fbpx
skip to Main Content
How To Reach More Readers: Get Your Book Listed On BookBub

How to Reach More Readers: Get Your Book Listed on BookBub

Book recommendation websites can be a valuable tool to help you reach more readers. One of these, the free subscription service BookBub, sends readers a free daily email of recommended reads, discounted and tailored to suit each subscriber's personal reading preferences. ALLi author member Christine Nolfi, who uses BookBub very successfully to promote her novels, interviewed the company's Editorial Operations Director Halli Melnitksy. to help you secure a BookBub listing for your self-published book.

http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-girl-flying-books-sky-image9214328

(Photo copyright Dreamstime)

Halli: We often receive over 100 submissions per day, of which we select about 20% for listing. They're mostly excellent titles, but we don’t want to overwhelm our subscribers with too many books and hurt the performance of any individual title, so we have to make a lot of tough decisions. We have 1.5 million subscribers and thousands of new readers joining every day.

Christine: How you maintain your astonishing efficiency of matching bibliophile to book while growing so fast?

Halli: We are continually adjusting our processes to ensure authors are reaching the perfect audience for their work, and readers get books they’ll love. Every day we ask ourselves how to get the right books to the right readers at the right price. We want to make sure our members are delighted by the books they receive so they keep coming back for more.

How BookBub Selects Books

Christine: I understand your selection process is collaborative. How does it work exactly?

Halli: First, we vet every submission we receive to confirm it meets our basic requirements, so it’s important for authors to ensure their books meet those guidelines before submitting. We look at the plot, cover, samples, author background, and book platform, including both editorial and reader reviews. If we only have a few sources of information, it’s much harder for us to evaluate a listing. If there is a lot of negative feedback on a book, we figure out what made people unhappy. On the other hand, we make sure positive feedback isn’t coming from biased, artificial, or paid sources.

We always try to put ourselves in the shoes of our subscribers and ask, “Will our readers be excited about this deal?” We also take price into account to ensure that the readers really are getting bargains. The greater the discount, the more competitive the deal.

Most importantly, we ask, “Is this the best possible book for our audience at this time?” We review data on our past titles to better understand our readers’ evolving tastes. That’s how we make sure our authors are reaching an audience of engaged subscribers likely to click on their title. We are also constantly adjusting our standards based on how many listing orders we’ve received and how many open spots we have.

Submissions that meet these basic requirements go to the editorial team member responsible for each book's category. Most of the submissions also go through a collaborative review process. The editorial team meets multiple times a day to discuss submissions. The team doesn’t vote on listings, but rather we reach the selection decision by consensus — considering and deliberating together until we all agree.

Top Tips for a Successful Listing http://www.dreamstime.com/royalty-free-stock-photos-girl-flying-books-sky-image9214328

Christine: What are the most important factors you consider, and how can authors make their listings more competitive?

Halli: Making sure readers get content they want, and ensuring that authors get results that make BookBub a valuable tool. We’re constantly looking to discover what optimizes a promotion, and the Submissions Tips page on our website summarises what we've found so far. Extensive research has gone into each and every one of these tips. We’ve tested everything — from pricing, to covers, to content — to get an idea of how important these factors are for a book’s success. 

We also keep a close eye on patterns and make decisions based on what we find. For example, if horror stories about evil unicorns have been consistently under-performing, we might conclude that our Horror subscribers weren’t looking for that kind of content at the moment. We’d then move away from accepting evil unicorn stories for a while, even if a particular evil unicorn book was exceptional in other ways, because that listing ultimately wouldn’t be successful for our author partner or our readers. Of course, that’s just a hypothetical example, not a judgment on unicorns — evil or otherwise!

This means that when we do select a book, we have confidence that it will appeal to our readers and will likely be a worthwhile investment for our authors. Granted, we can’t predict every outcome. But by closely analyzing each listing’s results, we can make better predictions in the future about what kind of books our readers prefer on each list.

Christine: Please tell us about BookBub’s editorial team.

Halli: They bring experience from across the industry, previously having worked at large publishing houses, tiny presses, literary agencies, and as published authors. More importantly, they are ardent readers and book lovers – the kind of kids who stayed up late with a flashlight, reading under the covers. We want to give our subscribers that same experience.

We understand how difficult discoverability can be. Authors want to find readers who will fall in love with their story and characters the way they have. We see ourselves as a conduit, helping readers and writers find each other.

