When you’re putting together a new book marketing plan, you may be interested in trying new promotional tools to accomplish your goals. BookBub offers several book marketing tools for our partners to promote their books, and each option has its own benefits. Whether you’re looking to increase a book’s revenue, reach hundreds of new readers, or just start building your following on BookBub, this guide can help you determine which option might be your best bet!
Featured Deals
If you already have a published full-length book with an established platform, a Featured Deal can help you reach millions of power readers.
What they are: Featured Deals let you promote deeply discounted ebooks to our highly engaged audience. During a Featured Deal, we promote a book in the daily email we send to our millions of members, and we also feature it on BookBub.com. Our curated deals are hand-selected by our team of editorial experts and targeted by category to ensure the highest engagement from our audience. Partners often use Featured Deals to drive revenue for backlist books, boost a book up a bestseller list, or get readers hooked on the first book in a series.
Price: We charge a flat fee based on category, regions, and expected ROI. While we can’t guarantee feature results, our goal is to maintain pricing that, on average, leads to a positive return on investment for most of our partners! See Featured Deal pricing information here.
Next Step: Submit a Featured Deal.
Learn more:
- How BookBub’s Featured Deal Selection Process Works
- Tips on optimizing your Featured Deal submission
Case studies:
- How a BookBub Featured Deal Revived My Writing Career
- How I Maximized My First BookBub Featured Deal
Free Reads
Free Reads is for running a free price promotion: an especially effective strategy for growing your audience and generating revenue, with free deals often driving 10x the downloads of a $0.99 promotion.
What they are: Free Reads is a dedicated email targeting a highly engaged subset of BookBub power readers who want even more free books in their favorite genres. The titles are hand-selected by our expert editorial team and featured in the newsletter with links to purchase at readers’ retailers of choice. Eligible readers will receive this email a few times per week in addition to their regular Featured Deals promotions. Free Reads promotions drive thousands of clicks and downloads per book, helping authors expand their audiences, rise in retailer rankings, and increase sales of related books!
Price: Free Reads promotions are charged a flat rate based on the book’s category. Thanks to focused targeting on avid readers, these promotions are offered at a lower price tier than Featured Deals — making them an exciting and accessible option for more authors than ever.
Next step: Submit a free deal through the normal Featured Deals submission flow. All submissions for free BookBub Featured Deals will now automatically be considered for both Featured Deals and Free Reads promotions.
Learn more:
Author Profiles
Whether you’ve already written 20 books or you’ve just published your first, or if you’re self- or traditionally published, you should claim your Author Profile on BookBub. Claiming your profile and updating your information is a great way to get discovered by new readers on BookBub and ensure you can take advantage of New Release Alerts and other tools we’re planning to build in the future.
What they are: Author Profiles let authors list their complete collection of published ebooks on BookBub.com. Using the “Author Profile” and “My Books” links in your Partner Dashboard, you can update your author photo and biography and keep all of your book data current. Readers can view your profile on our website and “follow” you if they’re interested.
The more BookBub followers you have, the more readers your discounts and new releases will reach. That’s because BookBub sends dedicated New Release Alert and Deal Alert emails to all of your BookBub followers. If you haven’t already, you can claim your profile here.
Price: Author Profiles are free to claim and manage.
Next step: Claim your Author Profile.
Learn more:
Recommendations
Once you’ve claimed your Author Profile and started growing your following on BookBub, you can recommend books to the readers who follow you.
What they are: Recommendations provide all authors a way to connect with their fans on our platform by sharing books they enjoy. BookBub readers love hearing what their favorite authors are reading, and they trust book recommendations from authors as much as from friends and family!
You can use recommendations to engage with your followers and stay top-of-mind by sharing new releases or preorders you’re excited about, books you think your fans might enjoy, or old favorites. It’s also an excellent way to increase your visibility on BookBub’s platform—your recommendations might be featured in blog posts or on our website, and we’re more likely to suggest that BookBub members follow you if you’re active on our platform.
When you recommend a book on BookBub.com, it will appear in your followers’ Recommendations feeds. We also send an email roundup to our readers each week with recommendations they might have missed.
