Running a Bargain Booksy promotion is a time and cost-effective way for authors to market their books. Over 30,000 happy authors have run book promotions with us and one of the most frequent questions we get is how best to optimize a Bargain Booksy Promotion. Here are our pointers and insider tips on how to promote your book with Bargain Booksy and get the best results!
Picking Your Promo Price
Bargain Booksy accepts books that are priced between $0.99 and $4.99. However, most of our authors see the highest engagement from our audience on books priced at $0.99. Many authors use our services when they are running a price promotion, or marketing their book while it is discounted. This means that a majority of the books in the email on a given day are priced at $0.99. If your book is priced higher than that, it really needs to pack a punch in order to get sizeable engagement from our readers.
That said, books that are well reviewed, with professional covers and engaging book description can see success at the $2.99 and $3.99 price point. You can read more about the relationship between pricing and profit in our data-packed article on How to Price Your Book for Maximum Results During a Promotion.
Bottom Line: Price your book at 99c for best results.
Planning the Frequency of your Promotions
We allow authors to promote a book once every 30 days. This allows us to build our list and acquire more readers who will want to read your book! There is no limit on how frequently an author can promote different titles with us.
Different authors have different strategies for promotion. Some want to get their books out there as much as possible. These authors often promote each of their books with us once every 30 days.
Some authors want to get big spikes of engagement out of all of their promotions with us. These authors often promote their books with us on a 90 day cycle. By waiting 90 days, these authors know that we have added tens of thousands of readers to our lists between promotions, so they know they’re going to reach a larger number of new readers.
Some of our authors run promotions on both Bargain Booksy and our sister site, Freebooksy where we promote free eBooks. While the Freebooksy and Bargain Booksy lists are made up of different readers, there is some crossover. We do not require a wait time between running Freebooksy and Bargain Booksy Promotions but due to the moderate amount of crossover, we recommend waiting at least 30 days. If you do plan to run promotions on both Freebooksy & Bargain Booksy within a shorter period, we urge you to run the Bargain Booksy Feature followed by the Freebooksy Feature for optimal sales.
Bottom Line: Once you have run a promotion on Bargain Booksy you will have to wait 30 days before you can run the same title again. Promo slots do book up in advance so plan your promotions and book repeating promotions for the same title on a 30-90 day cycle.
Review Requirements
Getting your book reviewed can be one of the most challenging parts of self-publishing. For this reason, Bargain Booksy does not have a minimum review requirement for standard features. We want to make sure that all authors can use our service, no matter how far into their author journey they’ve traveled.
However, it is important to keep in mind that reviews have a substantial impact on reader engagement. A book that has zero, or less than 5 reviews will see fewer sales than a book that has 10+ reviews. When you promote a new, unreviewed title, keep in mind that it may not see optimal engagement.
As we’ve tracked the effect that reviews have on a promotion we’ve honed in on a few strategies that help authors get their first reviews. One of the best ways we’ve found for authors to gain reviews is to promote your book for free with a service like Freebooksy. You can click here to learn more about how and why Freebooksy helps you get reviews.
Bottom Line: The more reviews you have, the better your book will perform. Running a book with little to no reviews may not be immediately ROI positive but it will still result in sales and can still be an effective marketing technique to help your book rank, increase pages read if you are in KU and build your following.
Kindle Unlimited Availability Impacts Results
Is your book available on Kindle Unlimited? If so, the success of your promotion will be gauged not only by book sales, but also by KENP reads and their resulting Amazon payouts. A portion of our Bargain Booksy readers are Kindle Unlimited subscribers, so you’ll see a bump in KENP reads in the days and weeks after a promotion. Some authors have reported that their earnings from KENP reads after a promotion match the revenue they made through direct sales. We’ve recently added a call out tag in our email for books that are enrolled in KU so our readers who are devoted KU members will know that your book is available to them.
Bottom Line: Your promo results will be even better if your book is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Remember to factor in your increased KENP reads when calculating the efficacy of your promotions.
Genre Choice
Getting your book in front of the right audience will make a huge impact on the success of your promotion. We offer a wide variety of genres and the list is growing! Check out our genre guide to find the best fit for your book. If you feel your book can crossover to multiple audiences, you can book a feature in multiple genres on the same day to heighten the impact of your promotion. But don’t worry, we’ve got your back! Our editorial team reviews every book we feature and if we feel you’ve picked a genre that isn’t the best fit, we’ll reach out to you within three days of your booking.
Bottom Line: Promote your book in its genre to get best results. Our editorial team will check your genre choice and let you know if we think there is a better genre fit.
Book Cover Matters
The first impression that readers get about your book is the cover, so having a professional, eye-catching cover that makes sense to your target readers is extremely important. You’ll want to make sure that your cover fits the content and genre you are trying to reach. Stay away from covers that are too dark, hard to read, or that may confuse readers. Check out books in your genre on the bestseller lists to see if your book has similar qualities.
Bottom Line: Don’t overthink your book cover. Your book covers should look similar to other books in your genre. Having a book cover that is off-genre or hard to decipher will confuse readers and impact the success of your promotion.
Plan Ahead To Set Your Price
Bargain Booksy Promotions last for 24-hours and we require that books are at their discounted price on all sales platforms until 11:59 PM EST on the day of the promotion. If your book is enrolled in KDP Select you may choose to discount your book using a Kindle Countdown Deal. If you do, please schedule the countdown to start at 5am or earlier on the day of your promotion.
If your book will not be discounted with a Kindle Countdown Deal you may want to consider setting up your price drop a day before your promotion. Amazon can be very tricky and we’ve worked with many authors whose promotion plans were foiled because they were waiting for Amazon to approve their price change, and we would hate to have that happen to you!
Bottom Line: Amazon can be finicky if you are not using the Kindle Countdown feature. Reduce your price at least 24 hours before your Bargain Booksy promo date to ensure that your price is correct on the day of your promo.
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Contact Us
We are here to help. If you have any further questions about how to prepare for your Bargain Booksy promotion and the best way to promote a book, don’t hesitate to contact us. We generally will respond to your email within 2 business days or quicker.