by: Byrd NashPosted on

There are many book newsletters that go out to readers looking for deals. There are plenty to choose from and their cost and results vary widely. From having done so many of these over the last six years, I have a system that I will share on how to set up newsletter ads and track the results.

What are book discount newsletters?

Book discount newsletters alert their subscribers to discounted book deals. But they aren’t doing this from altruistic reasons by just scanning the internet for deals. No, it’s authors and publishers who are paying for these ads, although there is often a gatekeeper deciding if the book will be accepted into the newsletter.

These book discount newsletters are a great way for the indie author to be seen by interested readers for a pretty fair price.

A list of book discount newsletters

Here’s a list of some of the most popular book deals newsletters which go out to readers and that you can advertise within.

Note: This list was adapted from Wide for the Win and I recommend you follow that Facebook group to know more, as there are discounts offered to group members. I’ve added a few more and marked the ones in bold I’ve personally used.

This list is only for research purposes, so be sure to investigate before using by signing up as a reader (when signing up a as a reader don’t use your author email. I have a Yahoo junk email that I use for this purpose so I can keep spam out of my inbox).

GENERAL NEWSLETTERS

GENRE NEWSLETTERS

  • BookAdrenaline.com Mystery, Thriller, Suspense & Horror
  • BookBarbarian SFF good results in the past, but the newsletter quality has gone downhill
  • Geektastic SFF book promo via https://book-promos.com
  • Faithful Reads (run by eReaderCafe), Christian books
  • 1531 Entertainment, Christian books

ROMANCE NEWSLETTERS

  • BadBoyRomance.com
  • BrazenBookshelf
  • CraveRomance
  • ExciteSteam.com
  • FullHeartsRomance.com
  • HiddenGemsBooks.com
  • ILoveBooksAndStuff (PNR and fantasy romance only; book at https://www.123formbuilder.com/form-4185070/my-form)
  • LGBT-romance.com
  • LoveKissedBooks
  • MegaBookDeals.com (accepts all genres but seems to focus on romance)
  • PillowTalkBooks.com
  • Pretty-Hot.com
  • RedRosesRomance.com
  • SFRStation (SFF romance ONLY)
  • ShamelessBookDeals.com (erotica or super steamy romance)
  • SweetRomanceBookBargains (sweet / clean romance ONLY)
  • TheDarkNewsletter (dark romance only)
  • TheSweetestRomance
  • ToplessCowboy
  • Unearthly Ever Afters (PNR or sci-fi romance only)
  • Wolf Pack Co-op (PNR, UF, or soft sci-fi romance only)

I do NOT recommend Open Road Media or their many subsidiary newsletters (Early Bird Books, MegaBookDeals, Murder & Mayhem, The Lineup, PromoteHorror, The Portalist, The Archive, A Love so True) as the company lacks transparency and some authors have had dodgy experiences with them (uncertain if their ad ran, no reply when asked about it).

BooksButterfly is flat out a rip off organization. Don’t believe me? Do an internet search with their name and look at reviews off their website.

Become a reader first so you can research the book ads

My advice is to first sign up to these newsletters as a reader. Monitor the newsletters for several months and save screenshots of books that would be comparable to yours. That gives you an idea of how they are writing the book description (for example, some book descriptions mention the number of reviews, or lists a line from a popular reviewer).

Things to notice: the book covers, how they write the description, how long the description is, and what vendors do they allow? Too many of these newsletters only offer a buy option to Amazon, but it’s becoming more common to have other options such as the Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple, Smashwords, and even the author’s own website.

Doing your research beforehand will help you write a better ad and thus have a greater chance for success.

Look over the book deals for comp authors

When the newsletters start rolling into your inbox, be sure to keep an eye out for any books that might be comps to yours. These are authors or books that would match up to who your readers are.

You write cozy mysteries in small towns? Look for authors who write the same.

Contemporary thrillers? Find books that match in style to your own.

I usually do screen shots of the books I want to keep. This helps me understand how to write my own newsletter ad, and what covers and titles are visually appealing. This helps A LOT when you get to writing your own ad.

Here’s a comp for Breathings of the Moon, with a New Release ad with Bookbub. This gives me important details about the body text, what will be bolded, how much of the description can be seen, and the booksellers they are promoting.

You can see there is a “read more” so that means your description will be cut off at the end. Plan your body copy accordingly by putting the hook at the beginning.

