# BookBub Ad: Final Update



## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Since my BookBub ad on Fallen Pride didn't do as well as I'd hoped, I moved up my ad campaign by a month. I'd originally planned the next BookBub ad for mid-December.

This promo will be for my newly released Fallen Mangrove and I'm going back to the system that worked so well with Fallen Out on 8/1. The Kindle Countdown Deals (US and UK) will start Thursday night, 11/13 and run for four days, until Tuesday night, 11/18 at $.99. This time, I'm pulling out all the stops with front loading ads. I still have two I haven't heard back from, FKB&T and ENT. I'll add them in, once they confirm. Everything's a go. Right now I have the following promotions set up for Saturday, 10/15, with BookBub in both the US and UK on Sunday, 10/16.

BookBub - $336.00
Fussy Librarian - $7.00
AwesomeGang - $10.00
BookSends - $20.00
ReadCheaply - Free
eBookSoda - $10.00
Pixel of Ink - Free (Won't know until the day of the promo iif they run it.)
Kboards - $35.00
IndieBookBargainsUK - $5.00
Fiverr BKnight - $5.00
GoodKindles - $7.95
FKB&T - $25
eBookBargainsUK - $8.20
ENT - $20

Total cost of all ads: $489.15
Sales needed to recoup the cost of ads on 11/15: 700
Sales needed to recoup the cost of the BookBub ad: 480
Sales needed to recoup the usual days sales: 200 per day
Total sales to break even over the whole four days: 2000
Projected sales over four days, based on past experience: 4000-5000

Average sales of Fallen Mangrove is about 60 over the last few days, but it'll probably be down around 30-40 per day by mid-November. Prior experience tells me that I'll get about 50 sales above average on Friday the 14th, just from the KCD. I predict 100 total sales. All those ads on Saturday, the 15th should equate to about 100 above average. I predict 150 total sales.

Fallen Mangrove will probably start from somewhere between #2000 and #2500 before the KCD starts, rising slowly on Friday to about #1500 and higher still on Saturday into the top 1000, possibly as high as #500. If it's above #1000 when the BookBub ad comes out, it should make the top 50 by early Monday morning, the day after the BookBub ad. If it's at about #500 before the BookBub ad comes out, it could make the top 20. My best performance so far got Fallen Out to #15 in early August.


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## WCHoffman (Apr 24, 2014)

Bookmarked and ready to enjoy this ride with ya!


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Wayne, buddy, you inspired me with the previous thread reporting your past promo results. Ironically, I have a very similar promo scheduled on almost exactly the same days. This should provide TWO sets of data for everyone to compare and ponder.

I'm starting from a lower sales per day total than you, but I have high hopes, given the fact that the book I'll be promoting, _HUNTER_, is the first in the Dylan Hunter series and previously hit #4 on Kindle. Here is the schedule, building on a 100-hour (4+ day) Kindle Countdown Deal in both US and UK, during which I'll reduce the price from $4.99 to 99 cents. (NOTE: I'm promoting this in the "thriller" categories of the following sites and lists):

Wed. Nov. 12: Starting KCD late in the day, to make sure that there are no glitches the next morning.

Thurs. Nov. 13: KCD, plus BKnights at Fiverr, and Kindle Books & Tips. The idea is to start an upward trend early.

Fri. Nov. 14: KCD, plus I pile on Riffle, Booksends, EbookSoda (US + UK), Fussy Librarian, EbookLister, Awesome Gang, and Readers in the Know (with a likely blog interview, too).

Sat. Nov. 15: The big day: KCD, plus ENT and Bookbub.

During the early days, I'll also be hitting social media -- hard.

As for expectations, I'll only draw on the past experience of Wayne and others. I'll regard the experiment as a flop if _HUNTER_ fails to get well into the Top 100. I'll be mildly satisfied if it does, and regard the experiment as a "success" if it gets into the Top 50.

However, I do have confidence about hitting the Top 50, and even guarded optimism about hitting the Top 20. I'll be over the moon if it reaches the Top 10 -- and I think that with this promotional lineup, that may be possible, especially with the promo ending with both ENT and Bookbub on the same day.

I'll be fascinated to see how a rising trend of sales over 100 hours will affect both the final ranking and the duration of the book's presence in the Top 100. And I'll also watch the "halo effect" on sales of the print and audio editions of _HUNTER_, and also on sales of the sequel, _BAD DEEDS_.

Wishing you luck, Wayne, and thanks for your advice.


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## djv1120 (Dec 7, 2013)

Very glad I saw this post. I have been hoping that I can soon qualify for Bookbub and have been trying to decide whether to do free or paid. I had a thread a couple weeks ago, but the only feedback I got was from people who did free promos and insisted that it was the best without any real data. Based on the numbers your mentioning, I think .99 is the way to go instead of free.

I have always thought that 1,000 sales was worth more than 10,000 free downloads and if it works for you, I couldn't hope to do any better than emulate your success.

Just out of curiosity, have you done any FREE promos on Bookbub?


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

djv1120 said:


> Very glad I saw this post. I have been hoping that I can soon qualify for Bookbub and have been trying to decide whether to do free or paid. I had a thread a couple weeks ago, but the only feedback I got was from people who did free promos and insisted that it was the best without any real data. Based on the numbers your mentioning, I think .99 is the way to go instead of free.
> 
> I have always thought that 1,000 sales was worth more than 10,000 free downloads and if it works for you, I couldn't hope to do any better than emulate your success.
> 
> Just out of curiosity, have you done any FREE promos on Bookbub?


Except it's easier to get a free spot on BookBub (hugely easier). And you get way more than 10,000 free downloads.


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## djv1120 (Dec 7, 2013)

YodaRead said:


> Except it's easier to get a free spot on BookBub (hugely easier). And you get way more than 10,000 free downloads.


Why do you say it is easier? I'm not saying your wrong, I'm just asking why you say that. I get way more promotions from Bookbub for paid books than free books - I am signed up for 4 or 5 categories including fantasy, young adult, and action/adventure which are the categories my books would fit into.


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## djv1120 (Dec 7, 2013)

YodaRead said:


> Except it's easier to get a free spot on BookBub (hugely easier). And you get way more than 10,000 free downloads.


The 10,000 to 1,000 was simply a ratio. That is roughly what Bookbub publishes as the difference between free and paid - 10 to 1 (plus or minus depending on category).


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

djv1120 said:


> Why do you say it is easier? I'm not saying your wrong, I'm just asking why you say that. I get way more promotions from Bookbub for paid books than free books - I am signed up for 4 or 5 categories including fantasy, young adult, and action/adventure which are the categories my books would fit into.


