BookBub Featured Deal Case Studies & Testimonials

Are you considering running a BookBub Featured Deal? Deciding where to spend your book marketing budget is an important decision, and we want to arm you with all the information you need to run a successful price promotion. Publishers and authors have shared information both on our blog and their own websites with not only the results of their BookBub Featured Deals, but also the strategy behind their ebook price promotions.

Here’s what a few publisher partners had to say:

Kensington Publishing

We’ve recently had several titles across genres (Mysteries, Thrillers, Women’s Fiction) that have been discounted between $0.99 and $2.99 that have benefitted from discounting in concert with retailer promotion and BookBub — and ultimately hit major bestseller lists including the New York Times and USA Today lists. In some cases, they remained on the lists two or more weeks. [read more]

• Alexandra Nicolajsen, Associate Director of Social Media & Digital Sales at Kensington Publishing Corp.

Workman Publishing Company

We align our ongoing ebook price promotion programs with our BookBub listings, and where possible we try to time these listings with big media hits or retailer promotion. One of our more successful recent BookBub promotions, for example, was for Is This Tomorrow by Caroline Leavitt (a fiction title from Workman’s Algonquin division). We timed the BookBub listing with a major daily deal with online retailers, and with Algonquin’s own social media and blog support — the results of which catapulted the title onto the New York Times bestseller list for the first time. [read more]

• Thea James, Director of Digital Strategy and Operations, Workman Publishing Company

Lukeman Literary Management

The most recent BookBub promotion we ran was Death by Deceit by Jaden Skye, which is book #5 in a very successful mystery/romantic suspense series. We set the price to free (down from $5.99) and the results were excellent, as they always are with BookBub, with tens of thousands of free downloads. We often find that after a promotion, readers will discover other titles in the series, too, and that sales will not only spike, but also linger at a higher level for some time — and that was the case here, too. In my view, BookBub is the single most effective tool an author/agent/publisher can use for ebook promotion. [read more]

• Noah Lukeman, Literary Agent, Lukeman Literary Management

Here’s what a few author partners had to say:

How I Sold 130x More Books with a BookBub & Countdown Promo

I only sold 26 copies of my standalone thriller Submerged across Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk during the first 27 days of October 2014. After running a combination BookBub and Kindle Countdown Deal promotion, I sold 3,421 copies. That’s a whopping 130x increase. [read more]

• Cheryl Kaye Tardif, Thriller Author

How a Self-Published Fantasy Series Author Sold 15K Books

Along with regular new releases, price promotions on BookBub are the most effective marketing tool I have. That was true in the early days and it’s still true now. In December last year, BookBub featured my fantasy novel Moth — the first in The Moth Saga — discounted from $2.99 to $0.99. The book sold over 3,000 copies following the promo, cresting at a sales rank of #62 on Amazon. Last month, BookBub featured my Dragon War omnibus discounted from $6.99 to $2.99; it went on to sell over 1,500 copies. [read more]

• Daniel Arenson, Fantasy Author

Why Indie Authors Should Adopt New Marketing Trends Early

I ordered a BookBub ad… (and) decided to lower the price on the second and third books in my series for a $0.99 sale at the same time as I advertised the first (those books are usually $4.95). I made sure to mention this in the product description for book one, figuring that people who downloaded the first and bought the next two would be more likely to check out the novels sooner than those who simply downloaded the first. Sales were good for the whole series for the rest of the month, and I sold a lot of copies of books two and three when they were sale-priced. [read more]

• Lindsay Buroker, Fantasy Author

Why a Regular Release Schedule is So Important in Self-Publishing

My last BookBub feature was in October for Come a Little Bit Closer, which is the seventh book in my Sullivan series. Because all of my Sullivan books can be read as stand-alone novels, I find that featuring any of them will have great results. Usually my BookBub promotional prices are only for 24 hours, but with this one I chose to make the book $0.99 for one week to see how that would go by comparison. It went well, but since I saw the biggest downloads in the first couple of days, for my next promotion I will run the sale for three days instead of seven. [read more]

• Bella Andre, Romance Author

BookBub ads: One author shares her experience

Over the next few days (after my BookBub promotion), people downloaded about 20,000 copies of Chez Stinky. That month, I had a total of 36,000 downloads just on Amazon. Books that had sold absolutely nothing on other channels like Barnes and Noble started selling. Literally overnight, my books went from invisible to visible. Sales of the rest of the books in the series skyrocketed. The ad paid for itself within hours of the email going out. I got a large number of subscribers to my new releases email list, fan emails, and a lot of new reviews. [read more]

• Susan Daffron, Women’s Fiction Author (via BuildBookBuzz)

BookBub: Does It Work?

