We know there are a number of myths and misconceptions out there about how BookBub works — from tricks on how to boost your submission to what kind of behavior will get authors on a “blacklist” (this one baffles us!).
We wanted to put some of the rumors we hear about most often to rest. Keep reading to learn the truth behind some of these myths!
1. You will automatically receive promotions or alerts for your own books – FALSE
The moment has finally arrived — you’ve been accepted for a Featured Deal, or your new book has been approved for a New Release Alert! But if you don’t have the right subscription settings in your own BookBub reader account, you may never see how your promotions look.
If you’d like to receive an original copy of a Featured Deal or New Releases for Less promotion, you must sign up to receive our newsletters and ensure you’re subscribed to the category and located in a region where your promotion is running. If you don’t manage to sign up in advance, we’ve got you! Just reach out to our team at partners@bookbub.com and we’ll be happy to send you a screenshot.
If you’d like to see a New Release Alert or Preorder Alert for one of your titles, make sure to follow your own Author Profile and sign up to receive Author and Book Alerts. We can’t replicate these emails after they’ve been sent, so make sure to check your settings in advance of the alert date.
If you’re running a BookBub Ads campaign, you likely won’t see your ads at all — but rest assured that if your ad is serving impressions, it’s reaching BookBub readers in your target audience. You can track your impression and click data through your BookBub Ads dashboard.
2. There is a BookBub “blacklist” – FALSE
Many authors think that if they do something “wrong” — such as cancel a Featured Deal, resubmit too many times, or encounter any issues setting up a discount — we’ll “blacklist” them and never select their books again.
We can assure you that no such list exists. We know that discounting a book for a promotion can be complicated and unpredictable, and that your plans or circumstances may change, so we would never penalize your future submissions for that! We just ask that you abide by our policies and notify us as soon as possible to any potential problems with upcoming features.
The editorial selection process is absolutely not personal. Our editors rely on data from past promotions and their knowledge of our readers’ tastes to select the books that will be most appealing to our audience. Our selection criteria is influenced by a number of factors that can change over time, including the preferences of our readers and the volume and quality of other books being submitted to that category. If your books haven’t been getting selected, you can review tips for optimizing your submission. We’d also encourage you to check out the current deals in your book’s category on our website to get a sense of what types of themes, plots, and covers are appealing to our readers right now.
3. Unpublished authors can’t work with BookBub – FALSE
While you do need to have a published ebook to take advantage of some of our tools, including claiming an Author Profile on bookbub.com or submitting for a Featured Deal, we also offer tools that authors can use while they’re preparing to publish!
Our new website builder platform, Author Websites, was designed for authors at any stage, including authors who are still working on their first book. If you’re not yet published, this is the perfect place to get started with BookBub’s suite of marketing tools. Learn why every author should have a website.
Anyone can post book Recommendations on bookbub.com, which can be a great way for unpublished authors to start growing a following before they claim their Author Profile.
Lastly, you can submit for a New Releases for Less promotion before your book is published! If your book is selected, we’ll schedule the promotion within the month after the ebook release date.
4. The longer it takes to hear back from BookBub on your submission, the more likely it is that your book will be selected – FALSE
The truth — it’s random! The time it takes for us to get back to you can vary based on the particular time of day that you submitted your deal, the editorial team’s schedule on any given day or week, and the number of other submissions in our queue. We’ll do our best to get back to you within a few days, but please reach out if you haven’t heard back from us after a week.
5. You should send separate submissions for all the categories you think your book could fit into – FALSE
While it may feel helpful to send in individual submissions for all of the categories you think your book could be considered for, it could actually delay their review process. Our editors always consider alternate categories when reviewing a submission, so we recommend you submit your book to your preferred category, and include alternate categories that you’d like to be considered for in the comment section. If the editors think your book would fit best elsewhere, they will make that suggestion in their offer! You’ll always have the chance to review our offer before confirming.
6. Submitting a bunch of your books at the same time boosts your chances of getting selected for a Featured Deal – FALSE
We understand wanting to improve the odds of selection whenever you submit titles for Featured Deals. The best way to do this is to be thoughtful with which books you submit (and when!) — for example, we wouldn’t suggest that you submit a whole series at the same time when we haven’t featured book one yet.
The editors can only run one book per author per month, so they always prefer that authors submit their one to four strongest titles for consideration — and one title at a time — rather than their entire catalog. This also reduces the chance that you compete against yourself for a spot!
7. It’s bad to decline or cancel a Featured Deal offer – FALSE
This is a fear we’ve heard from many authors, and it’s related to the mythical BookBub “blacklist.” However, we can assure you that there are no repercussions to canceling as long as you give us at least seven days’ notice before the date of your feature (but we appreciate you letting us know as early as possible!).
