As many of our partners know, the submission process for BookBub Featured Deals is a competitive one, and we know it can be frustrating to apply and not be selected. If you’ve been applying for a Featured Deal for one (or more) of your books and have yet to have your book chosen, you might be wondering what else you can try.
There are many ways to help increase your chances, and as a BookBub editor, I’ve written about some of them before. But here, I want to encourage you to think about submitting for Featured Deals as a strategic process. To that end, I’ve rounded up the best tips and tricks I have to help you hone your submission strategy and — hopefully — land a coveted Featured Deal.
Your Timing
Did you know you’re allowed to submit your book for a Featured Deal once every 30 days? That’s right — you can resubmit a book as soon as 30 days after you hear back that it wasn’t accepted, so be sure to take advantage of this policy. Some of the authors who have been selected for Featured Deals get a place on our schedule not only because they write great books, but because they submit on a regular cadence, so editors are more likely to evaluate one of their books at a time when they have a spot open on the calendar.
If you’re submitting only when you happen to think of it, or on an irregular basis, and haven’t had your book selected, consider putting your submissions on a monthly schedule — and try submitting at different times of the month, too! Different categories have different rhythms when it comes to spots opening up, and if you’re submitting frequently, your chances of having a book in our queue at the right time increases significantly.
It’s important to remember, too, that just because your book hasn’t been selected yet doesn’t mean it’s not competitive or that an editor will never accept it for a Featured Deal. If you submit frequently, we’ll be comparing your book to books by different authors with different tropes and plotlines each time — and that means your book has a better chance of standing out against the competition depending on what else we’re seeing in our submission queues.
In addition, our readers’ preferences change often. There might be a span of a few months where cozy fantasy is a high priority for our Fantasy readers; this might slowly give way to a preference for epic fantasy books. Submitting consistently is the best way to ride the waves of readers’ changing tastes so that when we think our subscribers are ready for your book, we’ll have the option of selecting it.
A final note about timing: While we work hard to offer Featured Deals within our partners’ preferred date ranges, we do have limited space in our schedule of promotions. So if you’re able to be flexible with your promotion dates, we’re better able to find a spot for your book. If you’re able to keep yourself open to a broader date range — working around any retailer guidelines and other marketing priorities you need to consider — that’s another way to use timing to your advantage when you’re applying.
Your Price Point
We’ve certainly given this advice before, but one thing you can always be strategic about is your price point. This doesn’t just mean that if you always submit for a paid deal, you should switch to submitting for free — it could mean the opposite, too! Most categories have a mix of free and paid promotions each week, and depending on the quantity of submissions we’re receiving, it’s hard to predict whether there will be more competition for one or the other (and this varies greatly by category as well).
If you’re open to either a paid or a free Featured Deal, you’re welcome to submit for one or the other, and note in the comments section that you’re willing to discount to a different price. Editors love comments like this, because it means we have more chances to find a spot for a great book!
Your Regions
Many of our partners are primarily interested in Featured Deals that include the US. However, applying for US-only deals is not necessarily the best or only way to go about achieving this goal. Editors often look for books to send to the US plus all of our international regions; in this scenario your book will be more competitive if you’ve applied for a deal in all regions.
Sometimes the only spots we have available are for international regions, and while that might not be your ideal situation, it can really work to your advantage. I want to give you a little tip: If a book performs well in international regions, it may stand out even more to editors the next time it’s submitted. So, while an international deal may not be your end goal, it could be a meaningful step toward attaining a Featured Deal that includes the US. Editors are able to use data about a book’s performance internationally to inform decisions about future promotions, so accepting an offer to be featured in international regions can help you attain a US deal in the future!
We understand that this strategy may not be for everyone, but at a minimum, an international Featured Deal will give you a chance to increase your readership and find new folks who are interested in your books. In addition, our fees for international promotions do reflect the different audience sizes, so while you may be increasing your readership on a smaller scale, the price for that promotion is still a great deal!
Your Catalog
After you think about timing and price points, you can start to think about ways to leverage the rest of your catalog, especially if it’s on the larger side. If you have a significant number of books to your name, this is another place you can be strategic when you’re planning your Featured Deal submission. Think about which of your books you’re submitting, how many books you’re submitting at one time, and how to make those decisions wisely.
If you’re submitting the same book over and over again without getting selected, it might be time to try a different book altogether. I recommend looking over your backlist for books that are standalones, the first in a series, or a series-starting box set. These are proven to perform most strongly in a number of our categories, so if the single book you’ve been submitting is a later book in a series, you may want to try submitting your series starter — or if you’ve been submitting book one, consider submitting a box set of books 1-3 in the series.
If you have multiple series, it might be time to think about submitting a different series! While a particular series or book might be your priority, a different type of content might be a better fit for our readers’ tastes at the moment. And if readers respond well to a book in one series, they’re more likely to check out your other books and even read through to another series of yours.
If you tend to submit a large chunk of your catalog each time you apply for a Featured Deal, and that hasn’t been working for you, consider prioritizing a smaller number of books when you submit. Editors carefully consider each book that comes in, but if you’re being strategic about which books you’re submitting, our attention will be focused right away on the books that matter most to you. If you don’t have a book selected from the first small batch you submit, you can always submit a few more books the following week, and this may be more effective than submitting a large batch of books all at once.
Think through which book you’d most like to promote with a Featured Deal, especially given the considerations above, and submit that one — and maybe one or two more. Submitting in smaller, rolling batches like this also gives you the benefit of keeping editors’ eyes on your work frequently, which increases your chances of having a book in the submission queue at the same time we have a spot open.
If you’re in doubt about any of these tactics, the best advice I can give is just to keep submitting. As I’ve said, our readers’ tastes are constantly changing, as are the types of submissions we receive, so you never know when the perfect time will come for us to promote your book with a Featured Deal. Make sure to review our Featured Deals requirements, take a tip or two from this article, and just submit! I can say with certainty that we editors can’t wait to take a look at your work.