Newsletter book ads and what they look like

Before booking your newsletter ads, be aware that each newsletter has a different look. This will influence how you write your ad copy and what features about your book you will promote. It’s why I highly recommend subscribing so you become familiar with them.

Here are some examples of book newsletter ads I’ve run. You can see how they differ, and knowing this will impact how you write your book description.

The Freebooksy ad showed the entire series, even though it was only the first book that was on sale. It also gave a lot of bookseller links such as Kindle, Apple, Kobo, Nook, and my webstore. If your books are wide and not exclusive to KU this is important as it will boost your sales on those platforms.

Notice these two ads from Crave Books. The line describing your book is VERY SHORT so make sure that first sentence really gives a wow to the reader.

This OHFB ad gives more room for a rich description. From reading other ads they like using comp authors to compare the book to and why I mention other books in this ad (something they allow). But they only give a link to one bookseller: Amazon.

How should you price your book discount?

Newsletter ads work best for a book in a series, so when they get your discounted book they buy the rest of the series, which hopefully makes you money! Let’s face it a FREE book will “sell” but if you don’t have a series for them to buy through, you’ve made no money. So only discount to free if it is a book in a series, or if your plan is to boost your overall visibility.

Cutting the price of a standalone book in half is a good rule of thumb, but again a lot of factors go into if your book will be a success.

If applying to a Bookbub Featured Deal price I suggest doing free. The deeper the discount, the better the chance they will offer you a Featured Deal. Although I have submitted discounted to free books and they have also been refused.

How well a newsletter ad does for you depends on many things: book cover, title of the book, description of the book, and cost of the book. It’s why I encourage you to experiment with different newsletters, phrasing, and tracking the results so you can judge for yourself if something works for you

The frequency of using discounts do matter so use them sparingly

A good rule of thumb is don’t discount your book except once during a 90 day period (or even longer). The more special a deal is, the more likelihood you’ll get a Featured Deal at Bookbub. Some newsletters won’t let you advertise until 90 days after your ad ran, so be aware of their policies.

Realistically, I’ve seen fall off on a newsletter ad if I run the book on too many specials. That happened with Never Date a Siren, which I advertised steadily for three years. Advertise a book too much and readers lose interest in it as the deal isn’t seen as special.

A word of caution! If you are constantly discounting your books, Bookbub especially will veer away from offering you a Featured Deal.

Make your discount look even better with print and hardback versions of your book

You may have noticed this on Amazon, but the bookseller will show your regular ebook price as a discount if you have a more expensive version of your book available on the same platform.

The best way to schedule your book discount newsletter ads

When booking your ads if doing promo stacking (where you do a group of newsletter ads as shown here on my calendar) make sure to spread them out. Why? This gives you feedback on your sales. For example, if I ran an ad on the fourth and I saw a big increase in sales on the fourth and the fifth, I know which ad gave me that spike.

In this calendar example I’m using colors to let me know what ads have been approved and booked (green) vs the ads or promos I’m still waiting to hear from (yellow). Red marks something super important – in this case the launch of Breathings of the Moon.

Some of these newsletter ads bill under different names, so its good to know that so tax time isn’t as confusing. I do like to put info into the description field on my calendar such as the name of the newsletter, the book I’m running (MC DD is Madame Chalamet Delicious Death), the category (if any), and the cost of the ad. I also put a link if there is some reason I might need that for reference later.

Bookbub is one of the best known of the book discount newsletters. It is heavily curated, so generally most of the books being offered are of good quality. It’s an exclusive club!

For example, Bookbub Featured Deals often mentions the reviews, the tropes, and how many ratings the book has. If you have an editorial review, it can influence them to offer you a Featured Deal.

Not sure who Bookbub is or how to set up your author account? I have a blog to help you figure that out.

The Bookbub Featured Deal for Ghost Talker:

Use a Bookbub pre-release alert

If you have over 1,000 followers on Bookbub, you are given the chance to buy a pre-release alert for two notifications to be sent to your followers that you have a book releasing. This is a very low cost (less than $10 for me) and you set it up via your dashboard and chose the date the notifications are sent out. It doesn’t have any of the qualifying hoops to jump through that the other Bookbub advertising requires.

Want to increase your Bookbub following? Check out ways to do that at this blog post about Bookbub.