Because that's what evidence has shown. I've been watching this stuff for about two years. Most people report that it's easier to get accepted for free than paid. I used their advice when I put my first book up for free about a year ago. I had 50,000 free downloads from the mystery spot. I think I spent like 250 bucks. That tail lasted for months. I decided to do the same with the first book in another series several months ago. I got accepted in 24 hours (I've only tried the two times because I don't want to dilute the BookBub effect). I went into a smaller subcategory for this one, spent $80, and had 30,000 free downloads. The after sell pushed my free book up to a high of 430 after it went to paid. Months later? It's still under 1,000 ranking. Free has worked for me, it's cheaper, and apparently it's easier to get in that category. I have no intention of trying for paid any time soon - although I don't want to dilute the market and won't try for another (for a new pen name) until the spring, and then another for my main pen name when the third book is out in another series until next fall.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

I believe it's easier to get into Bookbub as free. But I don't want to sacrifice my existing paid ranking, so I'm trying again at 99c. I'm 99.9% certain they'll decline me. 

I'll be watching this thread with interest- as always


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## nightfire (Mar 22, 2012)

Just curious why you scheduled these so far in advance of Black Friday?


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

I tried about ten times for a paid BB and got turned down each time. Then I got accepted first go for a freebie, which in terms of impact was possibly the single most successful thing I've done in my (short) writing career so far, as I reduced the prices of my other books to 99c and cross promoted in the blurb of the BB title.


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Lydniz said:


> I tried about ten times for a paid BB and got turned down each time. Then I got accepted first go for a freebie, which in terms of impact was possibly the single most successful thing I've done in my (short) writing career so far, as I reduced the prices of my other books to 99c and cross promoted in the blurb of the BB title.


Yeah, this will be my next try when I can submit again... I've submitted almost ten times, at a guess. Time to bite the free bullet, I think.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

DaCosta said:


> Yeah, this will be my next try when I can submit again... I've submitted almost ten times, at a guess. Time to bite the free bullet, I think.


Do it, definitely. If you cross-promote to another discounted title you get all the benefits of doing a 99c run at half the price for the ad!


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## Graham C. (Oct 19, 2014)

> I am signed up for 4 or 5 categories including fantasy, young adult, and action/adventure which are the categories my books would fit into.


*djv1120* you can buy a free ad at Bookbub in young adult for $80. They say you can expect 12,300 downloads but I did a free run in that category and ended up with 22,000 downloads and your sequel sales will kick in that day and keep going, The ROI for Bookbub free is AWESOME. And I found that the reviews from a Bookbub free run seem to be very enthusiastic...as if Bookbub's seal of approval puts your reader in a frame of mind to like your book.

I haven't done the 99 cents, so I can't compare, but free seems easier to get into. I got my Bookbub yes response in one hour. Your book looks like a no-brainer for a Bookbub acceptance, so if you are wary of free I would just say don't be.

Plus, if you are categorized in children's fantasy and regular fantasy you'll probably hit the top of both free charts and stay there for a few days.


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## djv1120 (Dec 7, 2013)

Graham C. said:


> *djv1120* you can buy a free ad at Bookbub in young adult for $80. They say you can expect 12,300 downloads but I did a free run in that category and ended up with 22,000 downloads and your sequel sales will kick in that day and keep going, The ROI for Bookbub free is AWESOME. And I found that the reviews from a Bookbub free run seem to be very enthusiastic...as if Bookbub's seal of approval puts your reader in a frame of mind to like your book.
> 
> I haven't done the 99 cents, so I can't compare, but free seems easier to get into. I got my Bookbub yes response in one hour. Your book looks like a no-brainer for a Bookbub acceptance, so if you are wary of free I would just say don't be.
> 
> Plus, if you are categorized in children's fantasy and regular fantasy you'll probably hit the top of both free charts and stay there for a few days.


Thanks for your encouraging words. I won't consider myself a "no-brainer for Bookbub acceptance" until it happens. I am 0 - 3 so far.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

djv1120 said:


> Very glad I saw this post. I have been hoping that I can soon qualify for Bookbub and have been trying to decide whether to do free or paid. I had a thread a couple weeks ago, but the only feedback I got was from people who did free promos and insisted that it was the best without any real data. Based on the numbers your mentioning, I think .99 is the way to go instead of free.
> 
> I have always thought that 1,000 sales was worth more than 10,000 free downloads and if it works for you, I couldn't hope to do any better than emulate your success.
> 
> Just out of curiosity, have you done any FREE promos on Bookbub?


I did a free promo once, without the benefit of BookBub. I am planning a free BookBub ad for Fallen Out in late February or early March, though. I anticipate 40,000 downloads when I finally do it.


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## djv1120 (Dec 7, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> I did a free promo once, without the benefit of BookBub. I am planning a free BookBub ad for Fallen Out in late February or early March, though. I anticipate 40,000 downloads when I finally do it.


What I would really like to know is what the promotion means for overall readers. Obviously money is good, but what we all want is active readers/fans. We know that not everybody who buys a book reads it and even fewer read book 1 and buy book 2. This is even more true with free books.

Here is an example of what I speculate happens and I would love input on the numbers. 50% of purchasers actually read a book. 50% of readers like the book enough to buy subsequent books. 10% of free downloaders actually read a book. 50% that read the book like it enough to buy subsequent books. If these SWAGs (Scientific Wild Ass Guesses) are accurate, here is what you get:

Free Promo:
40,000 downloads ~ 4,000 actual readers ~ 2,000 sales of next book(s) ~ *$4000 gross earnings with 4,000 new readers/fans*

Paid Promo (.99 Kindle Countdown Deal)
4,000 purchases (.70 profit) ~ 2,000 actual readers ~ 1,000 sales of next book(s) ~ *$4800 gross earnings with 2,000 new readers/fans*

Now, I have very little data to support these numbers. The BookBub price sheet indicates that the number of downloads is approximately 10X the number of sales from a promotion so that is probably close. From limited personal experience, 50% buy through rate is reasonable if the book is interesting (I'm sure some authors are much higher and some are lower).

The interesting part of this theory is that you produce more readers and fans from a free promotion, but you make more money from a paid promotion. I suspect it is a good theory even if my numbers aren't exact.

For a long series, the payoff for the free promotion probably surpasses the paid promotion because there are more books for fans to buy. Also, I expect the buy through rate increases the further along you go (ie. 50% of people that read book 1 buy book 2, but 75% of people that make it through book 3 buy book 4)

Any input on my hypothesis?


