BookBub's New Releases for Less - My Experience

Every author knows Bookbub as the Master of Advertising. If you are picked for a feature you’re all but assured of a great sales day and residual bumps. (Most of the time) Heck, I remember when they started and I was one of the first dozen or so authors to get a feature. But note, that didn’t give me any special privileges. I still get rejected by them.

Recently I was able to try the latest feature, ‘New Releases for Less’. Googling this didn’t breed many results. I only read people stating they heard ‘mixed results’. I couldn’t find one dedicated article, so I decided to write one.

I read a comment on a post that they accept everyone. Not true. I had two rejected for new releases for less. That being said, my latest novel, The Black, was accepted under horror and here’s what I learned, but I didn’t just watch my book.

It’s important to note that they base their decision on your release price, so doing a Countdown deal of .99 won’t work unless you contact them ahead of time.

The email

An email is sent out in the early afternoon (EST). It targets readers who subscribe to those categories. In my copy of the email, there were three books. Mine and two others. I tried to reach out to these other authors to get their opinion, but one was like trying to contact a mythical creature, no FB or website. The other just didn’t get back to me.

Anyhow, let me start by saying my book was at a disadvantage going into this ad campaign. A recent Amazon glitch caused my book to be without a rank. For ten out of fourteen days it was not listed in any categories and therefore unsearchable other than by my name. Yeah, that sucked. So it started out pretty bad compared to my other new releases.

RESULTS

There were three books in the email.

The Black – by Me (2.99 – Horror)

The Signal - Philipp Calvert and Joshua T. Calvert (0.99 – Sci Fi)

Not Like Yesterday – Ava Strong (4.99 – Psychological Thriller)

Here is how I charted the ABSR (Amazon Best Seller Rank)

 

Now for the breakdown.

To be fair I used the KDP Rank Calculator to estimate sale. Even on mine, which by the way, if I break down page reads as book sales (Divide by KENP #), it comes pretty close to the calculator.

 

The Black – Release Price $2.99

Est Three-day unit sales – 104

Cost of ad -                 $260.00

 Est. Royalties             $208.24

Loss/Profit                  -$51.76

Opinion – Not great, but not bad. I really think the glitch put my book at a disadvantage, but only the next several days will tell. Like all books sales go up and down. The difference in rank wasn’t grand, but hopefully, it will make a difference.

Not Like Yesterday – Release Price $4.99

Est Three-day unit sales – 29

Cost of ad -                 $700.00

Est. Royalties              $101.30

Loss/Profit                  -$598.70

Opinion – While the massive jump from a rank of 238,000 down to 18,000 is super impressive, as authors we know to go from 238K to 50k takes only a couple sales. Her hardest jump wa from 33k to 18k. I wish the author would have replied to my email, I really wanted to know what she thought.

 

The Signal – Release Price $.99

Note this was not a countdown deal so the author royalties are $.034 a book.

EST Three-day unit sales – 610

Cost of ad -                 $400.00

Est. Royalties              $207.40

Loss/Profit                  -$196.60

Opinion – Impressive freaking jump in best seller rank. However, setting a price of 99 cents with a 35% royalty was risky. In order just to get the money back on the ad the author needed to sell 1200 books roughly in 3 days, which is possible. But not with this type of ad. Even though they took a hit, I’m gonna say the ad worked for them because it’s a book one.

In Conclusion

So what does this tell me. The ad can work if your book is at the right price. I don’t think $4.99 is a new release for less (Unless you’re Stephen King), I think $4.99 is a new release for an average Indie Author Price. The Category has 1.4 million subscribers, you have to wonder how many opened that email and were like, ‘not for less’. I wonder how many she would have sold had she priced it at 1.99

The .99 book rocked as far as sales go but profit margin was lost, however, the strategy for a first book in a series paid off. The thing they did was think it through, come up with a plan.

In looking at the stats I didn’t do too bad. Would I do it again? Yes, but I would plan it through with a strategy to at least break even, and hopefully wihtout another horrible glitch throwing me behind the 8 ball.

Why Lodi, Ohio?

It's kind of funny. My book, The Flu has been out for a few years, and only recently have I been asked, 'Why did I pick Lodi?'

For those of you who have asked, THANK YOU.

So here I'll share the story ...

Awhile back, I was en route to Cleveland from Pittsburgh and my friend and I stopped there because we were looking for another little town around there. Seville, to be exact. All in Medina County. It was raining, and I still remember the song we played rolling into town. Kiss Me by Sixpence None the Richer.

