Ebook promotion site Bookbub has a 50-50 split on featured books between indie-published and traditionally published and the company claims the average partner doubled their investment on a promo last year.
The site is the leading ebook promo platform and although slots are expensive they are eagerly sought by self-published authors and trad firms and only just over a fifth of submissions are selected for promo spots.
The firm gets 200-300 submissions a day from publishers and authors looking to boost their books and it tries to give a decision on yea or nay within two business days.
In a round-up of the top questions asked in 2015, Bookbub also reveals that although there isn’t a minimum number of reviews required for a book to get a promotion slot, it’s very unlikely to select new releases as ‘they usually haven’t built up enough platform’ and it recommends waiting until reviews have built up.
Bookbub says authors can help to support a promo further by using targeted Facebook and Twitter ads and by cross-promoting their other books in the back matter of the promoted book. The biggest marketing mistake the firm sees authors making is in targeting too broad an audience.
In 2015, Bookbub received over 55,000 deal submissions and ran a total of 12,308 ebook deals featuring 7,631 authors — meaning that 22% of ebooks submitted ( 1 in 4.4) win a promo deal.
A total of 20 million ebooks were sold through Bookbub promotions over last year, which represents an average of 1,625 ebooks per promotion (20,000,000/12,308), although obviously there would be very wide variations between individual books. Over 200 books hit a New York Times bestseller list after a promotion.
Crime fiction tops the most popular list of Bookbub genres and over 2.3 million readers were added to the email list in 2015. The company now offers a total of 36 categories covering fiction and non-fiction and has more than seven million members overall.
How short-term Bookbub discount can bring you long-term, full-price fans