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

djv1120 said:


> What I would really like to know is what the promotion means for overall readers. Obviously money is good, but what we all want is active readers/fans. We know that not everybody who buys a book reads it and even fewer read book 1 and buy book 2. This is even more true with free books.
> 
> Here is an example of what I speculate happens and I would love input on the numbers. 50% of purchasers actually read a book. 50% of readers like the book enough to buy subsequent books. 10% of free downloaders actually read a book. 50% that read the book like it enough to buy subsequent books. If these SWAGs (Scientific Wild Ass Guesses) are accurate, here is what you get:
> 
> ...


Your math is missing something. My guess would be a lot more than half of those who paid for a book will read it. It's human nature that we put a higher value on something we pay for. Probably closer to 80% to 90%. Half are likely to buy the following book as well. But, if you have more than two books, that number grows. If I sell 4000 in a BookBub ad, probably 2000 will read book two and half of those will read 3, 4, and 5. So 4000 sales would net $2800 initially, but sell through would be about 1500 x 4 books, or an additional $16,500 (my books are at $3.99, all but the first) spread out over months.

My hope is that when I do finally run the BookBub freebie in the spring, my cover will help get 25% to read it right away and buy another book. That could result in 10K sales at $2.70 profit. If only 10% of those downloaders go on and buy what will then be six more titles, that could turn into 24K sales over a couple of months or $65,000.


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## Ethan Jones (Jan 20, 2012)

I'm scheduled for a BookBub ad on 11/20, but it will be pure BookBub, without any additional ads before or after. I found out in my last experience in September that they don't really work.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone.
Ethan


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## djv1120 (Dec 7, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> Your math is missing something. My guess would be a lot more than half of those who paid for a book will read it. It's human nature that we put a higher value on something we pay for. Probably closer to 80% to 90%. Half are likely to buy the following book as well. But, if you have more than two books, that number grows. If I sell 4000 in a BookBub ad, probably 2000 will read book two and half of those will read 3, 4, and 5. So 4000 sales would net $2800 initially, but sell through would be about 1500 x 4 books, or an additional $16,500 (my books are at $3.99, all but the first) spread out over months.
> 
> My hope is that when I do finally run the BookBub freebie in the spring, my cover will help get 25% to read it right away and buy another book. That could result in 10K sales at $2.70 profit. If only 10% of those downloaders go on and buy what will then be six more titles, that could turn into 24K sales over a couple of months or $65,000.


Thanks, Wayne, for the input. As I said, I don't have enough data to make better than SWAG's at the numbers.

Now that I think about it, I think you are right about the read rate of purchases. By my math, 50% that buy a book read it and 50% that read it buy book 2. That would mean that only 25% of the people that buy book 1 would buy book 2. My personal experience tells me it is closer to 50%. I think I will revise my numbers to say 80% who buy read. As I noted, the effect gets better with more than 2 titles and I know I almost always keep reading to the end of a series if I make it through book 2.

The big question out there is how does each type of promo help sales after it is over. Obviously a sale is a sale and it helps you get found on other people's "also bought" list. What happens after a free promo? Do you still show up on the "also bought" lists of other books?

Here's the new numbers.

Free Promo (10% read rate, $2 profit per book):
40,000 downloads ~ 4,000 actual readers ~ 2,000 sales of each additional book in series ~ $4000 earnings per book after book #1 with 4,000 new readers/fans

Free Promo (20% read rate, $2 profit per book):
40,000 downloads ~ 8,000 actual readers ~ 4,000 sales of each additional book in series ~ $8000 earnings per book after book #1 with 8,000 new readers/fans

Paid Promo (.99 Kindle Countdown Deal, $0.70 profit per book 1, $2 profit for other books in series)
4,000 purchases ~ 3,200 actual readers ~ 1,600 sales of each additional book in series ~ $2240 earnings on first book and $3200 for each book after book #1 with 3,200 new readers/fans

BTW, I'm an engineer by trade so I am pretty into numbers.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

djv1120 said:


> What happens after a free promo? Do you still show up on the "also bought" lists of other books?


Since no books are "bought" during a free promo, there are no also boughts. Plus, while it's free it's not selling and drops in rank. That's the downside of free promos.



> BTW, I'm an engineer by trade so I am pretty into numbers.


I recognized that.  I was an HVAC engineer in an earlier time.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> I did a free promo once, without the benefit of BookBub. I am planning a free BookBub ad for Fallen Out in late February or early March, though. I anticipate 40,000 downloads when I finally do it.


That's about spot on by my numbers. And you can really add some juice to your mailing list if you offer another freebie for those who download the book and then sign up.


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## Graham C. (Oct 19, 2014)

> I won't consider myself a "no-brainer for Bookbub acceptance" until it happens. I am 0 - 3 so far.


Was this 0 for 3 for a paid ad?

Okay, here is how I look at the math.

Not being accepted for a paid BookBub ad, and spending weeks/months on and off applying and being rejected will earn you $0.

Applying for a free spot, (which are easier to get) and getting the ROI and kickstarted sales/KU borrows (if in Select) now = $$$$$$$ 
Then, after doing well on Bookbub free, you can always wait an appropriate length of time and apply later on for a 99cent ad.



> What I would really like to know is what the promotion means for overall readers. Obviously money is good, but what we all want is active readers/fans. We know that not everybody who buys a book reads it and even fewer read book 1 and buy book 2. This is even more true with free books.


There is no other advertising machine that will get you active readers like Bookbub does. They will read your first book, download the second ASAP, and give you a big dump of reviews. Some will even write to you and say nice things.



> Since no books are "bought" during a free promo, there are no also boughts. Plus, while it's free it's not selling and drops in rank. That's the downside of free promos.


Yes but a Bookbub free run is not equivalent to a FreeBooksy free run or an ENT free run, or any other vehicle. You get paid sales after the free run from the increased visibilty so if your rank drops it should climb back up. Plus your sequel sales will keep you visible on the charts for weeks.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Wayne,  how many of your now readers are just waiting for the sale?  
I would say you are right on the buyers will read it faster except for the fact that the book I paid the most for is still not read.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

cinisajoy said:


> Wayne, how many of your now readers are just waiting for the sale?
> I would say you are right on the buyers will read it faster except for the fact that the book I paid the most for is still not read.


For readers to be waiting for a sale means they would actually go to my Amazon author page (as well as dozens of other favorite writers) on a daily basis, all to save the price of a cup of coffee. Out of the 2000 that bought Fallen Pride last month, I doubt if any of them are checking my page daily waiting for the Mangrove sale. They'd only know one was coming up if they read it here. I'd like to think that everyone who read the first four would buy Mangrove as soon as they knew it was published.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

OK so 1.  And that is because she was away when it came out.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Added Kindle Books & Tips to the lineup.


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## djv1120 (Dec 7, 2013)

Graham C. said:


> Was this 0 for 3 for a paid ad?
> 
> Okay, here is how I look at the math.
> 
> ...