If you do cancel a feature, you can resubmit the same book at any point — no need to wait four weeks or six months — and it won’t affect the editorial team’s consideration of your future submissions. However, since our selection criteria is always evolving based on our readers’ ever-changing preferences and the other submissions we’ve received, being selected once doesn’t guarantee that your book will be selected again when you resubmit.
If you do resubmit a book you’ve previously cancelled a feature for, it’s helpful for us if you note that the book had been selected and explain your reasons for canceling in the comments. That way our editors won’t be surprised to see your book again so soon, and our partners team will recall any scheduling concerns you may have had the first time.
8. You have to accept the date we initially schedule your feature for – FALSE
If you’re not satisfied with the feature date we offer you for any reason at all, please don’t hesitate to let us know. While we can’t guarantee that we’ll have schedule space on the days you request, we’ll always do our best to accommodate your preferred promotion dates.
9. If one retailer isn’t discounted on the day of your Featured Deal, it will jeopardize your entire feature – FALSE
If one of your retailers isn’t discounted on the day of your feature, we’ll just leave that retailer out of the email — we won’t cancel your entire feature. However, we won’t be able to offer a refund, so you may see a slightly lower ROI if you don’t reach our whole audience in your category. In order to maximize your ROI for a Featured Deal, it’s best to include as many retailers as possible.
Most discounting issues our partners encounter are related to price matching or international pricing. Learn how to make your book free and how to avoid common international discounting errors.
10. You pay for BookBub readers who don’t even see your book due to email truncation – FALSE
While some email providers truncate long emails, cutting off some of the content, this only affects a very small percentage of our subscribers (those who are signed up to a large number of categories). We don’t have evidence that truncation has a significant effect on either Featured Deal or BookBub Ads performance.
It’s important to note that BookBub partners aren’t paying for readers who don’t see their promotions due to email truncation. Our Featured Deal pricing model is based on the expected results for each category, not just the number of subscribers you reach, so any impact on those results would be accounted for in our fees. For BookBub Ads, advertisers using cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) bidding are only charged for images that load in a reader’s email; advertisers using cost-per-click (CPC) bidding are only charged when a reader clicks on an ad.
11. You have to wait for your Author Profile to be approved to start promoting your books – FALSE
While we always recommend submitting an Author Profile claim as one of the first steps in getting started on BookBub, you do not need an approved Author Profile to start submitting for promotions or to set up a BookBub Ads campaign.
That said, if your profile claim has been pending for more than a week, please reach out to us at partners@bookbub.com and let us know! We’ll make sure to process your claim as soon as we can.
12. You can add books written under a pen name to your Author Profile – FALSE
Claiming an Author Profile allows you to list all of your ebooks on the BookBub website, but you have to claim a separate profile for each pen name you write with. To claim additional Author Profiles, you’ll need to create a new Partner Dashboard account using a different email address. By associating each profile with a unique partner account, we can ensure that all of our book information is accurate for each author.
If you’d like our readers to be able to discover books written under all of your pen names, you can link your profiles. If you’d like to link your profiles, just contact us at partners@bookbub.com letting us know the pen names you would like to link.
13. New Releases for Less is just Featured Deals for new books – FALSE
New Releases for Less is a weekly curated email of newly published ebooks priced below $7. This product has a similar editorial review process to Featured Deals, and it can be used to reach all BookBub readers subscribed to a particular category, but there’s more flexibility in the price points of the books that can be featured. For that reason, the range of results that we see is much more varied than our Featured Deal promotions, which we select and price based on established discount tiers.
The core value of a New Releases for Less promotion is rooted in the exposure it can help drive for a title early on in its publication. Learn more about the goals you can achieve with New Releases for Less.
14. You need a minimum number of reviews to be selected for a Featured Deal – FALSE
Many authors think you have to have a certain number of reader reviews in order to even be considered for a Featured Deal — 50, or 100. The truth is, there’s no minimum number required to be considered or selected!
Reader reviews are only one part of the editorial team’s selection process. Equally important, if not more so, is making sure that a book will be a good fit for our particular audience in each category. A book with fewer reviews that hits all of our readers’ buttons might get selected for a feature over a book with hundreds of reviews about a topic our readers aren’t interested in. Hear directly from an editor about the myths of Featured Deal review requirements.
We hope that this has cleared up some confusion about common myths and misconceptions about BookBub! If you have any other questions, you can always email our team at partners@bookbub.com.
This post was originally published on March 17, 2016 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
