Bookbub recently announced it will start offering advertising spaces. Unlike the vigorous screening process that leaves more books out than it allows in its popular newsletter, these will be available to anyone who can afford them.
BookBub Ads will run in a dedicated space in BookBub’s daily emails. Advertisers — authors, publishers, agents, and other book marketing professionals — can use this space to promote full-priced books, discounted books, audiobooks, novellas, multi-author box sets, and much more.
Here’s an example of what a BookBub Ad will look like:
BookBub Ads have several key benefits for advertisers who want to promote their books. For example, advertisers can:
- Target by Author, Retailer, and More: BookBub allows advertisers to target readers by their author interests, their book category choices, their location, and their preferred retailers.
- Promote Any Book: BookBub Ads are not subject to BookBub’s editorial selection process. Advertisers can promote any book that complies with its policies, at any price point.
- Set a Personalized Budget and Schedule: Advertisers set their own budget and schedule for each ad, meaning they can run any size campaign any time they want.
- Manage Campaigns Online: Advertisers can update their ads and track live results from their Partner Dashboard.
Pricing for BookBub Ads is determined by a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) auction. When an advertiser creates an ad, they bid the CPM they’re willing to pay. When they win impressions, they pay the second-highest bid.
Although BookBub Ads appear in regular BookBub daily emails, they are completely separate from Featured Deals. Ads don’t need to feature a discounted book, and they don’t have any impact on any future editorial selection of Featured Deals.
Differences between Ads and Features
To help explain the differences between Ads and Featured Books, Bookbub has created the following infographic.
How can you get started with BookBub Ads? Just add your name to the waiting list. Bookbub plans to test BookBub Ads with a small number of independent authors, publishers, and other advertisers first, so it will gradually invite those on the waiting list to use the service in the months ahead.
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I just got my confirmation email that I was accepted to participate. They took a few days to get back to me and I was all excited until I read the comments. I am not sure if I should risk it. Funds are low as it is. They told me I could start with a $30 budget, but not sure how long that will run for, or how many books would be sold with that.
I suggest you take a look at https://alfageeek.wordpress.com/2016/12/18/bookbub-ads-im-calling-it-the-patient-is-dead/ first. It seems to be early days yet.
How long did you have to wait on the waiting list before you could use bookbub ads? Is it a matter of a month or several months?
I still have to be accepted into Bookbub ads. Friends of mine have, though, after a waiting period of a few months. So far, they say it hasn’t worked out they way they hoped: CPCs are too high to make any kind of profit.
Hi Nicholas, do you have an update on this? Without me ever asking, I was suddenly approved for the ads, but the bids per click are huge, $5-9, with a minimum of $1. My first book is free, so I was considering making it full price again and perhaps running a $0.99 promo to make at least some of the money back. Do you have any knowledge of a buy-through?
Hi Ana,
No, sadly I don’t. You’re the first author I’ve heard from who’s been accepted into the program, so thanks for sharing that!
Wow, so this is something special then? There are posts on kboards about it, but the posts are so long and windy, I lost interest in trying to decipher them. People did post numbers, so you may be interested. It looks like cost per click was in cents at first and then went up to $5-8 as authors piled in with their money. Minimum cost per click is $1, and I find it hard to believe it would be effective.
Indeed! Although AMS also started off being terribly expensive, but nowadays it’s pretty reasonable.
From a scan of KBoards posts, it’s quite clear that the ROI on the BB ads is nowhere near the ROI of the Featured Deal, but everyone jumped in because they believed it would be similar. I would expect the costs to go down once the bidding fever subsides.
I’ve been watching these ads on Bookbub. NannyLand by Hughes for $1.99 published by Pocket Star (only 16 reviews, released May 30) has been advertised this week. On Amazon the book sales rank was at 14,000 on Day one with category ranks 763, 1038, 1277 in Literature, Romance, Women’s fiction. Day Two, 5,470 with category ranks 315, 454, 545. Day three 5,094 with category ranks 233, 366, 436. I’m not sure how to interpret the sales rankings but best guess is that the book is selling 3 or 4 a day? I’ll keep watching to see how long that lasts. The ad is still running on BB.
Thank you so much for sharing that! I’m saving the data for future reference.
