I have used BookBub once before for my first novel, Watch Me Disappear, and it was my most successful promotion. That time I discounted the book to $0.99. In fact, I was quite happy to have enough downloads during that promo to fully pay for the rather steep cost of the BookBub promo and even have a little cash leftover.
For What She Inherits, I took the plunge and paid the big bucks--$433.00--to tell the world I was giving my eBook away for free for one week. One week later, it feels like money well spent.
The first day of the promotion, over 40,000 people downloaded it via Kindle and by midday it was the number one book in the Kindle Free store. It held that top spot for at least two full days. Five days later, it was still at 29 in the free store, with no additional promotion from me.
Here are all the stats from the week:
- 51,147 free downloads on Kindle with 25 new reviews (most of them positive!)
- 13,113 free downloads on iBooks with 46 new reviews (also mostly positive. Prior to this promo the book had ZERO reviews on iBooks)
- 4567 free downloads on Barnes and Noble with 6 new (and positive) reviews
- unknown number of Kobo to date, but there must have been some as it has 6 new reviews.
Throughout the promo, I also had some sales.
- 186 copies of the audiobook were sold on Audible. Readers who download the eBook can add the audiobook at a discount, so this doesn't net me a lot of income, but each of those downloads did require readers to spend actual money, so that's not too shabby!
- 4 paperbacks were sold as well.
Today, since the price went back to its regular level of $3.95, twenty-four copies of What She Inherits have sold.
Those sales don't fully recoup the cost of the promo, but I expect the boost to continue a little while longer, so I do think I'll earn back my investment. Even if I don't, the promo has done a lot to increase the credibility of my book on Amazon and iBooks thanks to all those new reviews.
I will be curious to see how any bump in sales plays out. My previous free giveaways of this book have been part of Kindle Select, meaning the book is Amazon-exclusive. In those promos, I have had a decent number of downloads, but--more importantly for my income--a lot of borrows through the Kindle Select program and Kindle Owners Lending Library. With that program, I get paid about a half a cent for every page read, which doesn't sound like much, but it can add up. My experience with those promos is that I easily earn back the money I spend advertising, usually about $100, and I have a sustained boost in earnings for about three months as people who discovered the book during the promo continue to read it. This time, since I made the book more broadly available, it is not part of Kindle Select, so I won't have that "pages read" income. Still, the boost in vendors outside of Amazon might just make up for that factor. Time will tell!
Have you promoted your book via BookBub? How did it go? Share your experiences in the comments below!
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