I have actually been applying for Free promos and not getting accepted so that is why I started thinking about the paid promos. With that said, I have done a significant rewrite that includes completely new chapters 1 & 2 which show up in the preview on Amazon. I also improved the blurb and have more reviews (I think I was under 20 the last time I applied).


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## Graham C. (Oct 19, 2014)

> I have actually been applying for Free promos and not getting accepted so that is why I started thinking about the paid promos. With that said, I have done a significant rewrite that includes completely new chapters 1 & 2 which show up in the preview on Amazon. I also improved the blurb and have more reviews (I think I was under 20 the last time I applied).


You have great reviews. Why don't you raise your price to 3.99 for a few months and then offer to slash it for Bookbub? Maybe the 2.99 reduced to 99 or free is what makes them pass on you, as they seem to be really into offering great deals. I did that, took my book from 2.99 to 3.99 and let it sit there at that price for two and a half months before offering a five day free deal which they took right away. They say they like to offer their readers good deals on books that haven't been reduced in a while. So that's what I gave them.

And looking at your ranking you are already selling great, and will probably keep selling at 3.99 at this point.


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## EC (Aug 20, 2013)

I think you've got this back-to-front, Wayne.  You have to be careful of over-exposure.  I have adverts in my regular business that score well, but I have to nurse them.  If they are seen too often they lose their effect.

You seem to be in the good position that BB will run your ads when you want - I would have said that December was the better option. To be in the top 100 after Christmas Day should be the target.  You would then hope to pick up on the annual surge of new users.


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## nightfire (Mar 22, 2012)

EC said:


> You seem to be in the good position that BB will run your ads when you want - I would have said that December was the better option. To be in the top 100 after Christmas Day should be the target. You would then hope to pick up on the annual surge of new users.


I would have done that too, but if you have a plan that you think will work, go for it!


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

EC said:


> I think you've got this back-to-front, Wayne. You have to be careful of over-exposure. I have adverts in my regular business that score well, but I have to nurse them. If they are seen too often they lose their effect.
> 
> You seem to be in the good position that BB will run your ads when you want - I would have said that December was the better option. To be in the top 100 after Christmas Day should be the target. You would then hope to pick up on the annual surge of new users.


I'll have a new release after Christmas and plan to run a BookBub ad in January for it. I may still run one in December. It's been over six months since Fallen Palm was featured.

I think I'm a pretty average reader. If I have a good book I'm reading, I don't shop for another one until I finish it. Sometimes, I don't even open the BookBub email and I think a lot of other people do the same thing. If they allowed it, I think running the same book every month would produce fairly equal results for several years. Think about it. They have almost a million subscribers to Action/Adventure. My greatest number of sales in a BookBub ad sold 2500 in one day and there was only one other A/A book listed with it. That's only .3%. Did the other 99.7% buy the other one? Odds are, the majority of those people subscribed to A/A didn't even open the email as they were already reading something. Conceivably, if you ran the same book every day, it may take months for all one million subscribers to even see it. The same book once every six months? A different book by the same author every month? Pretty much the same thing.

As far as scheduling, asking for a specific day or even week is a pretty sure bet you'll get turned down. I leave it completely up to BookBub, requesting the earliest and latest day they have on their calendar and everything in between.


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## EC (Aug 20, 2013)

The interesting figure would how many people actually open the emails.  I was a member of a forum that boasted of 165000 members. Admin told me there were less than 8000 active.

Anyway - I can see your logic, good luck.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

I think it's inevitable to dilute any advertising market if you do it too often. I would bet that half the BookBub subscribers NEVER open their email. I know I don't. Of those that remain, another half probably only look at the first title. Some might just look at the covers. By that time you're probably down to a quarter of the BB market who actually look at the books. That 250,000 mark is much lower than one million, because as others have said a lot more people just delete the emails without looking at them than actually read them. Then, when you have that small group, you have to ask yourself what percentage like what you're writing about? You hit that key group a few times and then the law of diminishing returns kicks it. It's sadly inevitable. I purposely didn't want to put all of my eggs in one series basket. I didn't have advertising in mind when I did it -- just writing boredom. Now, I could have focused on one series and kept flogging it for money, but I didn't want to be pigeonholed by that one series. When it comes to advertising, that decision has come to benefit me years later. This is just for me, but I like the tail of a BB ad - but I like that I have multiple series and they can stand on their own without constant advertising, too. If I hit BB fatigue on a series, then BB is not going to be there down the road for fun series boosts. That's just me, though. Everyone has to do what they're comfortable with.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Since Wayne and I are doing extremely similar multi-day KCD promos, with mine starting only a day before his, it will be interesting to see the comparative results.

_The similarities:_

* We both are discounting our books to 99 cents.
* We both write action/suspense type books.
* We both have previously had high profile indie success.
* We both are running our promotions during the same week.
* We both are running campaigns lasting several days.
* We both are front-loading smaller ads before culminating in a Bookbub promotion.

_The main differences:_

* To Wayne's advantage, his book will start from a lower ranking than mine. This means I have to play "catch-up," using KCD, social media, and a few small ads the first day or two to lower my ranking closer to his.

* To my advantage, I'm using the Bookbub "thriller" list, while he is using "action/adventure." There are over 1.4 million recipients to the "thriller" list, but only 990,000 in "action/adventure." His book will thus be advertised to only 70% as many readers as mine will. Average sales on the "thriller" list are 2,010; average on the "action/adventure" list are 1,210. That could factor hugely in the outcome.

* My paid ads are spread out over three days; but if I understand him correctly, his are bunched up in two days. Specifically:

-- He uses KCD alone from late 11/13 through 11/14, then adds a bunch of ads on 11/15, and finishes with Bookbub on 11/16. His 99-cent KCD pricing then extends almost two days afterward, into 11/18.

-- By contrast, my KCD starts late 11/12; but on 11/13, the first full day, I add to it two paid ads + social media. Then on 11/14 I add a host of ads (7-; and I finish with Bookbub and ENT on 11/15. My KCD promo extends through the next day only, 11/16. (However, I'm debating adding an extra day to the end, going through 11/17.)

The significance here is whether the Amazon algos reward his book or mine better.

Wayne's theory is that the algos operate on rolling 24-hour blocks, placing the most weight on the previous day's sales, but less on the day before, and almost no weight on sales more than 48 hours old. So, he's bunched up his ads right before the Bookbub promo. If Wayne is right, then (all else being equal) his more-bunched-up ads should reward his book with better and more enduring rankings than my more gradual escalation (assuming that my sales do, in fact, escalate over 3 days leading up to the Bookbub/ENT climax).