Use a Bookbub Release for Less notification

These are only for new books and seem to be easier to get than the Featured Deal. According to Bookbub’s Terms of Service it won’t affect you getting a Bookbub Featured Deal for a different book.

I got one of these for Ghost Talker and it did gain me about 300+ purchases of the book, which really made me happy. But some authors feel the New Release option doesn’t pay back.

Only you can answer if this would be a good option for you. Some things to consider is 1.) how many Bookbub followers do you have? 2.) is the book a hotly anticipated release? and 3.) Is the price really appealing? Ghost Talker was priced at $1.99 at the time, so I think that was one key to that ad’s success.

Like all things Bookbub you have to submit and be accepted. Details are here. Improve your chances by knowing your book tropes, your comp authors, and having advance reviews (including Editorial Reviews) that you can submit.

How do you discount your books for the sales day?

If you are simply discounting your books (NOT to free), all you have to do is go into the bookseller dashboard and set the new price. I usually do this at least 2 days in advance of a sale because Amazon can be slow to update and you need it to update across the globe (especially if you sell in other countries).

If you need to change your price to FREE, this is a bit more tricky. Amazon will price match to any other bookseller (not to your website). So go to the other booksellers, drop the price to ZERO. Once that goes live on their bookselling platform, send that information to Amazon and request a price match.

IMPORTANT! I’ve had Amazon price-match in 24 hours but the last time it took them five days! EEK! So be aware that you will need to discount BEFORE the sale to get this all set up correctly. If they don’t price-match within 3 days, go and request again.

If you are in Amazon’s KU program you will need to use some of your discount days they offer in that program.

Be aware that you want to give at least 1 maybe even 2 days AFTER the sale day to keep your discount. You will often have latecomers come by and get your book because they finally opened their email newsletter.

Tracking performance of an ad after it runs

It’s really important to review what happened after your newsletter ad ran in order to determine if it was successful. ALWAYS track your campaigns by monitoring the book’s sales on the date the ad ran. That is the only way to know if that book ad was successful or not.

Unfortunately, these newsletters do not provide a unique tracking url (except for Book Raider) so a lot of this is educated guesswork. The carryover in sales on the dates after the ad runs is why you will want to make sure you space out those ads! Otherwise you won’t be able to get (somewhat) accurate data.

If you ran an ad on Jan 5, you might see a spike in sales on the 6th, and maybe even the 7th. This is because some readers haven’t opened that newsletter yet and when they do, they buy it the day after the ad ran. I found this especially true when I’ve run a Bookbub Featured Deal.

Use a spreadsheet to record the data such as dates, numbers sold, and ad run. If put into a spreadsheet, you can easily calculate the numbers and make a bar chart.

This example shows one of the most successful campaigns I’ve had, primarily as I was able to score a Bookbub Featured Deal for Ghost Talker. I ran the first book free but the buy through on the series helped me make a profit (see line 22 and 23). the campaign cost was $760 and the royalties were $2921.

NOTE: some authors like to discount the rest of the books in a series when a big ad runs because it gives them even more buys. That is something only you can decide but do keep in mind that readers love deals and will scoop up more books if discounted.

Other ways to track book ad success

Another way to track your ad’s success is to keep an eye on your book’s categories and where you fall on that number BEFORE and DURING the ad’s run. This data is found in your book’s product details area on Amazon.

Here’s a screenshot of where I ranked AFTER the Bookbub Featured Deal ran for Ghost Talker.

You can also see how far you get on Amazon’s Best Seller list. This is Ghost Talker hitting number 1 in the TOP 100 FREE in Gaslamp fantasy category.

My original ratings of 316, shot up to 650 in the next few weeks as people read the book. Essentially this ad doubled my reviews for this book. I continued to have that number climb and four months later I’m over 700 reviews for this book. This happened due to the high number of sales. More book sold increases the chance of more reviews.

What other marketing options are available to indie authors?

The other two options that work best for Indie authors are running AMAZON ADS and FACEBOOK ADS. Both of these work best if you have a series that has buy-through (meaning readers go onto the next book, and the next, and the next etc…).

Running ads is a complicated process, so I won’t go into how to do it, but I might post some resources at a future date that you can look into. Be sure to subscribe to the blog to be notified when that happens.

Need more advice for writing, publishing, or marketing your book? Check out my Writer’s Life blog posts. You can also subscribe to the blog to know when I publish another one in the Writer-help series.

Categories:

Leave a Reply

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