Bookbub at 1.5million subscribers!

“I now have more books than I can read in a lifetime,” said Suzie Miller of Auburn, Wash. She said she has downloaded more than 350 free books using the service."

Book Lovers are Totally Obsessed with This Website--The Book Insider

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This article brings up some interesting questions for me. I suppose they aren't new (but some might like to read the article anyway ).

On the one hand, it's awesome that readers love this website. That is great for both readers and writers. On the other hand, what good is it if your book is one of the 350 books that someone will not be able to get to in a lifetime?

On the other...tentacle (I'm an octopus now)...several writers here at AW have said Bookbub helped them. So someone is reading those books from BookBub.

What do you think? Do you use Bookbub? As a writer? As a reader? What do you think?

Wow, interesting that it's getting this popular. I've never used it, but I've talked to 3 indie authors in the last month that used it and got a lot of exposure. One got about 15 reviews on Amazon because of it. If I take my book down to 1.99 or lower, I'll definitely give it a shot.

Literateparakeet said:

What do you think? Do you use Bookbub? As a writer? As a reader? What do you think?

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If I had a qualifying book in a popular genre, I'd definitely give them a try. I wouldn't make the book free, though.

WriterBN said:

If I had a qualifying book in a popular genre, I'd definitely give them a try. I wouldn't make the book free, though.

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The first time I made 5 figs in a month on a self-pubbed series was with a free book + Bookbub ad. I think free only works when you have a series. I've done a $0.99 ad with them and it didn't have as good of a return. This is just my experience.

Yes, if it's the first book in a series, making it free for a few days for a Bookbub ad is simply a strategy that works. A heavy discount to 99 cents can work, but the return is often not as great. Still worth it for almost everybody, though.

I use Bookbub as a reader. I usually get all the books that interest me and start downloading them on my iPad's kindle app. XD I'm slow at reading sometimes, so... Uh... Yup!

I use Bookbub as a reader, and I would certainly submit to them if I had a series of books that qualified. However, I have rarely read books I download. I tend to pick up the free ones if they look vaguely interesting, with the intent to look at them later. There have been a few that I picked up at 99 cents or higher, if they looked really interesting or I'd been wanting to pick them up before hand. However, I can only think of one freebie I fully read. I enjoyed it and left a review,but I have yet to pick up any of the other books in the series. There's another one I paid 99 cents for that I plan to read... once I get through the growing list of paperbacks I purchased or borrowed from the library.

So... it works well to announce the existence of a book, but I've read that it has varying success in getting readers to actually read the books picked up from Bookbub ads.

I do like that you're able to select the categories you want mailed to you. Quite a nice feature.

Literateparakeet said:

What do you think? Do you use Bookbub? As a writer? As a reader? What do you think?

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I just signed up with this site a week ago, as a reader. I've been getting the daily emails with a list of discounted or free books in my areas of interest. I like the concept. I would get a free book if it looked interesting (obviously!), and I would pay a few dollars too.

So, as a reader, I like the site.

But I don't plan to use Bookbub to market our historical nonfiction book, when it comes out, because:
The book is going to have a very narrow audience. It has information that's never been translated to English before, so those who want the book will pay for it. It's not a pleasure read; it's more like a textbook-- people who don't want it don't even consider buying it, and people who do want it (the minority) pay more for it.

What another poster said about Bookbub working well when you have a series makes a lot of sense. If you get hooked on a series, you almost HAVE to buy the whole series.

It's like the TV series Lost. We all HAD to watch the entire thing, right up to and including the last episode (no matter how bad it got, how convoluted and tediously ridiculous it got!).

Are you thinking of doing a free offering? I just finished reading the book APE (on self-publishing) and the authors really recommend offering your book for free as an ebook for a time. They did a number of different strategies to market their book, but that was one of them. It worked! Their book is a big success. I got the book for free on BookBaby; not sure if it was/is offered for free on BookBub.

Literateparakeet said:

What do you think? Do you use Bookbub? As a writer? As a reader? What do you think?

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As a reader, I have a big enough stack of paperbacks to read that I don't even buy eBooks. As an author, none of my titles qualify. So while BookBub is a great idea and seems effective, it's not relevant to me. Yet.

Thanks everyone! I am loving the feedback.

For me as a reader, I'm one of those people that get excited, "Ahh! Free book!" I have several on my kindle that I haven't read yet...so I stopped even opening those emails.

As a writer, I think the idea about a series is good. If I had a series, I would definitely give that a try. But I don't (currently) have a series. My books are non-fiction, and that makes it hard for me to decide. Bookbub would be about $400 for me, so it is a tough decision.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Good luck to you, Literateparakeet!

I hope it goes well if you decide to do it.