Paid Promos on Kobo

[Wonder]

Hey all.

I finally tried out Kobo's "promotions tab" after I took two of my series wide recently. I paid thirty bucks to get onto their free mysteries page, gave away about 1000 books in that week, and with sell-through of book two, the ad was easily profitable. Mostly non-US readers too.

I'm glad to see some ad options from the non-Zon retailers!

What's your experience been with ads on Kobo?

[notthatamanda]

Usually terrible. I stick to the ads that don't cost me anything up front. I do apply to the free books ones (top cost $50) I think, but I don't think they've given me one of those since 2018. My first free promo did really good there, and I was very excited about Kobo. I earned over $1000 my first 6 months on Kobo and it has taken me almost 3 years to earn my second $1000 there.

The $80 ads have been a total bust for me.

[Eric Thomson]

Tried a few times but paid ads were never worth my while.

[LilyBLily]

I did the 40% off ads that didn't require me to manually drop my prices all over. Results were meh, and there was zero tail. Not only that, but Kobo picks and chooses which books get to be in these ads and doesn't run the promotions often enough that I could do a reasonable test. And yet...since my three BookBub internationals in a row, my books are selling--in small quantities--regularly on Kobo. So clearly Kobo does not give a boost in visibility based on sales via its in-house ads but does based on sales coming from outside. Put your money somewhere else and point to Kobo and maybe you'll get good long-term results.

[alhawke]

What I'd love to do is tie a Kobo promo with a big promo I'm already running. Like imagine one of their book feature ads while running a Bookbub promotion (anyone of you ever do that?). For some reason, when I try to pair them they always reject me, even when I apply to more standard free promo applications I've been accepted to before. Murphy's law.

You want to move up on their promotion carousel. Ads can help with this. When your book shows on the carousel, it sells. When it doesn't, it gets only one or two sales during the promotion, ime.

As far as paid versus not, the paid $10 free promotions can give you some visibility. But be careful. If you run a free promo on Kobo, your book might be price matched free on Amazon.

As far as whether the paid are worth it ... they're affordable. You might get a limited tail.

[Mysterywriter]

What I'd love to do is tie a Kobo promo with a big promo I'm already running. Like imagine one of their book feature ads while running a Bookbub promotion (anyone of you ever do that?). For some reason, when I try to pair them they always reject me, even when I apply to more standard free promo applications I've been accepted to before. Murphy's law.

You want to move up on their promotion carousel. Ads can help with this. When your book shows on the carousel, it sells. When it doesn't, it gets only one or two sales during the promotion, ime.

As far as paid versus not, the paid $10 free promotions can give you some visibility. But be careful. If you run a free promo on Kobo, your book might be price matched free on Amazon.

As far as whether the paid are worth it ... they're affordable. You might get a limited tail.

I combined a Kobo free promotion with a global bookbub just over a week ago. I’ve posted numbers in private section on here. Will update soon!

[alhawke]

For some reason, I missed that you linked a Kobo promo. Thanks for the stats!