At BookBub, we hear a wide array of questions from authors on everything from the Featured Deals selection process to claiming a BookBub Author Profile. But there are certain questions that come up again and again, so we thought it would be handy to compile the answers to the most commonly asked questions we receive in one place.
1. How can I increase my chances of being selected for a Featured Deal?
Before a book goes through our editorial review process, it must first meet our minimum requirements. Those can be found here.
After ensuring a submission meets our minimum requirements, you can increase a book’s chances of selection through a few different avenues:
- Reviews, Accolades, and Descriptions: One of the best ways to make a submission more competitive is to garner reader and critical reviews. Remember to mention any accolades, such as bestseller status or a blurb from a bestselling author in your genre. Our editorial team also considers the product descriptions on retailers during the selection process, so it’s worth optimizing these before submitting.
- Cover Design: Ensure that the cover of your book or box set is professionally designed and appeals to readers in its genre.
- Date, Region, and Retailer Flexibility: Since we have a limited number of spots in the daily email, the more flexible you are with the date of your promotion, the more likely it is that we can find a feature date that works. Our editors also prefer books that are available in many regions and on multiple retailers. We want to be sure that our deals reach as many BookBub subscribers as possible, and if a book is not available for subscribers in a particular region or on a certain retailer, those subscribers will miss out that day.
For more tips, check out this post on optimizing your submission.
2. Can you give me more feedback on why my book wasn’t selected for a Featured Deal?
We’d love to give more concrete reasons for why your book wasn’t selected — whether it’s review count, product description, the way similar books have been performing, cover design or something else — but, unfortunately, the feedback would be misleading because so much of our selection process is dependent on current trends, the other books being submitted, and other timing factors.
When reviewing submissions, our editors consider the current trends in each category. These trends depend on what our readers have been responding to in the past few weeks AND what other books are submitted at any given time. This is why we encourage authors to continue submitting their books. We can’t predict how our readers’ tastes will evolve over time, and the other books being submitted alongside yours will be different every time. So if we told you today that your book didn’t have enough reviews, there’s no guarantee that it will be selected if you got 20 more reviews OR that the same number of reviews wouldn’t be more competitive in a few months.
When in doubt, it’s always a good idea to browse through the books featured on BookBub.com to see which kinds of books are getting selected in your category — be sure to check out the cover designs, the number of reviews, the plotlines and subgenres, etc.
You can learn more about the editorial team’s selection process here.
3. When should I submit my book for a Featured Deal?
We suggest submitting to us about 30 days before your ideal promotion date. We can only schedule Featured Deals up to 30 days in advance, and you will hear back from us about a book’s submission within seven days. Once a book is selected, it will usually be offered a feature date between one and five weeks from the day it was submitted.
Submitting a deal too early is a common mistake partners make. You can indicate any preferred date range on the submission form, but if it falls later than five weeks after the submission date, we likely won’t be able to accommodate it.
On the other hand, we also see partners submit their books too late. The upcoming two weeks of Featured Deals are usually fully booked, so to increase the odds that we have availability during your requested date range, it’s best to submit as early within the 30-day scheduling window as you can!
4. Is there a fee to run a Featured Deal?
If a book is selected for a Featured Deal, we charge a flat fee based on the deal price, the category of the book, and the regions included in the feature. We take royalty rates, average sales, and average downloads into account when calculating fees for each category to ensure that most partners are well-positioned to see a positive ROI. You can see Featured Deal pricing here.
5. How do I discount my book on retailers?
The process for discounting your book depends on whether you are running a free or paid promotion.
- Read about how to discount your book to free here.
- Read about how to lower the price of your book to any other price here.
- Read about how to avoid the most common pitfalls of international discounting here.
6. How do I claim my Author Profile?
You can claim your Author Profile by clicking Claim Now on the homepage of your Partner Dashboard. If you have multiple pen names you will need to create a separate partner account for each one in order to claim them.
Only authors themselves can claim Author Profiles. If you are a publisher, encourage your authors to claim their profiles at partners.bookbub.com. If you are an author but you’re not seeing an invitation to claim your profile, change your role to “Author” in your account settings.
7. How can I market my new release on BookBub?
Although we rarely feature new releases in our daily deals email, there are other ways partners can promote new releases through BookBub. These tactics include:
- Promoting a backlist book with a Featured Deal. Consider submitting a backlist book to build up an audience for a new release. 89% of BookBub partners who used a price promotion to market a new release sold more of their new book after the price promotion of an older book. Be sure to include a link to your new book in the back matter of the discounted title. Learn more about this strategy here.
- Sending a New Release Alert. To send a dedicated New Release Alert to your followers on BookBub, simply add the new release to the “My Books” page of your Partner Dashboard on, before, or up to seven days after its release date. Our team will confirm that the new book meets our timing and page length guidelines for a New Release Alert, and we’ll send you a confirmation email once we’ve scheduled the alert. Best of all, New Release Alerts are free!
- Running a BookBub Ads Campaign. Run a BookBub Ads campaign promoting the new release to relevant readers. See how one author successfully promoted a new release with BookBub Ads here.
8. Why isn’t my book eligible for a New Release Alert?
There are several reasons a book or box set might not be eligible for a New Release Alert. The most common are:
- The page count isn’t updated on retailers. If our team doesn’t see a page count, or can only find a placeholder page count, they won’t be able to schedule your alert. If this is the case, contact us as soon as the actual page count is available for us to verify!
- The paperback edition was released more than 30 days before the ebook edition.
- The content isn’t new. If a book or box set includes any previously published material, it won’t qualify for an alert. This includes re-released or expanded editions.
You can review all eligibility requirements for New Release Alerts here.
9. My book has a new cover design! How do I update my book information on BookBub.com?
Partners can update their book data on our site through the “My Books” page. You can find a step-by-step guide to this process here.
10. What is the difference between Featured Deals and BookBub Ads?
BookBub Ads and Featured Deals both appear in our daily email, but there are a number of important distinctions between the two. Most notably, you can run BookBub Ads for any book at any time — full-priced books, new releases, novellas, etc. — without needing to go through any editorial review process. Alternatively, Featured Deals are only for discounted full-length books that have been selected by our editorial team. Other differences include:
- Placement. Ads are placed at the bottom of the daily email below Featured Deals.
- Fees. In contrast to the flat fee associated with a Featured Deal, Ads are priced through a real-time CPM auction system. This means that pricing is more flexible — advertisers bid the CPM they’re willing to pay and set the budget they’re willing to spend
- Targeting. BookBub’s editorial team determines a Featured Deal’s final category selection, whereas for BookBub Ads, advertisers can target by any combination of categories, regions, retailer preferences, and author interests.
You can read more about the differences between Featured Deals and BookBub Ads here.
11. How do I get access to BookBub Ads?
All BookBub partners now have access to BookBub Ads, so you can create an ad campaign any time! To get started, click here and log into your Partner Dashboard account (or sign up for a new one).
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