Over the past few years, direct sales — selling books to readers without using a major retailer as an intermediary — has become an increasingly popular sales strategy for independent authors. Selling direct can enable authors to collect more robust reader data, generate higher revenue per sale, and safeguard against unpredictability from major retailers. The challenge: Readers typically stick to their preferred retailers, and it can be difficult to redirect them to an alternative store.
Author Ariele Sieling (whose book you may recognize from our list of best BookBub Ads from 2023!) has been selling direct to readers in one form or another since she began her publishing journey in 2013. She’s experimented with delivering ebooks via her website, shipping paperbacks, and selling at live events. Most recently, she’s turned her focus to selling books through an online shop she hosts with Payhip, using BookFunnel for distribution, with the support of BookBub Ads. In this post, we share Ariele’s direct sales strategy and how she uses these three tools to drive series sales.
Direct sales as part of wide distribution
Direct sales are core to Ariele’s marketing strategy because she’s built her business model around wide distribution: “I want my books to be available to as many readers as possible, and the first step is to make them available on as many platforms as possible.”
This includes distributing her work in ebook, audiobook, and paperback formats; distributing to every retailer she can reach, including library systems like Libby and Overdrive; and building up her online store. By expanding beyond traditional retailers, Ariele serves readers who may have different buying preferences, want to own their ebooks outright, or have limited access to retailers.
Even though selling direct aligns well with her wide distribution philosophy, Ariele acknowledges that it presents unique challenges — the toughest being getting readers to adopt a non-standard method of purchasing.
Most readers are familiar with Amazon, or one of the other major ebook distributors. And these companies provide a lot of benefits, like returns, convenient reading apps, and a consistent shopping experience. I can’t provide that necessarily, though I try to bridge the difference by using BookFunnel Delivery (BookFunnel has a great reading app) and Payhip, which is a store many other authors use (for the consistent shopping experience).
The potential for higher royalties and increased access to reader data make it worthwhile for Ariele to present the direct option to readers — even if they typically use major retailers — and to invest in streamlining their buying experience. The last piece of the puzzle is sending readers to her store: “BookBub Ads send the most traffic to my store out of the various options I’ve experimented with so far.”
Using BookBub Ads to enable direct sales success
Ariele stresses that she didn’t launch her first BookBub Ads campaigns with any sales expectations; because she was testing, her goal was simply to learn what worked on the platform and use those learnings to inform future campaigns. But, she says, “I was surprised how well it did, so I kept doing it.”
Ariele’s first foray into BookBub Ads was an attempt to drive sales on a $2.99 book; however, she found it challenging to assess whether the clicks on her ad were converting to sales. “So,” she says, “I shifted my focus.”
Ariele tried advertising her free first-in-series book instead. To get as many eyes as possible on that free book, she began to run BookBub Ads using cost per thousand impressions (CPM) bids, which can be effective for delivering a high volume of impressions. In her early days of experimenting with this approach, she tested targeting a single retailer per campaign so that she could assess the performance of each retailer individually.
Ariele quickly discovered that she could drive consistent free downloads at a much lower cost if she removed Amazon links and targeting from her campaigns. (Amazon is the most popular retailer to target on BookBub Ads, which means there’s generally far more competition to reach readers who buy from the Kindle store — targeting readers who purchase ebooks from other stores, who fewer advertisers are bidding for, often decreases the cost of impressions or clicks.)
As part of this testing, Ariele treated her direct store as any other retailer, learning which campaign set-ups were most effective at driving engagement on her site. She tested different ad images targeting audiences of readers who typically prefer to purchase ebooks from Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, or Google Play and assessed on a case-by-case basis how well each version of her campaign was performing, focusing on promoting the free download as her call-to-action.
To further refine her audience, Ariele tested out different comparable author targets, but she realized she could drive more engagement on her ads when targeting her own fans as well. This can be a powerful way to capitalize on your following and promotions on BookBub — anyone who follows your Author Profile, wishlists your books, or clicks on your Featured Deal or New Releases for Less promotion gets added to your targetable BookBub Ads audience.