Price: It’s free for every author to recommend books to their followers!
Next step: Search for any book on BookBub.com, then click “Review” on the book page to write your recommendation. Make sure to check the “I recommend this book” box to share your review with your followers.
Learn more:
- 7 Surprising Perks of Recommending Books on BookBub
- 21 Ways Authors Recommend Books to Their Readers
Preorder Alerts
If you have a book that’s currently available for preorder and are looking to drive sales before the book is officially released, Preorder Alerts might be a great fit!
What they are: A Preorder Alert is a dedicated email to an author’s followers on BookBub letting them know that one of the author’s books is available for preorder. Authors with over 1,000 followers on BookBub can send an announcement to readers in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, and schedule two alerts up to one year in advance!
If you haven’t quite hit 1,000 followers yet on BookBub, and are interested in growing your following, we have a handy blog post with ideas for boosting your count here.
Price: For these alerts, we charge $0.02 per eligible follower on BookBub.
Next step: Schedule a Preorder Alert.
Case studies:
- How an Author Doubled Exposure for a New Release
- How I Promoted a Preorder to Launch a Bestselling Book
New Release Alerts
If you have an upcoming new release, New Release Alerts could be a great promotional option for you to drive some additional sales at launch and make sure your fans know about this next book.
What they are: A New Release Alert is a dedicated email we send to all of your US BookBub followers letting them know you’ve published a new book, which includes links to retailer sites for the reader to purchase. To take advantage of this tool, all you need to do is add your book (as long as it’s on preorder or recently released) to your Author Profile. Our team will ensure the book meets our basic requirements, and if it does, we’ll send a New Release Alert for you within the first two weeks your book is on sale.
Price: New Release Alerts are free!
Next step: Add your upcoming or new release to your Author Profile.
New Releases for Less
New Releases for Less can expand the reach of your new release to millions of BookBub subscribers. This tool is a fantastic way to drive full-price sales and increase exposure of a new book.
What they are: New Releases for Less emails are curated lists of new releases hand-selected by our editorial team and targeted by category. Each featured book will reach US and international members subscribed to a single BookBub category. These emails are sent on a weekly basis and include links to purchase the new releases at readers’ retailers of choice.
You can submit a book to our editorial team for consideration for a New Releases for Less promotion on or up to six months before its release date, and selected books will be scheduled for features within the two weeks following their release dates. New Releases for Less have no pricing requirements, so you can submit discounted or full-priced books. You can read more about which books are eligible here.
Price: We charge a flat fee based on category. You can find our current prices here.
Next step: Submit an upcoming release for a New Releases for Less promotion.
Learn more:
Case studies:
- “My Best Launch Ever”: How an Author Broke Into a New Genre
- 5 Strategies I Use to Launch New Books in Kindle Unlimited
BookBub Ads
If you’d like to promote a new release, full-priced book, novella, multi-author box set, or a title that hasn’t been selected for a Featured Deal, BookBub Ads are a great, flexible option.
What they are: BookBub Ads appear in dedicated display ad spaces located at the bottom of our emails and on our website. This auction-based advertising platform allows partners to market any book at any time to our readers, without being subject to an editorial review process or any requirements. The platform is totally self-serve and allows you to target readers by author interest, region, retailer preference, and genre interest.
Price: Advertisers set their own budget and bid for each BookBub Ads campaign. The budget determines how much they want to spend overall on the campaign and the bid sets the maximum rate they are willing to pay to reach readers in their target audience. Because BookBub Ads are served through an auction, the actual cost of running ads depends on the details of each particular campaign and the other advertisers competing in the auction at any given time. Learn more about the cost of BookBub Ads here.
Next step: Create a BookBub Ads campaign.
Learn more:
Case studies:
- How One Author Grew Annual Revenue by 27x
- How an Author Perfected the Art of Advertising Free Discounts
We hope this guide has been helpful, and that we have a promotional tool or two that can help you achieve your marketing goals this year! And of course, keep an eye out for more options in the future — we’re always looking for new, effective ways to help authors promote their books.
You can find any news about new tools we’ve launched here on the Partners Blog, and we’d recommend signing up for updates to ensure you stay in the loop!