My theory (hypothesis, really) is that the algos are more geared to spotting _sales trends_ over 7-day and 30-day cycles, in order to discount one-day "flukes" of spiking sales. If I'm correct, then the algos will reward a more gradual and steady rise of sales over several days that culminates with the biggest sales near the end of the week. Similarly, the algos will note and reward rising month-to-month sales over 30-day periods. And that's why I spread out my pre-Bookbub ads over several days.

_The Variables:_

All sorts of other variables, known and unknown, can muck up this comparison, of course. For one thing, we aren't using exactly the same ad lists/sites, and their sales productivity will vary greatly. For another, neither of us can know if the algos also weight (at least somewhat) past total sales of books; their previous best rankings; how many positive reviews they have attracted; their cumulative ratings; etc. Another variable: How much will each of us use social media, and how effectively, to augment our ads? Yet another: What relative percentages of downloads will be sales vs. borrows? And when readers look at our respective product pages, which is more likely to "close the sale"?

Wayne and I are both numbers focused. We'll both be keeping close tabs of sales and rankings over the time frame. While it may be impossible to come to firm conclusions about the relative merits of our respective approaches, they're similar enough that we will probably be able to make some general recommendations about how to use Bookbub and KCD most effectively in the future.

Stay tuned...


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I hope you both have great sales.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Thanks much for that. I have little doubt that we both will. The only question in my mind, and I think Wayne's, is how we might better tweak this general approach to squeeze maximum lasting advantage from it. I hope these experiments shed some light on this for all of us.


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## Shayne Parkinson (Mar 19, 2010)

I have a BookBub ad running on the 16th too, Wayne! Very happy to be sharing the day with you.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Hi, Wayne!

I am impressed that you plan so far in advance and have it all coordinated. I tend to be quite haphazard about promos and that's something I'm working on fixing for next year. I'm trying to coordinate my efforts, combining paid promos with Kindle Countdown promos (I'm all in Select right now after being out for 4 months)

My Bookbub results:


- 5 paid (99c) Bookbubs since November 2013, 2 for Book 1 in a Contemp / Erotic Romance series, 2 for Book 2 in the same series and 1 for the collection of all three.

Book 1: (Reg price = $4.99) Released April 2013

Bookbub 1: November 2013: Cost: $280 
Sales the week before: (price = $4.99) 388 Revenue week before: $1334.72
Sales Bookbub week: (price = 99c) 6226 Revenue Week of Bookbub: $2157.31 
Sales Week after Bookbub (price back to $4.99): 639 Revenues Week After: $2198.16

Excess Revenues: $1686.03 - $280 = $1406.03 Highest Rank: #12 Kindle Store #2 Contemp Romance

The effect of the Bookbub on Book 2 (Price= $4.99) in the series was comparable: (Released September 2013)
Sales before: 279 Revenue: $959.76
Sales During: 762 Revenue: $2621.28
Sales After: 490 Revenue: $1685.60

Excess revenue: $1600 over average week.

Overall: $3000 excess revenue and almost 7,000 extra sales.

The four other promos were similar in terms of results, but the price for a paid promo has gone up and the rank never got as high as the first Bookbub for the first book. The Bookbub for the second book did not do as well as the first book, only reaching #35 in the Kindle store. The Collection (99c promo, usual price = $9.99) did really well. Rank was pretty good : Top 10 in Romance, #23 Kindle store. 

I was in KDPS for the first two promos and for the last three, I was on B&N, iBooks and Kobo and did well on them as a result.

Back in KDPS for now and have seen good results with KU. Revenue up and sales / borrows up.

Planning another round in February March and April 2015 when I am eligible and when my books are out of KDPS and back on other platforms.

Cheers!


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Interesting report, Sela. Thanks. 

The market is changing constantly, of course. So can you tell me when your most recent Bookbub promo occurred, and what the results were?


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Robert I just wanted to let you know I set you up with a few extra Tweets/Facebook post on the day of your promo across the Awesomegang network. 

Someone asked above towards Wayne does he think people will just wait until his books go one sale instead of buying it. I am a perfect example of Wayne's system working. I got his first book Fallen Out probably as a promo and just finished it. I went and paid full price for Fallen Palm just to see what happens next. For the price I paid I consider getting two books for the price of one. If I run a promo site and can't wait I doubt others will wait. We live in a need it now world. I could of emailed Wayne and asked him for a review copy but that would cause me wait until he responded. I don't have time for that I want to start reading part 2 as soon as I finish posting this.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Vinny OHare said:


> Robert I just wanted to let you know I set you up with a few extra Tweets/Facebook post on the day of your promo across the Awesomegang network.
> 
> Someone asked above towards Wayne does he think people will just wait until his books go one sale instead of buying it. I am a perfect example of Wayne's system working. I got his first book Fallen Out probably as a promo and just finished it. I went and paid full price for Fallen Palm just to see what happens next. For the price I paid I consider getting two books for the price of one. If I run a promo site and can't wait I doubt others will wait. We live in a need it now world. I could of emailed Wayne and asked him for a review copy but that would cause me wait until he responded. I don't have time for that I want to start reading part 2 as soon as I finish posting this.


Vinny, that is awfully nice of you. THANKS. I look forward to my _HUNTER_ promotion next week, which of course will include your AwesomeGang.com site on Friday Nov. 14. I hope writers here check it out; you offer authors like me that all-important "visibility," and I'm grateful.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

For those keeping track of this sort of thing, my promo for Ghosts on Sunday hit #30 on the store. Seems that concerns about weekend 'Bubs might be overplayed. The rank has been pretty sticky, too.


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## K. D. (Jun 6, 2013)

Mark Dawson said:


> For those keeping track of this sort of thing, my promo for Ghosts on Sunday hit #30 on the store. Seems that concerns about weekend 'Bubs might be overplayed. The rank has been pretty sticky, too.


Not to derail this thread, but that is great! Congrats!


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## InTheLandofAmazun (Nov 2, 2014)

Great Post. Good Luck on your promotion days.
There are also known (and unknown) tricks that BB will grab you book.


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## rachelmedhurst (Jun 25, 2014)

Good luck, Wayne!

I wonder if you could answer a quick question.

Do you think Bookbub is worth doing if not in Select?

I was thinking of applying with my bundle but I don't want to put it in Select. I was manually going to change the price to 99c for a limited time. Of course this means that the royalty is only 35%. The ad I would need to go for is $300. Is there still potential to make the cost back?

Thank you.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

rachelmedhurst said:


> Do you think Bookbub is worth doing if not in Select?


It definitely, definitely is. Apart from everything else, in my experience BookBub is the best way to sell books on Nook and Apple. It also has reach into Google and Kobo. I would be extremely surprised if you didn't make $300 back.


