New Releases for Less is an excellent tool for driving wide exposure of competitively priced new releases. Similarly to BookBub Featured Deals, each editorially curated New Releases for Less promotion is sent to every subscribed BookBub member interested in the featured book’s category. This gets the book in front of hundreds of thousands (and in some categories, millions!) of relevant readers outside the author’s existing fan base. However, while Featured Deals is primarily a tool for driving sales and revenue for backlist books, New Releases for Less promotions can lead to many other benefits for newly published titles beyond a surge in sales.
Here are eight of those benefits, along with success stories from authors to demonstrate the kinds of results you can achieve from running New Releases for Less as part of a book launch!
1. Increase followers and wishlists
While other BookBub new release tools promote a book to the author’s existing BookBub followers only, New Releases for Less expands the visibility of a new release to a much broader audience of BookBub readers. This can have benefits beyond your new release: Many authors see an increase in new followers from readers who clicked to learn more about their book. Growing your BookBub following can ultimately increase book sales over time because those followers will hear about your future promotions.
Not only did I reach readers that are not in my normal fan base, but also I received additional BookBub followers. This genre is a new one for me because I normally write international mysteries in my Nikki Garcia mystery series.
This feature was positive for the new readers it brought to my platform; especially followers and readers who bought not only the featured book, but others in my backlist as well. It was great to see so many new followers after the promotion.
2. Improve retailer rankings and visibility
Many different factors go into where and how your books are placed in retailer bestseller lists, categories, or search results. However, running a price promotion can boost a book’s position in bestseller rankings. Amazon’s bestsellers algorithm is thought to be based on both volume and velocity of sales, and favors more recent sales over older ones, meaning the quick burst of traffic from New Releases for Less can give it a boost. This spike in visibility can lead to a “halo effect” of extra sales from readers outside of BookBub’s audience.
It drew attention to the new book, and preorders to two other books in the trilogy. Into the Fire also made #1 bestseller in one of Amazon’s specialized categories. It was a B&N bestseller and made the Top 100 bestseller list on iBooks.
I hit number one in the Amazon Free Books listings in three different genres: Murder/Suspense/Thriller, Espionage Thriller, and Alternative History.
I got a great boost of traffic which helped Amazon’s algorithm to pick the book up and place it in five Amazon Best Seller categories. It was not lucrative but exposure is what matters in this case.
I ran several ad campaigns for both the new release (Water Memory) and its predecessor (Dog Logic) while the New Releases For Less promo was running and collectively resulted in both books being in the top ten (#1 & #5 respectively) on Amazon for over a week in several categories (Humorous Dark Comedy, Satire, Literary Fiction/Satire).
3. Gain additional merchandising
Because visibility multiplies, a book that sees clicks and sales from a New Releases for Less email can be more likely to gain above-average traction elsewhere. A boost in retailer rankings may in turn lead to placement in editorially curated lists on ebook retailers, leading to even more downloads over time.
Barnes & Noble even featured my book (after the New Release for Less email) as one of their weekly top 5 indie books!
4. Break into a new genre
New Releases for Less are specifically targeted to readers of a particular genre — whether that’s an author’s established genre or a new one! These promotions provide a large audience for a genre in which an author might not have built their own audience yet. These readers might not be familiar with the author, but will be enticed by an appealing price — 85 percent of BookBub readers are more likely to read a book from an unknown author if the book is discounted.
It was easy for me to get my book in front of a wide audience, without a lengthy author interview or blog post. This was my first book in Monster Romance (Paranormal Erotica), so I was almost an unknown (my usual books are vampire romances). My book rose to #2 in this super hot category and was under #2500 on all of Kindle paid books. Amazing. I’m still seeing Kindle Unlimited page reads from this deal almost two weeks later. While I didn’t earn back my original investment, breaking into a new subgenre was worth it.
5. Gain exposure under a new pen name
Similarly, because New Releases for Less delivers exposure to readers who are willing to try new authors, it’s a great tool for launching new pen names as well as breaking into new genres.
This is a brand new pen name and has had no exposure until now! Along with Facebook ads, the BookBub New Releases for Less feature was the only thing to push it. AND WOW. The book is currently #390 in the entire Amazon store, #1 in all its categories, and getting lovely reviews! I am SO grateful to the entire team at BookBub for helping get the word out about this book! I’ve subsequently done New Releases for Less features on later books in the series and each time additional readers are finding me! This feature truly feels like a fast track to reader awareness.
This book was released under a new pen name, and it’s in a genre that’s a notoriously tough sell. I didn’t expect the feature to earn out, and it didn’t quite, but it did get my book some much-needed exposure, which was my goal.
6. Grow awareness of new series
New Releases for Less can also help bring more eyes to a new series launch. Soon after promoting the first book in a new series, our partners have seen results such as preorders for the next book in the series and additional sales over the weeks following the promotion.
With this being the first title in a new series, my aim (aside from sales) was to get as many readers as possible to SEE this book as many times as possible, which hopefully leads to more sales in the future, and the BookBub email (going out to so many subscribers) was a big part of this.
My goal was to jump-start a new series and new pen name and build a following on BookBub and my newsletter list. I’m hoping to do this again with the second book in the series to amplify the good momentum that this first release deal started. I think the first one struggled a bit because I am still establishing the pen name and the series, so I would have expected better results if my name were better known. Overall, though, it was a healthy foot in the door for this series.
7. Generate follow-on sales
What about new books in an established series? You can also use New Releases for Less to promote a later-series new release and drive sell-through of earlier books in the series.
Great exposure, a wonderful pop of sales, and a long tale of read-throughs on this series. This is book 4, and I saw a big bump in books 1-3 for the week following. The long tail of read-throughs has been excellent. BookBub is easy to work with, and the process was quick and simple.
It gave my series good exposure. While Trapped Souls is only book 2 and at full price, the series gained several new readers. I am happy with the sales of book 2 and book 1.
8. Expand your BookBub Ads audience
BookBub Ads allows you to reach the fans of any author with a following on BookBub. This includes any reader who engages with an author’s BookBub promotions, so the readers who click on a New Releases for Less feature get added to the author’s audience for BookBub Ad targeting. This means targeting your own fans after a New Releases for Less feature is a powerful strategy for retargeting everyone who clicked on your promotion.
I run BookBub Ads targeted to my own audience. The bonus with BookBub Ads is that you’ll notice your target audience is much bigger than just your BookBub followers. Your Ads audience also has anyone who has interacted with your prior Ads, Featured Deals, New Releases for Less, etc. So you’ll reach Your People, but also make a start on an expanded audience of New People.
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