I discovered alfageek’s blog fairly recently, but I’m sure glad I did. Joshua, aka alfageek, generously shares his book marketing experience with his blog’s readers. His main marketing venue is Twitter Ads (more on that in a future post), but he jumped at the chance when Bookbub offered him a chance to advertise with them.
Sadly, the experience failed to pay off. As many of you have asked me if I knew anyone who had tried it, here is a great chance to see what didn’t work for him.
The Drawbacks of CPM
From the beginning, Joshua was skeptical. He felt that CPM advertising (paying for impressions, rather than clicks) didn’t make sense since they count opening the email as an impression. Yet you have to scroll down to see the ad. That means that a lot of those “impressions” aren’t really impressions at all, so one would expect the CTR (click-through rate) to be low. In other words, not everyone would see the ad, therefore fewer people would click on it.
After running a lot of tests, it turns out his skepticism was justified. The CTR on BookBub ads is pretty consistently about 0.4%. To give you a measure of this, I have been running a series of Facebook ads for the Pearseus bundle (more on that in a future post), which consistently have a CTR around 1.5% – over 3 times that of Joshua’s.
Joshua tested this by running a Twitter ad campaign using pretty much the same creative as his Bookbub ad.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ “I've probably read over a thousand romances in my lifetime, and this is unlike anything I've ever read.” https://t.co/AL0T73D5lc
— Sir (@entropy_sir) December 9, 2016
The Results
After spending $70 on BookBub, he had 128 clicks that converted to 5 sales; a CPC of $0.55. That’s 4%, which is fairly decent. Let’s put these numbers in context by comparing them to his Twitter campaign:
| BookBub | ||
| CPM | $2.30 | $1.29 |
| CPC | $0.55 | $0.12 |
| CTR | 0.40% | 1.05% |
| Conversion | 4% | 3% |
| CPS | $12.00 | $4.04 |
(CPM: Cost for 1000 impressions; CPC: Cost per click; CTR: Click-thru-rate; Conversion: % of clickers who buy; CPS: Cost per sale.)
Even though the conversion was actually lower for Twitter, the end cost was also lower, so Twitter turned out to be 3 times cheaper. This is borne by the bottom line, which is, well, the bottom line: What each of these sales costs him. If BookBub had a killer conversion rate, it could make up for the high CPM or the low CTR. But it doesn’t.
So here is what we can conclude: Right now, BookBub ads are a poor way to sell books. I think other advertisers have figured this out because the ads I’m seeing in my BookBub emails are all for stuff other than books. And that may be the reason the book ads don’t work. The CPM for BookBub book ads should be about $0.50. But the CPM for ads in general is almost five times that high. And since BookBub is mixing book ads from their publishing partners with general ads from anybody, those general ads drive up the book ad CPMs to make them unjustifiably pricey.
In Conclusion
If anyone from BookBub happens to read this post, here’s Joshua’s advice if you want to make BookBub ads work for authors and publishers of books – advice I agree with:
- CPC bidding, not CPM, since impressions aren’t impressions
- Better demographic data, so we can tell who is clicking the ads
- Throw out the random advertisers and have a pure book market
You can read the post in its entirety on alfageek or check out some beta testing tools here.
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still confused by bookbub–I have one ad that is doing extremely well–all the others are extremely low–now I’m attempting the CPM but not sure what percentage is good and what is bad! I’ve never tried twitter ads–perhaps I should?
The case of over/underperforming Ads is pretty widespread, regardless of the advertising medium (the same is true of Amazon ads, for example). That’s why we keep doing A/B tests (create 2 similar Ads and keep the overperforming one, then keep creating new sets in order to constantly improve our results). As for Twitter Ads, these haven’t worked for me but every case is different. It’s all a game of trial and error!
Great Post, I know feel somewhat educated about Bookbub. I look forward to more posts! Thank you! Karen
Thanks and welcome, Karen 🙂
I have to admit that the thought of doing this takes all the joy out of writing for me. I know we don’t have a choice, but still, ugh. Much respect to you and Joshua not only for your expertise, but also for sharing it.
It can be a bit of a chore. But then you see the sales climb, and it’s all worth it 🙂
Hi Nick I am a new author working on building up a brand name. I have had over twenty thousand people visit my website, Ebay and Bonanze pages using Twitter posts that I post to my followers. If I had to pay for clicks, I would have to take out a mortgage to pay for them. As for sales, I can count those on one hand. I think folks ought to demand for “Pay per Sale” and not clicks or impressions. I get anywhere from 100 to 200 K impressions on Twitter every 28 days, and have just under 10K followers. @firstbluelucy .
Many thanks for sharing that, Tiffee, and welcome! If you want to expand, I’d love a guest post on your experience building up your platform.