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## rachelmedhurst (Jun 25, 2014)

Mark Dawson said:


> It definitely, definitely is. Apart from everything else, in my experience BookBub is the best way to sell books on Nook and Apple. It also has reach into Google and Kobo. I would be extremely surprised if you didn't make $300 back.


Great, thanks, Mark! I have got a few sales over on kobo, itunes and B&N last month (only 15 but best so far!) so didn't want to go exclusive.

Think I will bite the bullet and at least try to get a bookbub.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

rachelmedhurst said:


> Good luck, Wayne!
> 
> I wonder if you could answer a quick question.
> 
> ...


My first BookBub ad was done that way, Rachel. With no knowledge or experience, I applied to BB and was accepted with Fallen Palm. Only problem was, I accidentally made a price change a week before the Countdown Deal and KDP canceled the CD. I'd intended to change the price of a different book. So, the day before the BB ad, I manually lowered the price and BB sold 1400 copies. At 35% royalty, I made $490. There were no front load ads, no follow up, nothing. Sell through to the other two books I had at the time went from about 9 per title per day, to over 20, almost instantly.


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## rachelmedhurst (Jun 25, 2014)

Thanks, Wayne, so it's safe to manually change it a day or two before to make sure the price is ready for the promo?

Also do they only take bookings up to 30 days in advance?

This is all just in case I am accepted. 

Thank you.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

rachelmedhurst said:


> Thanks, Wayne, so it's safe to manually change it a day or two before to make sure the price is ready for the promo?
> 
> Also do they only take bookings up to 30 days in advance?
> 
> ...


A day in advance would be good. Your best bet would be just before you go to bed, two days before. If it hasn't changed by morning, you have more than 24 hours to fix it. It usually only takes a few hours for a price change to kick in.

BookBub has a 30 day calendar you can choose from. The earliest day open on the calendar is usually a week or so out, because they're already booked solid and setting up the next week's worth of ads. That said, the best chance of getting accepted is to choose the first and last day on their calendar and click yes on your flexibility. Some days do sell better than others, but even a bad BookBub ad will more than pay for itself. Two of the four I've run were scheduled on the last day they had available when I applied, so it's good to apply as early as possible in the morning. The other two were scheduled within a few days of the end. I applied for this one on 10/23, so it's the earliest they've ever scheduled me, only 24 days in advance.

For anyone who is in Select, when you're ready to submit to BB, pay attention to when your Select period ends. A Countdown Deal can't be set up any sooner than two days in advance. If your renewal date is anywhere in BookBubs window, wait. If BB schedules it the day after Select renewal, you won't be able to do a Countdown. Murphy's Law. You could add in the notes section that the four or five day block around your renewal date won't work, if you feel you have to get your application in anyway. Or, if they approve you and schedule you on or near your renewal, they'll gladly work with you to get a later date. Sometimes it's better to ask forgiveness than permission.

Have I ever mentioned Wayne's Theory? "Murphy is a freaking optimist."


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## rachelmedhurst (Jun 25, 2014)

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer Wayne. I'll wait until I get up in the morning to apply (will be extra early as I'm in the UK).

Fingers crossed for us all.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Mark Dawson said:


> For those keeping track of this sort of thing, my promo for Ghosts on Sunday hit #30 on the store. Seems that concerns about weekend 'Bubs might be overplayed. The rank has been pretty sticky, too.


Good to know, Mark, since my Bookbub + ENT combo is going to be on Saturday 11/15.

BTW, your books have been showing as major "also boughts" on my _HUNTER_ page, so maybe our respective Bookbub campaigns will give each other a boost.


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## BBGriffith (Mar 13, 2012)

I just ran a .99 ad in the thriller category, for a trilogy. I am not in select, and I frontloaded the most effective ads outside of bookbub. I had ENT and FKBT scheduled for Sunday, Bookbub was yesterday. I sold about 4000 books yesterday across Amazon, B&N, iTunes, and Kobo. The highest I hit at Amazon was #24 overall, the highest I hit in Nook was #4 overall. I'm still around those numbers.

Before the Bookbub ad, I was ranked about 1100 thanks to the ENT/FKBT duo. I've run other ads with bookbub, most notably an ad on this trilogy seven months ago for $2.99 that got me up to about 70 overall in the kindle store with a fairly steep decline immediately afterwards. I didn't have any runup ads then. I'll be interested in seeing how long this rank will stick comparatively.

I'm thrilled with these results so far. I think I had a couple of things here that worked in my favor. The first is that I had a three book set, which people like. The second is that it has never been offered this inexpensively before. I write slowly, so I can only promote infrequently, and the last time I had a sale was seven months ago, which is basically forever in this industry, so it was fresh. I got a great blurb, too, which said that fans of The Hunger Games will love it, which I think helped a lot too since the Hunger Games is ramping up for the next movie and everyone loves that series.  

Also, I released a fourth book in the series two weeks ago that is essentially a tangential story to the trilogy I had on sale. I set this book at .99 as well right out of the gate. It did well too, which offered a bit more cross exposure.

Ironically, while this ad gave me four times the exposure, I don't think I'll make as much money as the last one I ran at $2.99. Even though that was a much more expensive ad, it paid off much more quickly. So you kind of have to pick your goal. Is it money, or exposure? I think you gotta go with exposure every time.


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## rachelmedhurst (Jun 25, 2014)

Thanks, BBGriffith, this is really valuable stuff. I agree completely, it's exposure I'm after but was wondering what experiences others had had with a 99c price point on all platforms as I've never done a bookbub before.

Well done for getting over 4000 sales, I can't even contemplate that!


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## BBGriffith (Mar 13, 2012)

rachelmedhurst said:


> Thanks, BBGriffith, this is really valuable stuff. I agree completely, it's exposure I'm after but was wondering what experiences others had had with a 99c price point on all platforms as I've never done a bookbub before.
> 
> Well done for getting over 4000 sales, I can't even contemplate that!


Thanks! At the pace I write, this promo was essentially five years in the making. I'm glad I made the most of it.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

I just added one more promo site for the day before the BookBub ad, eBookBargainsUK, for $8.20. I don't know anything about them other than they're UK based. Since I included BookBub in the UK and am running a Countdown Deal in the UK, I figured it'd be a good idea to get at least one UK ad ahead of it.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

If you've read one of my books, you know I enjoy watching the sky. I just realized the Leonid meteor shower is the middle of this month and when I checked, I found that this year it starts on the 16th (my birthday and the BookBub ad), and peaks on the 18th, when my Countdown Deal ends. Fireworks!

My oldest grand daughter's birthday is on the 17th and I'm toying with the idea of driving down to Florida to celebrate with her. Hmmm, forecast here is for rain, possible snow, highs in the 40s and a low near 30. Forecast there is clear, high near 80 and low in the 60s, sitting on the beach, watching the Leonids with Kira.