During our listing discussions, we also ask people from other departments to weigh in and give their perspective. We have business school grads, entrepreneurs, creative marketers, and brilliant programmers who all bring a different dimension to our decisions.

BookBub's Future Plans

Christine: How is BookBub evolving and what are your plans for the future?

Halli: We’re constantly thinking about the readers we aren’t reaching, and listening to feedback on how we can make our service better. For example, one thing we hear consistently from our readers and authors is that they want even more targeting capabilities. Many readers only read one sub-genre of a larger category, after all! So while we originally only had one Romance list, we now have six sub-categories, and we plan to do more of this as time goes on.

Any time we add more books or new categories, we have to think about how that will affect the results of each individual book. It's important that we reach new readers, rather than just diluting our list and decreasing the effectiveness of a BookBub listing, which is why we can’t just add as many books to the email as we want. Ultimately, our goal is to have every kind of reader, and the perfect book for each one.

When we see performance trends continue over time, they usually lead us to adjust our categories or policies. For example, we noticed recently that books we ran for a second time after only four months weren’t performing as well the second time. We now feature the same book only once every six months to ensure that it has the best chance of performing well the second time around.

We also use this research to create new categories. A great example is the recently launched Romantic Suspense list. Excellent authors were submitting very strong books, but we knew from prior results that their listings weren’t a perfect fit for either our Romance or Thriller readers, so we launched a separate category to address demand from both authors and subscribers.

Christine: Your listings feature both traditionally published and independent books. Do you try to strike a balance between the two, or do you favor one publishing medium over the other?

Halli: Independent authors have been the backbone of BookBub since we launched. One of the great things about publishing right now is how diverse it is. At BookBub, we want to reflect that diversity. When a subscriber opens our email, they can’t see whether a book we’re running is from an indie author or a big house. They are making purchasing decisions based on how appealing the book looks, whether it sounds interesting, and if the price seems like a good deal. And since that’s what matters to our readers, that’s what matters to us. Regardless of where they come from, we’ll take any book that we think our readers will enjoy, and we hope to always maintain that diversity.

Christine: Is there anything else you’d like to share with the ALLi membership?

Halli: We owe an enormous debt of gratitude to the indie author community, and we spend every day figuring out how to grow so that we can continue to reward their loyalty and support with the best BookBub experience possible!

Here are links to more detailed information:

BookBub Listing Requirements

Tips for Making YourBookBub Submission More Competitive

 

Author: Christine Nolfi

Award-winning author Christine Nolfi provides readers with heartwarming and inspiring fiction. Her debut Treasure Me is a Next Generation Indie Awards finalist. The Midwest Book Review lists her books as “highly recommended” and her novels have enjoyed bestseller status. Look for her new series, Heavenscribe. Her new series for Lake Union will debut February, 2017. Chat with her on Twitter at @christinenolfi and visit her at www.christinenolfi.com.

Share

This Post Has 21 Comments
  1. […] 5) ALLi BookBub guides: https://selfpublishingadvice.org/how-to-optimize-your-bookbub-submission-katie-donelan/ and  https://selfpublishingadvice.org/how-to-reach-more-readers-get-your-book-listed-on-bookbub/ […]

  2. Actually, the problems that can be caused by traditional
    chemical products can be enormous. This lets them know how they have done and it helps
    them to improve their cleaning. Is there anything special that the cleaning service needs to know
    about.

  3. Before you start calling properties and getting estimates, you may
    need to find out what you need cleaned. You can also keep containers of
    various colors and sizes in different rooms. While you
    schedule your work, make sure that you make allowance for cleaning different parts of the house on different days.

  4. If you have the tendency to horde things, you will have to learn let go.

    This lets them know how they have done and it helps them to improve their cleaning.
    Regardless of whether you have a 3 bedroom apartment home or a studio, your place will get dirty.

  5. Apply it to a soft cloth and use it to wipe down woodwork and furniture.

    When apartments get the unit “make ready” for the next tenant, they usually employ a cleaning service to complete this.
    These mops can be a bit pricey initially, but over time
    will add up to hundreds of dollars in savings on floor products, especially if you have many types of flooring.

  6. Remember that people trust real address workplaces more than online ventures because contact with the business is more real.
    You can also keep containers of various colors and sizes in different rooms.