Great info. Thank you.
A pleasure! I hope you find it useful 🙂
Thanks Nicholas and Joshua for sharing your candid views on Bookbub strategies. I’ll stick to my own lower cost methods, lol. 🙂
Same here, at least until things settle down a bit 🙂
🙂
I don’t think it will be worth it.
I’m afraid I agree with you 🙂
Nicholas! Thanks for this recap. Bookbub is a business and has found a way to serve multi markets with those new ads. I’m not doing it. If I can snag a regular Bookbub promo slot now and again, happy dance. Meanwhile, I’m sticking to basics…and I’m beta-testing small promotions designed to reach downloads of 15K on a free unit with a mini Bookbub tail of sales/borrows and crossover sales for up to 25-30 days. I plot for a return on investment. I also keep several Amazon sponsored ads running open-ended…They cost pennies a day and the exposure is excellent. Those ads pop up on Kindles and often in the stream below also bought. My goal with my small bookshelf since the beginning of 2014 was to earn $500 a month even when not in promotion. So far, I’ve met that goal.
Wishing you and yours a wonderful 2017.
Jackie
Thanks for sharing, Jackie. I will also urge readers to visit your post on https://enovelauthorsatwork.com/plotting-your-books-life-in-2017/ for some great ideas on promotion for 2017. May it bring us nothing but success 🙂
At work, I sit opposite someone who receives BookBub emails and says she’ll never buy another book with so many coming to her for free. I wish I’d thought of the BookBub business model. Wouldn’t be trying to make a living writing!
Lol – I hear you 😀
Thanks for this. I’ve wondered how successful – or not – BookBub ads were. I’ve never really understood the concept. Look forward to learnign about Amazon and/or Twitter ads.
So glad you found it useful 🙂
Is this the same Bookbub that has pretty stringent requirements re number of 5-star reviews? I thought they charge a lot more than $70, moreover. Maybe this is a different service? In any case, it doesn’t sound worthwhile, based on this data. Thanks for posting, Nicholas!
It’s the same Bookbub. They recently started offering sponsored ads in addition to the traditional slots. The ads have different requirements and are priced differently. You can find out more on https://wp.me/p6TDSX-1Xi
Thanks, Nicholas!
Interesting info. I haven’t tried these types of ads yet. I’m skeptical and these type of reports aren’t terribly encouraging. Thanks for sharing Joshua’s results.
A pleasure. I love how he posts his failures as well as successes, as we often learn more from the former 🙂
It it costs $4.04 per book sold, then what was the retail cost of each book, I wonder? If not much more than that, then it hardly seems worth it.
(Sorry to mess up your blog with my supposedly ‘helpful’ replies! Feel free to delete them.)
Best wishes, Pete.
It’s not. In his original post, Joshua explains that he’s still, in effect, paying people to read his book. And don’t worry about the replies, they’re much appreciated 🙂
Are we discussing e-book sales or paperbacks, or both?
Not sure I can afford to pay people to read my books – but then again, can I afford not to?
E-books. And no, you shouldn’t have to pay people to read your books. I’ve managed to make a small profit in the last 3 months using Facebook ads. I will explain my process in a step-by-step tutorial in the near future (I just wanted to be sure it works before sharing).
If I understand the above graph, Joshua paid $4.04 for each book sold through the Twitter Ad, and $12.00 for each book sold through the BookBud Ad? Gee, I’m money in pocket by not using any ads! I hope I misunderstood.
This is in the above text Charles, and might help. It seems that CPM might be better described as CPI?
CPM: Cost for 1000 impressions; CPC: Cost per click; CTR: Click-thru-rate; Conversion: % of clickers who buy; CPS: Cost per sale.)
Regards, Pete.
Thank you, Pete 🙂
Yep, that pretty much sums it up! 🙂
Thanks for this! I’ve been considering Twitter ads, but didn’t know how well they worked. Apparently, they work great. Looking forward to more on Twitter ads.
Be sure to check out Alfageek’s blogs for more on Twitter ads, as he’s shared his strategy there. Also, on his post, he explains that Twitter ads don’t make him a profit, as they’re still too high-priced (after the US elections skewed prices for everyone).
Quick question. What does CPM and CPC stand for? I get the ‘Clicks Per’ part, but not the M or C.
Sorry, that went in the wrong box! That’s what I get for trying to be helpful! See above, Charles.
Thanks. I was reading this on my phone and that part was incredibly small. I can see it now that I’m on my computer. Thanks for the clarification.
Lol – thank you, Pete 🙂
So, another one bites the dust. 🙂
I guess so. Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) was the same at first; too high-priced for us. Then, it came down to more reasonable rates. I hope the same will be true of Bookbub ads.
Fingers crossed, then.