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## Mark Dawson (Mar 24, 2012)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> BTW, your books have been showing as major "also boughts" on my _HUNTER_ page, so maybe our respective Bookbub campaigns will give each other a boost.


Interesting!

FWIW, this last promo has been very sticky. Ghosts stayed in the top 100 for a couple of days and is only now starting to accelerate on its way back to its usual #2,000ish placing. Very good, as usual.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

ENT just confirmed. I now have 13 ads stacked up the day before BookBub. It may lessen the sales by BB, but without a doubt all 13 combined, plus the effect of the Countdown Deal, will sell enough to get Mangrove into the top 100 before BookBub comes out. I should get over 100 sales on Friday just from the first full day of the Countdown, maybe 500-600 on Saturday through all the ads, which will lose money, but increase rank. Then on Sunday, I look for BookBub to sell 2000, which will be enough for a top 50.


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## John Ellsworth (Jun 1, 2014)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> If you've read one of my books, you know I enjoy watching the sky. I just realized the Leonid meteor shower is the middle of this month and when I checked, I found that this year it starts on the 16th (my birthday and the BookBub ad), and peaks on the 18th, when my Countdown Deal ends. Fireworks!
> 
> My oldest grand daughter's birthday is on the 17th and I'm toying with the idea of driving down to Florida to celebrate with her. Hmmm, forecast here is for rain, possible snow, highs in the 40s and a low near 30. Forecast there is clear, high near 80 and low in the 60s, sitting on the beach, watching the Leonids with Kira.


Oh geez, decisions decisions!

Enjoy the sand.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

I thought I'd give the first update to my own promotional experiment, first described here:



Robert Bidinotto said:


> Wayne, buddy, you inspired me with the previous thread reporting your past promo results. Ironically, I have a very similar promo scheduled on almost exactly the same days. This should provide TWO sets of data for everyone to compare and ponder.
> 
> I'm starting from a lower sales per day total than you, but I have high hopes, given the fact that the book I'll be promoting, _HUNTER_, is the first in the Dylan Hunter series and previously hit #4 on Kindle. Here is the schedule, building on a 100-hour (4+ day) Kindle Countdown Deal in both US and UK, during which I'll reduce the price from $4.99 to 99 cents. (NOTE: I'm promoting this in the "thriller" categories of the following sites and lists):
> 
> ...


Okay, and now to update:

DAY #1: I'm not yet at the end the day, and sales have already soared past 200. I was expecting about 100. Ranking has fallen today from around #9000 yesterday to (at the moment) #2505. Since sales are continuing at a quick clip, I anticipate being down near #2000 by the end of the day. To KCD, FKB&T, and Bknights (promoting on Digital Book Spot) I also added an appeal to my Facebook friends to promote it; plus some tweets that were picked up and retweeted; plus a blog post on "Readers in the Know" about this promotional experiment (see it here):

http://readersintheknow.com/blog/14/Countdown_Commencing_-_A_Real-Time_Case_Study_in_eBook_Promotion

So the _HUNTER_ promotion is off to a rousing launch, better than I had hoped. It remains to be seen whether on Day #2 the expected sales tail-off from KCD will be made up for by the seven promotional sites I've scheduled. I'd like to enter the big Day #3 -- Bookbub + ENT -- with a ranking in the low 1000's or triple digits. If the book is in that range, then the sky's the limit for those combined third-day promos.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

The Kindle Countdown Deal started right on time at 9 pm EST. Current sales and borrows for today so far are 33 and 18. Fallen Mangrove is currently ranked at #2670. From past experience, I don't expect many sales in the last six hours for today and no movement in rank, since it lags about five hours behind sales.

Tomorrow is all Countdown Deal, no ads. I expect 150-200 sales and an increase in rank into the top 1000 in Paid Kindle. 

Saturday will be pretty much all the front loaded ads, since the Countdown Deal on the second day by itself usually doesn't do much more than a normal days sales. I expect to sell close to 1000 and increase in rank close to the top 100.

Sunday is BookBub. I'm not really sure how it's going to do with this many front loaded ads. I imagine some subscribers also subscribe to one or more of the other ads. I'm hoping for 2000 sales and an increase in rank to the top 20.

I'll be on the road all day tomorrow. I'm going down to my home town in Florida to work on a house for a Wounded Warrior on Saturday and meet with a bunch of them on Sunday to talk about writing as a career option. I hope to use this promo to kindle a flame and get some of them excited enough to write about their experiences. I'm hoping for good sell through, especially to Fallen Pride, as half the royalties from it are donated to helping remodel their future homes. I'll post an update in the morning and again tomorrow evening, when I get checked in.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Wayne, one interesting thing I'll be watching for is to see how we wind up in our rankings, with similar numbers of promotions and virtually identical timing -- except that you are _starting_ from a much lower ranking than I am. I'm very curious to see not just where we end up, but how long we sustain Top 100 rankings, and try to figure out what the variables are.

As my Day #1 is heading toward midnight in the East (9 pm Amazon West Coast time), _HUNTER_ is down to ranking #1054 with 241 sales and 4 borrows -- and certain to be even lower in ranking by the end of this Amazon business day. Those results are much, much better than I expected for the first day.

Incidentally, FWIW, on Facebook I'm stressing the holiday "gifting" option to my friends. Even if they've already purchased for themselves, those who liked the book have to find appealing the idea of giving it to friends and family for just 99 cents. That would solve a lot of otherwise expensive holiday gifts, I think. We'll see how that works out.


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Wayne how come no ads for tomorrow?


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## rachelmedhurst (Jun 25, 2014)

Love what you're doing, Wayne, good luck with your latest promo! I love how you can predict how you're going to do.

My bundle was just rejected by Bookbub but have managed to get a free listing on Midlist for 28th Dec so I'm excited about that.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Vinny OHare said:


> Wayne how come no ads for tomorrow?


Vinny, the algorithm gives more weight to a slow, steady rise, than to a one or two day boom. Not much more, but a little. The Countdown Deal today will be more than enough to increase sales to above what it did on release just over a month ago. I figure there'll be a 500% increase in sales today.

Normal sales have dropped after 30 days, to about 37 sales per day this past week. Since the Countdown Deal started last night at 9 pm EST, it sold 34 more in the last 6 hours, literally doubling the sales of the previous 18 hours. It's climbed about 400 places to #2254, which reflects sales as of about 1 am EST.

I'm just about to get in the pickuo and head south. Good timing, it's supposed to be very cold all weekend.


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

rachelmedhurst said:


> Thanks, Wayne, so it's safe to manually change it a day or two before to make sure the price is ready for the promo?
> 
> Also do they only take bookings up to 30 days in advance?
> 
> ...