First of all, by investing in BookBub, my book was seen and downloaded by over 59,000 readers in two days…. I’m still tracking actual sales that come from what BookBub itself calls “The Halo Effect,” meaning sold books after the free period. As of the writing of this interview, I’ve made back the money I invested ($280.00 for BookBub and $25.00 for KB&T) 24 hours after the free period ended, and am hoping to see a little profit as time goes on. [read more]

• Aaron Paul Lazar, Mystery Author (in an interview with Dora Machado)

My First BookBub Promo – The Results

The five-day free giveaway netted Mark of the Loon 43,373 downloads (and) over 600 sales of all books in the series December 20 – January 4. Mark of the Loon made it to #4 in Amazon’s Top 100 Free list, and stayed high on the list for five days. [read more]

• Molly Greene, Women’s Fiction and Mystery Author

Do BookBub Ads Work to Find New Readers?

Within hours I made all my money back on the ad. By the next morning Playing for Keeps was sitting at the overall bestseller list at the #12 spot at the B&N Nook Store and #26 at Amazon’s Kindle Store. I made the Amazon Movers and Shakers List and my author rank sailed to #25. Snoopy dance!!!! [read more]

• Liz Matis, Romance Author (in an interview with The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing)

How to Sell a Ton of Books with BookBub: A Tale of Two Authors

I grossed $1,245.69, and, after payment of my BookBub fee, I profited $745.70 on day one. Saving Grace peaked at #34 on Kindle and my author rank went up to #127. Even more surprising? Saving Grace peaked at #7 overall on Nook! … Takeaway: I made nearly four times as much money in my week post-BookBub promo as in the week prior. That’s pretty telling. [read more]

• Pamela Fagan Hutchins, Mystery Author

Book Marketing Using Paid Promotion: Targeted Email Lists

In terms of ranking and visibility, (my BookBub promotion) was definitely great for moving Pentecost back up the charts. I made my money back, which was great, but the spike in the data was more important in the longer term. [read more]

• Joanna Penn, Thriller Author

Attaining Success as an Indie Author with BookBub

Is (BookBub) worth it? Absolutely. In the six days of my promotion, regardless of the fact that my e-book was priced at .99 instead of $4.99, I earned more net income than I had in the first six months of publication. Now for the bonus. One of the fun things about a BookBub promotion is watching your sales rank on Amazon climb higher and higher. On the day of the promotion, Thieving Forest climbed to an overall sales rank of #9 in the Kindle store…. Not only that, the sales rank and the e-book sales stayed high for a full month beyond the promotion. [read more]

• Martha Conway, Historical Fiction Author

Marketing Your Self-Published Book: Amazon KDP Select and BookBub Advertising

The BookBub advertising clearly more than paid for itself, to the tune of over 300% ROI in the marketing costs. The reviews gained and extended reach through the listing have pushed the book to 78 reviews (most are four stars!) as of today. [read more]

• Nick Thacker, Action/Adventure Author

Results from BookBub Free Promo

The total number downloaded for free was over 23,300. Yes, I was a happy bunny. And yes, Saving Saffron Sweeting achieved a pleasingly high position in the free Kindle charts… What was interesting to me was that sales of my second novel picked up even while Saving Saffron Sweeting was free, suggesting that either some people read it very quickly and moved on immediately to purchase another (bless them!), or that somehow the second book got a boost in visibility too. [read more]

• Pauline Wiles, Chick Lit Author

Does Paying for a Book Promotion Pay Off?

With the philosophy “If you can’t go big, go home,” I chose BookBub — the gorilla of ebook marketing in terms of reach, cost, and results — to promote my novel in September. Electing for as clean a test as possible, I didn’t do any promotion other than that. Not even social media… First-day sales covered the promotion cost by 2.5x. [read more]

• Carol Bodensteiner, Women’s Fiction Author

I Used BookBub to Promote My Novel, and So Should You

How could spending so much money without any guaranteed results be justified? And just for one day of promotion? I thought it was too much risk. I was wrong. So very, very wrong. In the end, my promotion on BookBub was the single most effective advertising I have ever done for my book in nearly four years. [read more]

• Jason Kristopher, Horror Author

The Amazing Fun of a BookBub Promo and Being on the Same Page as Harry Potter

By the time school was over at 3:15 my ad with BookBub was profitable… #970,000 was where Kevin and the Three-Headed Alien started on Friday, October 3. It reached #575 sometime that night. 575. Wow. But even more enjoyable was seeing it hit #20 on the overall children’s list when I got out of the movies. There on my phone it was on the same page as Harry Potter and Wonder. [read more]

• Martin Tiller, Children’s Book Author

BookBub Gets a Five-Star Recommendation

My BookBub promotion ends tonight after a very successful six-day run during which I offered The Leaving of Things at $0.99. A combination of their dedicated mailing list and million-plus subscriber base translated into bigger sales than I ever imagined I could get with a single promotion. [read more]

• Jay Antani, Historical Fiction Author

BookBub: The Hottest Tool in Book Promotion for Indie Authors

Allison Jewell used BookBub to gain traction of approximately 31,000 downloads. Allison admitted that BookBub did its job well to boost her giveaways compared to her usual methods, using her own social media channels for book promotion… Rise and Shine is currently ranked as #1,601 in Kindle overall chart whereas her first book — Shine On — reached #4 in the Kindle Free store following the BookBub ad. [read more]

• Panich Choonhanirunrit, BB Ebooks