BookBub Advertising: Principles for Success

One of the key ways that publishers and authors alike lift book sales—or keep them steady—is through self-serve, online advertising platforms that charge based on the number of impressions and/or number of clicks. Such ads get delivered based on parameters you, the advertiser, set (e.g., keyword, comparable author, comparable title). But authors often struggle to make profitable use of these platforms because of the learning curve involved. It is not like running a traditional advertisement in a newspaper or magazine.

In a February webinar, BookBub’s Carlyn Robertson offered a walk-through for beginners on how BookBub ads work. We’re not talking about BookBub’s Featured Deals (which work like traditional ads), but ads programmatically inserted afterward. Programmatically means that the advertising is automated in terms of buying and insertion. Everyone has experienced such ads; they include Google ads inserted into websites and digital publications as well as social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram.

The challenge with such ads? Every book is unique, and what works for one author or title might not work for another. The first ads you run probably aren’t going to do that well, and testing your ad is critical. Most authors tend to get discouraged and give up, said Robertson, instead of using failures as a learning opportunity to improve the ad. “There is going to be a lot of trial and error to figure out what works for your particular books.”

BookBub readers are power readers and look for new books to buy—usually at a discount. Therefore, your success on BookBub’s platform is more likely, especially for your initial campaign, if you advertise the first in a series at a low price (or free), any other type of free or discounted book, or a box set with a favorable price. Of course you can advertise full-price books, too, but Robertson said that your existing fans are most likely to purchase at the higher price. If you want to advertise and capture readers new to your work, they’re more likely to take a chance on an author they don’t know if the price is low.

To create the best ad: Clearly signal the genre and mood. It should be obvious from a glance what type of book you’re promoting, Robertson said. The cover does a lot of that work for you, plus you can mention the genre in the ad image. Other tips:

• Highlight a deal price in the image. BookBub ads get a 32 percent higher average click-through-rate when they include the word free in the image. A price of 99 cents also performs well. 
• If you’re not offering a deal: Use a strong hook in the image. You could highlight a popular trope that will appeal to your fan base; quote from another author or publication that your readers trust; or make a comparison to a book, movie, or TV show. (However, be careful: “If you make a big promise, get a lot of clicks, but the description doesn’t match up with expectations, you may not see a lot of sales,” Robertson said. So be honest in your comparisons.
• Many ads include a call to action—like Buy Now—that looks like a button (even though the whole ad is a button). It works.

New authors typically make their mistakes when targeting the ad. On BookBub, there are five ways to target: by reading-format preference, region, retailer preference, category interest, and author interest. It’s the last two that have the biggest room for error. When you use category targeting, your ad reaches any reader signed up for that category. (Here’s a list of BookBub categories.) While it may be tempting to use category targeting to reach as many people as possible, BookBub data shows that author targeting is almost always more effective. When you use author targeting, any readers who follow an author on BookBub or have engaged with them in the past on BookBub will see the ad. It’s possible to combine author and category targeting, which Robertson said is a fantastic strategy to use if you’re targeting authors who write across multiple genres—so you can reach the most relevant readers.

Avoid the most popular authors for your ad targeting. That means not picking Stephen King if you’re writing horror. You want to target fans of similar authors, but going straight to the bestsellers won’t provide a good return on investment. Robertson encouraged taking time to research this “rather than going to the first names you think of.” For example, check your also-boughts on Amazon, browse retailer bestseller lists, look for similar cover branding, and check for compatible distribution. (If your books are in Kindle Unlimited, you’ll have better luck if your author also has books in Kindle Unlimited and vice versa.) Robertson also suggested that authors keep an eye on BookBub’s Featured Deals, as they provide a nice source of target author inspiration—a great way to find authors who have a large and engaged audience in BookBub.

Other tips on author targeting:

• If you choose just one author to target, this can help you control the budget you spend per author, test the ad, and tailor the ad to that unique audience.
• If you choose multiple authors to target, your ad may be distributed more often to readers of the most popular of the authors you’ve chosen. This can lead to poor results, so BookBub generally recommends you target individual authors with smaller audiences for even distribution and to avoid exhausting your impressions on the big guys alone. Fortunately, you can see differences in ad performance among multiple authors through BookBub’s campaign dashboard.

The most confusing part for authors is typically the bidding process. Ads are sold in an automated auction process. Your bid determines how competitive your ad is in the auction and if your ad is shown. The bid you place is the maximum you are willing to pay for clicks or impressions for your selected targeting. You may end up paying less, since your ultimate rate will be that of the next highest bidder. BookBub does give you a range of winning bids to help guide you, but it will still take time to learn how much you need to bid to reach your particular audiences.

When bidding, you can choose between CPM (rate per 1,000 impressions) or CPC (clicks). Choosing to run a CPM ad ensures you get a lot of impressions, but it’s riskier from a cost perspective because it’s the same cost regardless of how many people click on the ad. With CPC, you only pay when someone clicks on the ad, and typically you bid higher with CPC ads. If you have a very short-term campaign, such as pushing a discount that lasts a limited time, you may need to bid higher to get your ad served. For long-term campaigns, you can bid lower, be patient, and wait for your bid to win. When testing ads, it’s best to set a small budget of $5 or $10, then try to get the ad to serve quickly so you can determine what works and what doesn’t. Robertson suggested test campaigns where you create two or more ads to run at the same time, editing just one element (e.g., image or target) at a time—then use a high CPM bid to win impressions quickly to get data to compare. She said 1,000 impressions is enough to ensure the results you’re seeing are reliable.

Bottom line: Here we’ll restate the common dictums surrounding this type of advertising: Don’t assume what works for one book will work for another; always experiment and test your assumptions; place small bets, then scale up; and realize that every ad platform is different in terms of what works. If you have a lot of success on Facebook or Amazon with your ads, that’s great, but the same ads may not do well on BookBub. It’s also helpful to learn and master one platform at a time, especially if this is all new to you.