Is this an odd Bookbub strategy>

[Dormouse]

I was reading my Bookbub email today, as I sometimes do, and saw a book. 5th in the series. Usual 0.99. Very positive reviews on Goodreads and Amazon.
First, rather gushing, review said how good it was and advised reading the whole series starting with the first.
OK I thought. lets look at the first: 3.99 - like the others. All in KU.
I assume this is a strategy designed to increase KU reads, because for a reader like me who isn't in KU there's no sense in buying at all when it would be so much cheaper to get KU for a month and read the lot. Outcome is that I'll not bother at all.

Having books in KU and bookbubbing a first in series makes sense to me. Works for KU readers and buyers alike.
I can also see bookbubbing a 5th in series might make sense if the series is wide.
But I'm not sure a 5th in series makes sense for a KU book. Unless, I suppose, a lot of KU readers stopped reading before 5 came out and can be reminded into getting back in.
Does anyone else do this?

[idontknowyet]

So you wont buy the book because its in KU?

Um? The whole point of doing a bookbub is to sell an entire series or catalogue not give away free books for the fun of it.

If it was book 1, all the rest would be full price not for those not in ku.


It wouldn't be my strategy, I would start at one, but some people will apply for all books and hope the bub accepts them.

[notthatamanda]

Bookbub is exposure, particularly for a paid book.  A 99 cent book will keep it's rank after the bookbub is over and, presumably, the price goes up.  If a bookbub gets a book up into the top 100 for a subcategory that is a lot of extra exposure and depending on the genre and/or market, it could be up there for a while.  1st in a series, 12th in a series, 48th in a series, it's good exposure, in KU or not. People do cycle their books in the series as they apply, just hoping to get one in.  Not me, cause I never got either of my first ones in, but it's not unusual.

[Dormouse]

So you wont buy the book because its in KU?

I buy books in KU, and not in KU.
I buy reduced books, cheap books and expensive books.
I'll sometimes buy later books before buying early ones.

What I don't do is pay 16.95 for books that I could read in a month with a KU subscription. Which is why I assumed it's a strategy for KU reads rather than sales. But maybe someone has done this and got a good number of sales from it.
Superficially at least it seems an odd strategy to me, but I've never been in KU so I've no direct experience of how best to tickle the reads along.
I do appreciate notthatamanda's point about getting any book in you can. I hadn't thought of that.

[idontknowyet]

I sometimes have KU and sometimes I get mad and drop ku. I will also buy books that are in ku even though I can read them there. Some people wont sign up for KU even if they can read the books cheaper. I can read many series in a week so financially it would make sense to do it that way, but if I'm irritated with ku I will just buy the books straight out.

That is from a reader perspective.


That's why your post didn't make sense to me. 

[TimothyEllis]

It might have been as simple as book 5 was the only book in the series Bookbub would accept.

My only BB, an intl, was on book 7.

I've never been able to get them to accept any of my book 1's.

So later books in a series are probably just an attempt to get a BB on something.

[LilyBLily]

I'm thinking of doing just this--promoting a later book in my series since it's arguably better written than the first one. Maybe BookBub will finally bite. Of course, first I'd have to actually, you know, apply for a BookBub ad. 

[Simon Haynes]

When I see a 'book x' on BB and X != 1, I won't buy it. But then I'm not a KU subscriber.

I don't mind a cheap or free book 1, to discover if I'm interested in the series, but a book > 1 means I have to buy this one, then buy all the ones before it at full price before I get to read this one, and that's too much of an investment.

For all I know the author might have dropped the first in series to free or 99c, but I never go and look. I just skip the deal and check the next one.

[notthatamanda]

Maybe Bookbub likes 99 cent deals better than free, they get paid more, after all.  Maybe they do more of those than free.  Makes me wonder if I should try for a 99 cent deal with book 2 or 3 of one of my trilogies.

ETA - I've been playing with the numbers, based on Bookbubs projected downloads.  So if 1000 people download a 99 cent book, but if a free book for the same category gets a 15000+ downloads, what percent of people that get the 99 cent bookbub, click on it, go to the first in the series and click on the free book and download that, then calculate your readthrough.

The unknown is 99 cent book Bookbub to drive first in the series free.  I'd be interested in hearing from people who have done that and what they saw for results.  Genre is probably important here too. 

[Bill Hiatt]

When I see a 'book x' on BB and X != 1, I won't buy it. But then I'm not a KU subscriber.

I don't mind a cheap or free book 1, to discover if I'm interested in the series, but a book > 1 means I have to buy this one, then buy all the ones before it at full price before I get to read this one, and that's too much of an investment.

For all I know the author might have dropped the first in series to free or 99c, but I never go and look. I just skip the deal and check the next one.

Aside from BookBub, most promoters don't want to take anything other than book 1, I think precisely because the ad will have less appeal.

Really, what we need are more options to promote a whole series. People who've seen some of the early books but missed that there were more can be reminded. People who haven't read any can start with 1.

I wish AMS would add a series option rather than sticking with the individual book model.

[Simon Haynes]

I wish AMS would add a series option rather than sticking with the individual book model.

