There are more than 3 billion people using messaging services—1 billion within Facebook alone—so messaging platforms hold incredibly strong appeal for marketers. Last year, Facebook opened up its Messenger platform to allow businesses to build and integrate branded chatbots.
As frequent Facebook users know, Messenger is most commonly used to send private messages between friends, but it’s now possible to receive messages from businesses, retailers, and others that use a mix of artificial intelligence and human oversight to mimic conversations.
With chatbots, businesses (and authors) can sidestep email newsletters and Facebook newsfeeds and reach people directly through their Facebook Messenger inbox. Earlier this year, the Bookseller offered an overview of chatbot activity in the publishing community, but it had little to say about book publishers testing the waters—so far, news outlets and magazines are the ones taking advantage of the functionality. But recently Kerry Gardiner, who writes crime fiction under several pen names, has started a new effort in the indie author community, Bookbot Bob.
Bookbot Bob is a Facebook Messenger bot that offers free ebooks to readers. Gardiner says that offering free ebooks is nothing new, but that Bookbot Bob is unique because it doesn’t ask readers for their email address. “That is the big USP [unique selling point], and the readers are loving it—perhaps in revolt at being subjected to unknown trillions of emails from authors as a result of the Instafreebie model,” she says. Once you agree to be messaged by Bookbot Bob, it asks for your preferred genres, and you receive a daily message promoting a new (free) ebook, with links to all the major platforms where the ebook can be downloaded. If you don’t want Bob in your life anymore, you can stop the messages just by typing stop.
All ebooks offered through Bob are paid placements; the current fee is $5 for a single placement, since the service is new and still growing. Gardiner’s requirements: books must be full-length ebooks with at least 10 reviews and an average four-star rating; they must be actually free (not just Kindle Unlimited). The books must be available on one of the major platforms (e.g., not available only via Instafreebie or BookFunnel) and not require an email newsletter signup.
Author Cidney Swanson recently promoted her permafree novel via Bookbot Bob and told us, “For a new service (which added Teen/YA only a week before my ad), the performance was good. It was in line [with] or better than most new promo services. My sales on the next-in-series are sitting at 200 percent of normal for book two and 150 percent of normal for book three, so there is good read-through. It indicates Bookbot Bob readers downloaded copies of the free title to read the book as opposed to storing it on their Kindle for later.”
Bottom line: Two major publishers have book recommendation chatbots: UK’s Pan Macmillan and HarperCollins’s Epic Reads. It’s still early days for Facebook chatbots, so no one is annoyed by such messages coming into Messenger—because they’re not yet deluged with them. We anticipate the novelty might wear off quickly, just as it does with any promotional method. For now, though, it’s a fresh and innovative way to reach readers. To learn more about chatbots, take a look at this post from Social Media Examiner. Also, ManyChat is a tool that helps create and support Facebook chatbots (Bookbot Bob uses ManyChat). Side note: It’s also possible to advertise via Facebook Messenger; read more from Jon Loomer on that.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
