them again. Nothing had changed since my school days. I thought they were boring and hated them. If given a choice between John Grisham and John Steinbeck, I would choose the former every day of the week. I’m not trying to influence opinion, but I am trying to show how subjective the evaluation of writing can be.

Presumably, the editors making judgments at BookBub are experienced and have tertiary qualifications in literature or marketing. Not unlike the numerous editors employed by publishers who rejected John Grisham’s A Time to Kill, the nine who rejected J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, and the thirty-eight who rejected Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind. Those who rejected Grisham, Rowling, and Mitchell obviously made mistakes that only became apparent with the benefit of hindsight. Perhaps legal thrillers, children’s fantasy, and novels about the deep south were not trending when they were rejected. It just reinforces how subjective and how difficult the evaluation of writing is. Do BookBub’s editors make mistakes? In my opinion, without doubt. They're in a business and discipline where perfection is impossible.

I hope the preceding makes those of you who have been rejected and not experienced the magic of a BookBub Featured Deal feel better about yourselves. When you finish reading this book, you’ll understand more about BookBub’s selection processes. In most instances, the rejection will have had nothing to do with the quality of your writing.

Regarding trends, I guess children’s fantasy wasn’t trending before J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter, and it doesn’t appear to be trending now. However, six Harry Potter books have almost permanent places in Amazon’s top one hundred bestsellers. Identifying trends and bestsellers after the horse has bolted is easy, and anyone can do it – identifying future trends and the next bestsellers is something totally different and relies on a mix of art, skill, and luck, with the latter playing the biggest role. Sara Nelson, vice president of Harper Collins, summed it up nicely when she tweeted, The minute you know what a trend is – it’s over.

Given I am not an expert, and the common views expressed for a BookBub rejection are subjective, why would my opinion count or be different? Simple! I have examined 506 books promoted by BookBub from August 4, 2016, to September 18, 2016, covering bestsellers, crime fiction, cozy mysteries, historical mysteries, thrillers, action and adventure, history, true crime, humor, biographies and memoirs, general nonfiction, and business, in precise detail. Why 506? I was looking for a representative sample size and thought 500 would cut it. I then waited 100 days from each of the above dates and assessed the outcome of the Featured Deal. Some of my findings amazed me. I think they’ll have the same impact on you. There is nothing subjective about my analysis. It is one hundred percent objective. Properly analyzed numbers and the conclusions they reveal never lie.

I also examined 194 books promoted by BookBub from December 26, 2016, to December 30, 2016, and another 39 on the 7 February, 2017, covering all categories. To check the validity of some of my findings, I also examined 79 books promoted by BookBub on the 30 and 31 March, 2017.

By the time you’ve finished reading, you will better understand how BookBub determines whether you and your book will experience the magic that comes with being selected for a Featured Deal!

Chapter 2 − BookBub – a remarkable journey

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based BookBub was founded in January 2012 by Josh Schanker and Nicholas Ciarelli as a daily deals email service for avid readers. They were not the first; Ereader News