I agree! But that way Amazon won't get the chain of ad revenue as people click other ads on our product page, then other ads on the next product page, and so on.

[notthatamanda]

How would you guys envision this working?  Separate category to advertise in - Complete Series, First Book Free?

I'll ask Written Word Media if we can hammer down some parameters.

[Simon Haynes]

I'd say allow linking to the series page instead of the product page for one book.

[notthatamanda]

Oh, good one. 

I could ask Kobo too.  A promo entitled "Find your next binge, Complete Series, First on Free"
That could link to the series page too.  Not that Simon's concerned with Kobo anymore.  ;)

[TimothyEllis]

Oh, good one. 

I could ask Kobo too.  A promo entitled "Find your next binge, Complete Series, First on Free"
That could link to the series page too.  Not that Simon's concerned with Kobo anymore.  ;)

Go a step further.

Find your next binge: Complete universe, Book 1 is free. Then links to each series book 1.

[Simon Haynes]

Oh, good one. 

I could ask Kobo too.  A promo entitled "Find your next binge, Complete Series, First on Free"
That could link to the series page too.  Not that Simon's concerned with Kobo anymore.  ;)

Haha.

All the Hal books & omnibus editions are now in KU. I just set up a bookbub CPM ad with the whole series of ten covers showing, and in the US and UK it links directly to the series page. (AU and CA don't have series pages, so I just linked to the first book instead.)


There's nothing to stop someone running a Kobo ad on BB and linking to the series list there, though.

[Lu Kudzoza]

It could be part of a launch strategy. When was the book published? A lot of people launch the next in series at .99 and push ads (FB, AMS, Bookbub) to the book for 4 or 5 days. Then they raise the price and ride the tail of the good ranking and also boughts created by the algos. Also, once the price is raised people see book 5 and decide to buy book 1 because it's interesting (and there isn't a price discrepancy anymore).

[David VanDyke]

Quite the opposite: it mainly makes sense to do this later-book strategy for KU books, rather than wide.

As KU readers don't care about price, the goal is to get them to see the series and read it all. It's pure exposure.

It also may be a recent release and the author wants to boost the release into the stratosphere to get exposure on the Top 100 and Popularity lists.

Just another way KU warps things from a true marketplace and invites gaming the system.

[Dormouse]

My only BB, an intl, was on book 7.

I've never been able to get them to accept any of my book 1's.

Do you remember if it did relatively better for reads than sales?

[Dormouse]

I don't mind a cheap or free book 1, to discover if I'm interested in the series, but a book > 1 means I have to buy this one, then buy all the ones before it at full price before I get to read this one, and that's too much of an investment.

For all I know the author might have dropped the first in series to free or 99c, but I never go and look. I just skip the deal and check the next one.

I think that's my position, although I will check the other prices. Sometimes they are all low, and some seem permanently so.

[LilyBLily]

It could make sense to advertise a new, later entry in a series. I just saw an ad for someone's Book #1, and having read the entire series I know that Book #1 has a different lead character than all the other titles in the series and might put people off. It has some very negative reviews--not entirely unjustified--that also might cause people not to try the series. Everybody says to make the book that is advertised the best, but often a Book #1 isn't quite there yet and the series gets better in later titles.

One way that author has mitigated that situation is to advertise an omnibus of Books #1-3, something I have considered, too.     Presumably the hope is that entropy (or is it inertia?) will keep a reader reading even if the reader doesn't love Book #1.

As for people who don't want to buy Book #Whatever in a series, it's the particular story setup that attracts me and not usually a series as such. Only if I feel enthusiastic about that author will I bother to check out other books in a series.

[Dormouse]

Thanks for all the responses.

afaics, the general view is that it makes sense in KU, but not necessarily otherwise.
But might work wide if it's the only BookBub you can get and you also lower some earlier prices. And it is general advertising to a buying public, even if they don't buy this book.
Would presumably also work if the series can be read as standalones.

I did think of one possible exception which is where it is used to re-energise a relatively recent release and where the same strategy has been used for previous books in the series. My guess would be that this is most effective for big sellers & probably trad published.

iirc, I can think of some series where this has been done a few times. Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London, and Andrea Carter's Inishowen Mysteries.

[Dormouse]

It could make sense to advertise a new, later entry in a series. I just saw an ad for someone's Book #1, and having read the entire series I know that Book #1 has a different lead character than all the other titles in the series and might put people off. It has some very negative reviews--not entirely unjustified--that also might cause people not to try the series. Everybody says to make the book that is advertised the best, but often a Book #1 isn't quite there yet and the series gets better in later titles.

I think it's always a problem with series when the first isn't typical or is significantly worse than the rest.
Presumably you can check for this by looking at read through from Book 1 to Book 2.

I can see that your idea of relaunching and shifting Book 1 to a prequel might be the best way of dealing with this.
Or making sure that every book works as a standalone.

[Dormouse]

The unknown is 99 cent book Bookbub to drive first in the series free.  I'd be interested in hearing from people who have done that and what they saw for results.  Genre is probably important here too.

I have no data, not having done it, but if I like the look of a 0.99 Bookbub I'll also snap up the free first in series. And if I like them, then I'll probably buy the rest. Unless it would be much cheaper in KU.