Form the moment we pulled in, I just fell in love with it. It was everything you'd imagine a small town to be. The Gazebo, the perfect town square surrounding the small park, and back then a little white house that was the library. It had a sign on it, too. The sign said, "we have a computer;

There was a corner restaurant, for a while it was The Lighthouse, and then there was the Lodi Diner (I think that was the name). I got a mug from there.

And let's not forget the Corn Festival! The people are so nice. They have a festival every year.

Since that day in 1997, for years I would just take day trips up to Lodi. From Pittsburgh it was a little over 2 hours. Just a road trip. Weird I know. I'd pack the kids and tell them we were taking a day vacation to ... Lodi.

It's an obsession and I remember when I went there before writing The Flu, I was telling the lady at the restaurant about it, then I went to the new Library, and next thing I know the police are after me. The Chief of Police (Steve was his name) wanted to talk to me. Here there was a scandal and he was fearful my book was about him.

It wasn't. I'm linking an album to photos I took about six and a half years ago, when me and my boys took a trip to Lodi so I could do an interview with a local paper.

Since that day, I have included Lodi is SO many books.
The Flu
Flu 2
Road to Lodi
Call me Gideon
The Forgotten

Just to name a few.

Of course, I have taken liberties, and added some fiction to Lodi. After all, I do write fiction. But never to I ever portray Lodi in a bad light. Why would I? I love it. And it is the town I plan on one day moving to so I can be that crazy writer lady, everyone talks about.

CLICK HERE FOR THE LODI PHOTO ALBUM

Where's Sleepers 3? Blame ... CM Punk.

Against the advice of my son, I am going to explain what is going on with Sleepers 3. The question I get asked all the time. My son, though, tells me that while my friends, family and closest readers understand my insanity, others may not.

But to the devoted Sleepers readers, I give you my explanation of its delay.

Warning, it’s twisted. I also promise to mark ‘spoilers’ when needed.

Many of you may know this, some may not, but I cast my books. I find actors, sports figures, wrestlers, musicians, and I craft my characters by what I think they portray or are like. Many times, my characters are nothing like those they are modeled after.

When I first embarked on Sleepers, the character of Alex Sans blasted on the pages and immediately took over, as if I had no say so at all in the writing. The character of Alex Sans was inspired by pro wrestler, CM Punk. Man, every Monday, every chance, I listened to CM talk, walk, act. Soon, within weeks, my kids were yelling at me because I was calling CM “Alex”. That’s ok, it helps my dementia.

Then came Sleepers 2. I flew through that one. Again, Alex ruled. CM Punk was WWE champion and man, I was able to really utilize the inspiration.

Hence Sleepers 3. Something happened. CM Punk turned into well … a punk. A bad guy and he wasn’t even a good bad guy, he was a tool. A cardboard bad guy that irritated me to watch. Honestly, someone needs to send CM Punk to wrestling persona school.

All the sudden, with the switch of CM Punk, I couldn't breed Alex the way I wanted. Middle of Sleepers 3, I had to stop. I tried, I really tried, I even wrote around him. It has been suggested, to watch ‘old’ videos of Punk. But the problem is, the good guy to bad guy stint (For me) was stealth and I didn't see it coming until he flipped such a bad switch, I was like, ‘oh God, no!” He cut his hair, just ….UH! He’s not my Alex!

I have used wrestling bad guys before as good guy characters in my books, but CM Punk’s bad guy is so badly done, it makes my stomach twist.

Now ...I wanna kill off Alex. But it’s not because of Alex, it’s because I don’t like CM Punk’s persona anymore. I can’t make him gay, I did that to Henry in Beginnings, because of the actor that inspired him. SLEEPERS 2 SPOILER ALERT: In Sleepers 2, it was a literal flip of coin to see who died, seriously I flipped coin, Alex or Beck. Beck lost. He died. Now I wish it were Alex. Because the inspiration behind Alex is gone.

Maybe … I’ll make him into a bad guy in Sleepers 3. But how, I love Alex. And what if I manage to successfully make him bad and CM Punk returns to being a good guy, then I’d have the task of redeeming Alex and that’s not easy. Then again, how many times did I redeem Frank?

I know this, Sleepers 3: Rise of Keller is nearly complete, but is on pause. I promise to have it out no later than May 1st. April 1^st if I’m lucky. I’ll post a peek in a couple weeks. Until then, this is where it’s at. Suggestions?