How One Author Used BookBub To Increase Sales By 130x...In One Week

This comes from a review of  “How I Sold 130x More Books During a BookBub and Kindle Countdown Promo” is a case study by author Cheryl Kaye Tardif. 

Cheryl wanted to increase sales from her regular 26 sales per month (over years) to something, more. 

The main strategy was to use Amazon Coundown deals and also Bookbub Featured Deal which we will go into here. However it is nice to note that you can use Bookbub to promote Amazon.

Cheryl also realised that one off promotions are nice but not longstanding, so another goal was to stimulate more visibility, reviews, and better Amazon rankings that could fuel ongoing organic sales.

She applied for Murder/Mystery category and then the deal was on the third day of the Countdown window.

Quick idea of what Bookbub is about

Bookbub promotes discounted eBooks. It is very much like AppSumo where people have access to a "deal" over a short amount of time. However what is different is that your book discount is sent to an email list of eager people who signed up for this promotion. It is not free but it can work exceptionally well.

The breakdown:

1. You submit your book (usually discounted to $0.99 or free).
2. If accepted, BookBub emails your offer to millions of genre-specific readers.
3. Your book often sees a huge spike in downloads/sales on the day it runs.

You are sent to targeted lists split into categories

• Readers subscribe to genres like thrillers, romance, self-help, sci-fi, etc.
• Each list can have hundreds of thousands to millions of subscribers.

This means your ad is highly targeted to people likely to buy your book.

But you have to discount. The email lists are looking for deals, no deal = lack of sales.

Ebook sales timeline

Cheryl started with pre-promotion. This is something we have seen time and time again. It builds up people to the sale so they are not "cold called" with a sale.

• Prepared marketing assets: new graphics, metadata refresh, updated blurb.
• Gathered additional reader reviews and cleaned up formatting.
• Scheduled supporting promotions to align with the BookBub date (i.e., not just a one-shot campaign). This means that Cheryl also timed the Amazon Countdown at the same time. If you have an email list/ social followers you would notify them

This is usually done by figuring out when you are going to sell the ebook and then working backwards then working forwards. So you would start 1 month before the sale, 3 weeks before, 2, 1 then 3 days 2 days 1 day then the day itself.

Many authors have also continued the selling by contacting their followers/ email list half way through the launch day to say how the sale is going.

She also made sure that Amazon was optimised. Remember you are still trying to get people to buy- even though it is a 99c ebook. So her Amazon sales page was changed:

• Selected relevant but not overly competitive categories
• Updated her product description to include: Author praise quotes, reader testimonials, keywords like “gripping,” “psychological,” and “twist”

Day 1 & 2 of Countdown

• Price was dropped to $0.99, but no major visibility yet.
• The first 48 hours were treated as warm-up days—meant to trigger some sales and reviews ahead of the main BookBub push.

BookBub Featured Deal

• The BookBub email went live around 10 AM Eastern.
• Results? An explosive surge of sales—the book moved more units in one day than in the entire prior month

Additional positives?

Positive of this? The ebook wasn't ranked in Amazon charts, then after the promotion it was ranked #19 in the whole of the Kindle Store.

And people complaining about price? The 70% royalty was kept due to Amazon Countdown.

Because the surge in sales triggered Amazon's sales rank algorithm, Submerged gained placement in:

• Top 100 Kindle list
• Multiple category best-seller charts
• “Customers also bought” recommendations

These placements, in turn, drove more organic discovery for the book after the promo ended, leading to sustained residual sales. Cheryl had other books which also got a lift from the Submerged sales. This was one of the main goals that Cheryl was after.

But Bookbub isn't that super powerful is it?

Bookbub is actually quite powerful but it can not be used in entirety. You have to back it up with other strategies for this explosion of ebook sales to work. So what else did Cheryl do?

1. Email List, She contacted her email list just before the promo to warm up loyal readers.
2. Newsletter Promo Stack She layered additional paid promos with other sites (e.g., FreeBooksy, Ereader News Today) around the BookBub date to extend visibility.
3. Social Media. Series Hook (Even for Standalones). She scheduled daily tweets, posted on author FB groups and personal profiles, used hashtags like #99cents, #Thriller

But a flash sale doesn't help with longevity of sales. What did Cheryl do to keep the sales going?

• Sales lasted for several weeks
• Increased borrows through Kindle Unlimited (the book remained in KDP Select)
• More mailing list signups from new readers clicking her author bio links
• A spike in international sales, likely via BookBub’s extended reach in UK/CA/AU

This technique can also be used to promote ebooks that have gone stagnant in sales. Throw them into Bookbub, make sure the sales process is smooth and then see increased sales.

OK...sounds great, what is the catch?

Bookbub is a launch but it is not sustainable. You HAVE TO have other marketing methods involved to continue with the streak of sales. You need a platform that actively rewards you for sales. Amazon is one of only a handful that does this. 

After the discount you need to increase your price point. Keeping it at sales price devalues your brand and the actual sales process. Increasing price steadily until sales start to decline is a nice way to figure out the price tolerance at which people will buy.

Bookbub also can be picky and you might not accepted first time. Cheryl took 3 attempts.

It is super not free.

As a rough idea based upon other authors, this is the amount of people your ebook will see, the amount of sales and how much it will cost you for that privilege.

Romance

Average subscribers: 3.8 million

Average price: $0.99

How much will it cost you. $800–$2,000

Sales estimate: 20,000–50,000+

Mystery/ Thriller.

Average subscribers: 3 million

Average price: $0.99

How much will it cost you. $600–$1,500

Sales estimate: 15,000–40,000+

Nonfiction

Average subscribers: 1 million

Average price: $0.99-$1.99

How much will it cost you. $300–$800

Sales estimate: 5,000–20,000+

It was to our surprise that non-fiction is less wanted and has fewer subscribers.

But what makes all the authors successful?

They have more than one ebook/ book for sale. Technically it is free advertisement for the others and they will get looked at and you can generate more sales. So the original cost of using Bookbub is high the actual overall cost is minimal due to other higher priced book sales countering the cost.

That is probably the true way to use Bookbub. Here is the 4 step summary.

• Find an ebook that you have that can be bought with other similar titles of yours
• Make sure that you engage in obtaining subscribers/ followers and then pre-sell the ebook/ book well before you are going to discount it
• Go through Bookbub
• Make sure that you post sale and keep the momentum going and collect subscribers/ followers

More ebook selling strategies can be found here.

 About. Updates. Disclaimer. Privacy. Mission/ Vision. FAQ. Newsletter.

Copyright © 2024- Jasonera.com  All rights reserved