Open Road Newsletter

[WasAnn]

Hat tip to someone on another site for bringing this up....but I had to bring it here.

Open Road Media, which is known for reprints and collecting the works of deceased authors (including Octavia Butler), used to appear with shocking frequency in BookBub. Then...they decided to create their own NL.

It's called EarlyBirdBooks. Looks and feels much like Bub, very slick and pro.

https://earlybirdbooks.com/

I don't know if they started with only their books, but their advertiser portal shows a whole lot of small and medium houses and subsidiaries that advertise in their newsletters. They have the NL, genre specific portal with added content, and their website for them all combined.

Prices are flat rate, regardless of genre, so they don't show exactly what type of subs they have. 300 for the NL, 100 for each website. You can find their ad info here.

http://openroadintegratedmedia.com/

newsletter specifics here:

http://openroadintegratedmedia.com/ebook-promotions/

Has anyone tried them yet? I went ahead and subbed so I can track results in the genres I write, but that will take a while. Looks like they have about 800K subs so far, which is quite a lot, but no Bub.

Be interested to hear all ya'll's opinions!

[Bill Hiatt]

I just subbed. They may not be Bookbub, but that could be a good thing. Maybe it's easier to get advertised with them.

That said, the website isn't very encouraging. It's easy to sign up as a reader, but there's no information at all about advertising. The "advertise with us" link pops open an email to their advertising division. There's no indication of whether they take indies or not (the books I can see today are all trad-pubbed). There is a mention of a wide variety of different packages available, but not actual description of them on the website. I find that off-putting. I'd rather not email someone if they aren't really taking indies or if their packages are too expensive. The website should provide some guidance, not just leave the whole thing up to the imagination.

[WasAnn]

I just subbed. They may not be Bookbub, but that could be a good thing. Maybe it's easier to get advertised with them.

That said, the website isn't very encouraging. It's easy to sign up as a reader, but there's no information at all about advertising. The "advertise with us" link pops open an email to their advertising division. There's no indication of whether they take indies or not (the books I can see today are all trad-pubbed). There is a mention of a wide variety of different packages available, but not actual description of them on the website. I find that off-putting. I'd rather not email someone if they aren't really taking indies or if their packages are too expensive. The website should provide some guidance, not just leave the whole thing up to the imagination.

It does have that, but you have to click OR/M at the bottom. They keep it discreet, I think. Since it's original aim is tradpub, that makes sense. They are open to indies now, since I checked previous ones in their ads and there are indies. I'll need to track them real time to see how effective they are, however. That generally takes some time.

I put the links to two of their entry portals on the advertising business. One is full spectrum, I think meant more for advertising solutions as a whole in the book world, which is definitely more tradpub oriented. The newsletter link gets lots more specific. I did open the "nominate a title" portion, which is how you sign up to advertise your book, and those have the prices I quoted on there.

[Bill Hiatt]

I just subbed. They may not be Bookbub, but that could be a good thing. Maybe it's easier to get advertised with them.

That said, the website isn't very encouraging. It's easy to sign up as a reader, but there's no information at all about advertising. The "advertise with us" link pops open an email to their advertising division. There's no indication of whether they take indies or not (the books I can see today are all trad-pubbed). There is a mention of a wide variety of different packages available, but not actual description of them on the website. I find that off-putting. I'd rather not email someone if they aren't really taking indies or if their packages are too expensive. The website should provide some guidance, not just leave the whole thing up to the imagination.

It does have that, but you have to click OR/M at the bottom. They keep it discreet, I think. Since it's original aim is tradpub, that makes sense. They are open to indies now, since I checked previous ones in their ads and there are indies. I'll need to track them real time to see how effective they are, however. That generally takes some time.

I put the links to two of their entry portals on the advertising business. One is full spectrum, I think meant more for advertising solutions as a whole in the book world, which is definitely more tradpub oriented. The newsletter link gets lots more specific. I did open the "nominate a title" portion, which is how you sign up to advertise your book, and those have the prices I quoted on there.

Thanks for the clarification. I should have looked more closely.

[Bill Hiatt]

Now that I've looked more carefully, the process looks fairly simple. I'll start monitoring my emails to see what kind of books get promoted in my genre.

Every book I can see on their deal page is wide. Most of mine aren't, but I'll see if any KU titles get advertised.

[DrewMcGunn]

Thanks for posting this. Subscribed to see what they send me. Always on the lookout for some place that will take my money for the promise of eyes on my books.

[OfficialEthanJ]

What I'm hearing is, they have 800K subs, all of whom are indie authors monitoring their genre. 

[123mlh]

I've run ads with them on the general list as well as some genre-specific ones. I had to pay by check at the time so hopefully they've gotten past that. No issue getting accepted. Didn't see results I'd want to pay for again at the price they charge.

[WasAnn]

I've run ads with them on the general list as well as some genre-specific ones. I had to pay by check at the time so hopefully they've gotten past that. No issue getting accepted. Didn't see results I'd want to pay for again at the price they charge.

Would you mind more details? Was this a long time ago? A few months? How many subs...etc.

[WasAnn]

I took a sampling from their web page and checked ranks. Nothing scientific, but if they were actually moving books, I think I'd see better ranks.

I wonder how many of their 800K subs are actual book buyers. That's the rub.

I might...if I'm brave enough...contact them and ask specific questions about that. Anyone have suggestions about what to ask and how best to ask it?

[Denise]

The rankings are terrible. I signed up too, and I'll check the rankings from the newsletters, but it doesn't look promising.

In terms of price, perhaps they have deal with trad publishers and then it's not as expensive. Maybe the idea is to compete with Bookbub but discouraging indies? 

That said, maybe it's not true that they have 800k subs. I mean, they should have advertised to get those subs, right? How come we've never seen anything? We're also readers and could have been targeted by their ads if such ads existed.

[Post-Crisis D]

I don't see a breakdown by genre of those 800k subscriptions.  Looks like they have five genre sites, so who knows how that 800k breaks down on a per genre basis.  One of their genres is romance, so could the bulk of their subscribers be on the romance list?

They do indicate that 75% of their subscribers are 45 or older, so I wonder if physical books might be a better seller than eBooks to that base?