    There are a couple of excellent e-courses available that give a lot of really valuable information on how to structure your business,where
    and how to get clients, how to calculate prices, what
    equipment and supplies are needed etc, and in my opinion are well worth the $30 or $40 they cost.

  7. Remember that people trust real address workplaces more than online ventures because contact with the business is more
    real. The places that are found in this lovely area are there for the convenience of
    the customers. There are a couple of excellent e-courses available
    that give a lot of really valuable information on how to structure your business,where
    and how to get clients, how to calculate prices, what equipment
    and supplies are needed etc, and in my opinion are well worth the $30 or $40 they cost.

  8. You can choose your own timings and above all, you can choose how much work you want to take up.
    Will you need the cleaning service to do a thorough
    cleaning for you. While you schedule your work, make sure that
    you make allowance for cleaning different parts of the house on different days.

  9. […] However, BookBub does not guarantee it will promote every author willing to pay. The site has a list of submission guidelines, which include having a professional book (edited and formatted with a good cover), deeply discounting the book for a limited time only, and being widely available. Not officially included in the list but equally important to the site is for the book to have many 4/5-star reviews (at least 10). BookBub also gives some tips for how to get selected on ALLi. […]

  10. […] However, BookBub does not guarantee it will promote every author willing to pay. The site has a list of submission guidelines, which include having a professional book (edited and formatted with a good cover), deeply discounting the book for a limited time only, and being widely available. Not officially included in the list but equally important to the site is for the book to have many 4/5-star reviews (at least 10). BookBub also gives some tips for how to get selected on ALLi. […]

  11. I’m both a BookBub author and subscriber. As a reader, I’ve discovered some wonderful novels through BB’s recommendations. As an author, I’ve had two successful promos. My first, in their romance category last May, resulted in 3,000 sales. This month, the second book in my series was listed in the new, smaller romantic suspense category (which costs a lot less than romance did) and performed well, but not nearly as spectacularly as the one in May. BookBub has earned the trust and loyalty of writers and readers. They do a good job and after reading this piece, I understand why. I’m flattered that I made it through the selection process!

  12. I also ran with BookBub for my novels. They are THE marketing service to use. It’s a serious enterprise run by serious people, and readers know that BookBub is not just another payed-for marketing scam, that’s why they purchase books on BB with confidence what they’re going to get a good read.

  13. My first and only outing–so far–with BookBub was explosive. To give you an idea of how explosive, on June 17 of this year, the BookBub ad ran for the 3rd edition of my first novel. For the first sixteen days of June only 78 copies sold. The previous month, only 137 copies were sold. The month before that one-hundred-sixty-eight.

    On the 17th of June, the day the BookBub ad ran, the book sold 1,982 copies @ .99 cents.

    I would continue to promote the reduced price six more days through my author-Internet platform and end up selling almost 3,000 copies by the time the price was increased back to $3.99—earning more money in royalties that one month than any other month the book has been in print.

    I can only hope the next time I submit a book for a BookBub ad that it will meet their criteria at the time and do even half as well.

    Thank you, BookBub, for your business plan. It works. If you say no to my next submission, now I will understand why thanks to this interview.

  14. When you state that you require the book to be free or deeply discounted (on your “Get Started” page), I’m just wondering how it’s possible to do that with books being sold on Amazon – especially if you select the Amazon options that require you to make the book available for sale on Amazon at the cheapest possible price.

    As I’m sure most of you will know, Amazon does offer the option to have free or discounted periods. I’m just wondering about the mechanics of syncing everything up.

    Halli, do you want to comment on this? Or does anyone else have experience?

    1. Theo, I hope Halli will weigh in (I’ve just sent her mail that this post is live) but I can tell you what I do: My books sell for $3.99 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. During a BookBub promotion, I drop the price for the listed book to 99 cents on all three platforms. Another author with, say, books usually listed at $4.99 may run a BB promotion at $2.99 for the listed book.

      After the promotion, I return the promoted book to its regular price. Kobo appears to take the longest amount of time to revert to regular price so I return to $3.99 there first. After I’m sure the book is live at regular price, I go in and change Amazon and B&N prices. Both Amazon and B&N tend to return to regular price within hours.

      A word of warning: Amazon will not list your regular price until all other publishing platforms have also increased the price.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Latest advice, news, ratings, tools and trends.

Back To Top
×Close search
Search
Loading...