My main BookBub Ads strategy that I’ve continued with is targeting my own name in the system. Because I’ve had a few deals, I have a decent sized audience on the platform… targeting myself reminds them that I exist, and simultaneously can make them aware of the fact that I have other books available that they don’t know about.
This way, Ariele notes, she doesn’t run her BookBub Ads in a vacuum; rather, she considers their role in the larger BookBub ecosystem. She allows the success of each promotion and increasing follower growth to build on each other so that her BookBub Ads have increased reach and those readers are more primed to engage with her books.
Landing on a strategy that drives consistent results
Ariele continues to test different author and retailer targeting combinations before landing on one that meets her engagement goals.
For click-through rates, I try to stay above 1% on free books, but I also look at how much money I’ve spent. So if the ad has only spent, say, $0.25 and has a 0.5% CTR, I don’t worry about it until the spend gets over $10.
At that point, she establishes the campaign with a continuous, low daily budget, and checks in periodically to make small adjustments as needed. The following campaign has been live since April of 2023, and in that time has driven hundreds of clicks to her Payhip store (in addition to several other non-Amazon retailers) for only $3 per day — requiring minimal intervention from Ariele to deliver a steady stream of readers landing on her personal store.
This ad is still running, and Ariele said “I went from basically 0 BookFunnel downloads to 15-50 per month across the various books I’m promoting” depending on the number of campaigns she’s running and the amount of time she’s investing in them each month.
The plan is to slowly increase the ads over time, but keep them at low costs so there’s a steady trickle of downloads. It’s a long-term strategy that’s easy and inexpensive to maintain, with the goal of getting sales over time, and not necessarily immediately.
Beyond the free downloads through her website, Ariele sees sell-through via other wide channels after a concentrated marketing push to her store. Some readers who don’t convert on the next book via Payhip do continue the series through another retailer, like Apple Books or Google Play. “One of the biggest challenges with offering free books is that they take a while to gain traction. Someone might download a free book and then read it three months later, then go buy the rest of the series,” she says. This means that when she’s assessing her campaigns, Ariele keeps in mind that she can’t always know how things are playing out on the readers’ end. She pays attention to clicks and impressions per retailer, but she’s more concerned with staying within her marketing budget, and measures her entire marketing spend across platforms against her total income to ensure that her overall strategy is driving a positive ROI.
Takeaways
Ariele plans to continue investing in ad campaigns that drive readers to her personal store over the coming year. She’ll expand on her current strategy by designing new ad creatives to test for other free series starters she has available in her store. She also plans to create new box sets, which she’ll promote via other BookBub tools, like Featured Deals, as part of her long-term strategy of cultivating her BookBub audience to make her ads more effective.
Paid ads are not for everyone. But if you think BookBub Ads are right for you, then remember that BookBub is a whole system, and it’s important to work on building it up as a whole… Try to build your follower account. Apply for Featured Deals. Optimize your profile. You don’t have to use every feature, but do your best with the whole system, in order to get the most bang for your buck.
For authors who are considering how to best integrate direct sales into their marketing strategies, Ariele’s advice is to think holistically about your business model. “My business strategy has three main components: distribution, marketing, and product development,” she says. “I might ask, ‘What distribution strategies can help enhance my marketing efforts? What products are best suited to what marketing tactic?’” She also encourages fellow authors to carefully monitor their marketing efforts and set limits: “One thing I learned early on is that it’s really easy to spend a lot really fast if you’re not paying attention. So experiment with smaller amounts of money.”
By integrating direct sales into her broader marketing strategy via paid ads, Ariele can attract readers to her store while still reaching those who prefer to buy from a traditional retailer. And she’s playing the long game: “I am not trying to make fast money, but trying to grow a solid base of fans who love my work for its unique qualities.”
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Click to tweet: Authors, have you tried using BookBub to boost direct sales? Ariele Sieling shared the strategy she uses to consistently drive free downloads, and her results are goals ✨ https://bit.ly/48aQtfL #bookmarketing
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