Update on NannyLand by Hughes, now back to original price at $5.99. As of June 14:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,607 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
Category Ranks:
#334 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Romance
#475 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Women’s Fiction > Romance
#559 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Women’s Fiction
Honestly, when looking at the category ranks (Literature/Women Contemporary) which I think tells the truest story, the lowest (highest selling rank) is 233. Hard to evaluate the sales but It didn’t reach the top 100 in any category.
Huh. That *us* interesting. Thank you so much for sharing! I’m saving this.
More interesting options. I can’t wait to see how it works. I’m figuring you are on the waiting list and will report in? 🙂
You know me so well 🙂
I’m on the waiting list too, Nicholas. But I’m so gun-shy until I find out how other books in my category and status do. Certain categories are more successful than others.
Very true. Short stories always seem to get the short end of the stick, too.
Thank you so much again for your generous investigative share. I will look forward to hearing some results from some who have used the ad program, most likely you, lol. ?
Lol – I hope so 😀
🙂
Thank you for this, Nicholas. I agree impressions can be a pretty hard think to quantify as to specific ads.
You can always check your sales for an uptick, of course, but it’s largely trial and error. Then again, isn’t everything in this game? 🙂
True.
Thanks for clarifying!
A pleasure. Now, all there’s left is for them to give us a price 🙂
I hate when anyone isn’t upfront with pricing. Another hurry up and wait hitch in the process. Interesting though.
My guess is that they’re waiting to see how many people sign up to the waiting list.
That’s a thought…
I’ve added my name to the waiting list but, like everyone else, I’ll be waiting to see what the cost is. Still, it’s very interesting…
Same here 🙂
I’m wondering about the cost. That’s a pretty big factor on how useful this is. I think a lot of indie authors are feeling a financial crunch in terms of promotions. So stuff like the big Amazon promotion stuff and possibly this could be more golden rings that are out of reach. Honestly, I never got into BookBub, so I don’t know how they operate. Just really curious to see how much it costs.
You and me both 🙂
We all know Bookbub ads for our featured books generates sales. A friend of mine was selected to do the new Bookbub ad, and he says it’s expensive, but well worth the money. He says he’ll be funneling his FB ad money into Bookbub. Just an FYI.
Thanks for sharing! I’ve applied a number of times, but have always been rejected. Probably because I’m on KDP Select, and Bookbub prefers books available through all bookstores.
Wow. That’s great. I’m working on getting enough reviews for my new release to run a feature ad, but it’s nice to know this is also an option.
It’s not yet available, but I see it happen real soon – in a month or so is my guess.
When I first saw this announced a week or so ago, I thought it was a great idea. Then I went looking for the cost. I didn’t find one. I thought maybe you would mention the cost, but you didn’t. Pay per impressions, paying the second highest bid doesn’t tell me anything. It might cost $100 or $1000. Is BookBub deliberately hiding the cost?
Personally, I hate hidden costs. And I won’t buy anything unless I know the full cost. If I’m in a store and there is no price, I walk by the item. If I really really want it, I will hunt down a salesperson to give me the price, but otherwise, that’s a loss sale because I don’t blindly buy anything.
So when I looked and couldn’t find the cost for BookBub ads, I pushed it aside. I’ll wait until I see real numbers to tell me exactly how much money I will potentially trade for this service.
The service is still unavailable. My guess is that Bookbub is waiting to see how many people will express interest before they finalize prices. Then, they will come up with a cost. That is bound to change after a month or two, when they will have some more data to work on.
To be honest, that’s not the part that worries me. The part I find worrying is that they’ll charge by impressions instead of clicks. That’s a poor metric, as clicks are invariably more efficient.
And obviously, the more demand and more people signing up for the waiting list, the higher the cost of impressions will be.
BookBub is not a small player in the book-promotion game, so this will probably be out of my reach for some time.
I was unaware this service was not yet available since the BookBub emails arriving in my inbox have ads at the bottom of them. But as you say, they are test-driving the idea.
It appears that the service is by invite only, and it’s been available since June or so. I just got the invite to participate, but their cost per click makes no sense to me atm.
I just heard from another author, whose experience was the same as yours.