BookBub Ad to give away ARCs

[Tom Wood]

I'm on track to release the first three books of a series - all at the same time to make a big splash. I have no mailing list or large social media presence, so I probably represent a lot of people who are trying to launch this thing. I'm coming out of nowhere.

I've been in contact with BookBub (BB) and BookFunnel (BF), and have reached a way to use both to distribute my ARCs via a BB Ad that links to a BF bundle 'download' page that has all three links to the book pages at BookFunnel that in turn link to their pages at Amazon. (BB would not let me link to a BF page that collects emails - I'm okay with that for this effort.)

I'd run these ads starting about 10 days out from the launch date, with the books on pre-order so I can link to their pages in the BF download page. In the ebook itself, I'll include a link to its page at Amazon and also make a plea for a review - both at the front and end.

I've identified three books as comparables that I want to use to tell Amazon that they should match me to those readers:
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (Virtual reality and a game - a common theme in all three of the books in this list, as well as mine.)
Warcross - Marie Lu (Does a brilliant job of bridging from science fiction to the romance readers.)
The Eye of Minds - James Dashner (Also wrote The Maze Runner series, so this is also a link to The Hunger Games and Divergent readers.)

If you go to Bookbub and set up an ad, you'll see that there are about 40,000 total followers of those three authors combined, and about 110,000 readers. (See David Gaughrans's posts and book to see the minimal difference.) BB ads are served to the readers number.

I plan to run three BB ads, each one targeted at one of the above authors. Here's the one for Ernest Cline - Ready Player One:



Given that you are a fan of Ready Player One, would you click on the ad?

(The other two ads would replace RPO with the relevant title.)

[Jeff Tanyard]

I'm not seeing the ads--and I haven't read Cline's book, so I'm not your target audience anyway--but I wish you all the best.   

When are you launching the series?

[Tom Wood]

History is-a made at night!

Character is what you are in the dark.

Where are we going?

(Planet Ten!)

When?

(Real soon!)


So yeah. Soon.

[Tom Wood]

Here is what I think is a worst-case scenario for using this approach to generate some early reviews:



The assumptions on CPM, CTR, review rate and read-thru are based on what I'm reading in the various online discussions. The idea here is that the reviews will be from people who also bought one of the three books that I want Amazon to use as also-boughts for my books. They won't be 'verified purchase' reviews, but I'm assuming that Amazon will still make the connection.

At the current moment in time, I'm being served some poor-quality ads from BookBub that are not targeted at me at all. Which tells me they have excess capacity. I think I'll start off with a lowball CPM bid and see if it serves any impressions. I'm also hoping that a single ad that delivers three free ARCs will have a higher CTR.

[Denise]

Why don't you post your ARCs on Booksprout? You could get some ARC readers there for free.

Try some review groups on Goodreads or Facebooks.

The reason is that BookBub readers might not be reviewers, so it's possible that you'll spend money and give away your books for no reason.

Also, BookBub readers buy books, so you'll want to use those ads when the book is for sale.

[Tom Wood]

Thank you for the BookSprout referral, I signed up for an account. I'm a little bit confuzzled by all the references to 'your readers' at the site. I don't have any readers. I'll poke around there and see if it will work. Since I'm pursuing a strategy that is focused on relevant also-boughts, I'm not sure I want to use generic groups. Even BookBub's own featured deals are too generic in terms of the readership.

Given my spreadsheet numbers above, I won't be exhausting the potential buyers at BookBub - 110,000. Only 1200 or so might participate in the ARC effort. Which leaves a lot of room to run a drip-style campaign going forward. My ad(s) will switch to this after the release date:



ETA: Again, the book title at the top will change to the relevant one for the target audience.

[Bill Hiatt]

Do we know whether unverified reviews even affect also-boughts? My assumption has always been that they didn't, that only people who actually purchased the books (and maybe those who borrowed in KU) affected those also-boughts. After all, reviewers from something like BookSprout are getting the book for free, right, not buying it.

[Denise]

Thank you for the BookSprout referral, I signed up for an account. I'm a little bit confuzzled by all the references to 'your readers' at the site.

Booksprout assumes you have readers. It's ok if you don't. If you post your arc it will go public on their website and some people will sign up. Only readers interested in your genre will download it. It doesn't affect also boughts. You should get some 3 to 6 readers, because it's not a popular genre on the site, but still... I think it's worth it.

It's also easier to post just book 1, because then it's less stuff for the readers. If they like it, then they can ask for book 2.

Also, again, look for review or ARC groups on Goodreads and Facebook.

The reason is that some people review books but most don't. If you're not targeting reviewers, the odds that whoever downloads your books will post a review is like 1/500 to 1/1000. True story. Just ask anyone who's done free book giveaways.

[Tom Wood]

Do we know whether unverified reviews even affect also-boughts? My assumption has always been that they didn't, that only people who actually purchased the books (and maybe those who borrowed in KU) affected those also-boughts. After all, reviewers from something like BookSprout are getting the book for free, right, not buying it.

I admit that it's a stretch, but if the all-seeing Amazon algorithm is really that smart then it could look at all the possible connections between the people who are active on the site. If it sees that a person who reviewed a book (that they didn't buy at Amazon) also bought a given title at Amazon, then it might make the connection in the background. Long shot at best, I know. I just feel like it's a better strategy than trying to collect random reviews that tell the algorithm nothing useful. The BookBub ads allow me to target the readers of specific books.

This video from Chris Fox isn't about reviews, but it is about 'training' the Amazon algorithm. It's only 8:30 minutes long, but the first 3:30 is about data science so you can skip to that time mark to get to the book stuff.

ETA: He makes a subtle case that getting a promotion on one of the giveaway sites is a bad thing when it comes to the also-boughts and to the long game of getting Amazon to help sell your books.