I always manually change 2 days before and 3 or 4 after. I don't like leaving any BB to chance. They are too precious to waste.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Vinny OHare said:


> Robert I just wanted to let you know I set you up with a few extra Tweets/Facebook post on the day of your promo across the Awesomegang network.
> 
> Someone asked above towards Wayne does he think people will just wait until his books go one sale instead of buying it. I am a perfect example of Wayne's system working. I got his first book Fallen Out probably as a promo and just finished it. I went and paid full price for Fallen Palm just to see what happens next. For the price I paid I consider getting two books for the price of one. If I run a promo site and can't wait I doubt others will wait. We live in a need it now world. I could of emailed Wayne and asked him for a review copy but that would cause me wait until he responded. I don't have time for that I want to start reading part 2 as soon as I finish posting this.


I think this happens for quite a few of us who write/read series.

As soon as I put a new book/serial part out, I'll get emails the very next day asking when the next one is releasing.

I'm learning it's to my benefit to put the part of a new series at the end of any release. At the end of Book 4 in one series, I've put the beginning part (1/2) of another. 
I plan on going back and adding it to all previous releases, too. So at the back of most they'll get two samples: the next in the series, and the start of another series.

Wayne and Robert - Thanks for sharing. I've bookmarked this thread. I love Bookbub, but haven't used them in awhile.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Hi, Lisa. A bit of updated data for your pondering.

I launched the KCD Wednesday night 11/12, and noticed a slight sales spike before the end of the Amazon business day (midnight Pacific, 3 a.m. in the East).

Things soared beyond my best hopes on Thursday 11/13. 285 sales of _HUNTER_ (281 sales, 4 borrows), and a 3 a.m. ranking of #634. That blew me away, because it was generated solely by the following promotions: KCD itself, FKB&T, Digital Book Spot (via BKnights/Fiverr), a blog post on Readers in the Know, plus a lot of help on Facebook by many friends promoting it, and plenty of tweets/retweets, too.

Today, Friday 11/12, I add in promos with Riffle Select, Booksends, a Readers in the Know sidebar feature, EbookSoda, Fussy Librarian, Awesome Gang, and Ebooklister (the nice big "Daily Focus" spot on the right margin). I'm doing more social media, too. I've already sold 84 plus 10 borrows as of 11:40 a.m., and HUNTER's ranking has just fallen to #499. So, in the Kindle Top 500...and still almost a full day BEFORE Bookbub and ENT on Saturday. As a serendipity, it appears that the Amazon algos noticed: _HUNTER_ was included this morning in an Amazon KCD email promotion of its "Crime Fiction Newsletter."

I'm fascinated to watch how Wayne's promos will go. He's got his stacked up tomorrow, and his Bookbub is going to run on Sunday. I'd love it if we were rubbing elbows in the Top 20 on Sunday-Monday.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Hi, Lisa. A bit of updated data for your pondering.
> 
> I launched the KCD Wednesday night 11/12, and noticed a slight sales spike before the end of the Amazon business day (midnight Pacific, 3 a.m. in the East).
> 
> ...


Thanks, Robert  Congratulations. I've put a link to it on FB https://www.facebook.com/KindleDealsDaily page.

You've got the #1 badge in thrillers right now.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

You are a sweetheart! _Thank you!_


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

What is MOST encouraging to me so far is discovering that an author can build impressive sales and a great Amazon ranking _without_ depending on a single promotional site, such as Bookbub. Sometimes so much emphasis is placed on that one site that I'm sure many authors think their success requires it, or that they're doomed without it.

Even at this stage of the experiment, my first- and second-day results show that this is absolutely not true. It's now 1:25 pm Eastern time on Day #2, and my "HUNTER" sales have already reached 134 for the day -- which isn't half over. My Bookbub promotion doesn't kick in until tomorrow. This shows that a combination of a Kindle Countdown Deal + several smaller (and may I add, far less expensive) book promotion sites + social media can generate terrific results, in both sales and rankings. Is it a lot of work? Sure. But worthwhile results always take a lot of work.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Cool beans...The PRE-Bookbub + ENT ranking for "HUNTER" is now down to #377. That's far lower than I ever anticipated going into a Bookbub finale. No telling where BB will send it by Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Wayne is also positioned beautifully for a run to the top. _Fallen Mangrove_ is currently sitting at #1303, almost entirely on the strength of KCD. Tomorrow he piles on a host of sites, which should send its ranking into the low triple digits, too. Then Bookbub, batting cleanup on Sunday. Wow, what great scheduling!

I'd be making popcorn right now, except that I discovered I have a corn allergy. Ah well, I'll solace myself with red wine....


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Arrived in Florida yesterday. Watching the sun rise over the Atlantic right now.  

Yesterday, on the back of a Countdown Deal alone, Mangrove sold 143 copies (buys and borrows) and rose to #892 in Paid Kindle. I had no ads at all yesterday, that was all purely the CD. That's close to the number of sales I'd figured, but well within the results. Today's fourteen ads will be dampened slightly due to it being a Saturday, but I still think a thousand sales and a top 200 isn't out of the question. 

I'll be out most of the day. Headed to a Wounded Warriors new home to do some painting, then to my sister and brother-in-laws, for a motorcycle ride.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

For me, yesterday's sales slightly exceeded the first day's. 289 sales + 12 borrows = 301 paid downloads of "HUNTER."

The best-performing list of the following may well have been Booksends. I got a message from them this a.m. indicating that Amazon reported their promo had resulted in about 100 sales -- in other words, a third of the total. They also reported that this represented only 30% of the people their promotion sent to my product page -- in other words, over 300. Pretty impressive.

The other 200 sales were divided among the following:

KCD (of course), Riffle Select, Readers in the Know, EbookSoda, Fussy Librarian, Awesome Gang, and Ebooklister...PLUS residual sales resulting from the previous day's promos with KB&T and Digital Book Spot (BKnights)...PLUS my social media, including a blog interview conducted by author friend Stephen England. It's impossible to know, of course, whether any of these sources was disproportionately fertile in generating sales -- only that, all combined, they generated 200 sales/borrows.

The 300 sales, atop nearly as many the day before, were sufficient to lower the _HUNTER_ ranking to #299 by the end of the Amazon business day. It maintained a ranking into the mid-300s through this morning, when my Bookbub promo dropped at 10:30 a.m. Eastern time.

I bought the Bookbub thriller list for the USA and UK, which cost me $525. However, it hits something like 1.3 million thriller-targeted subscribers. And the email itself featured _HUNTER_ in the first listing. Can't ask for more than that.

I can tell you that it is blowing up my KDP author sales chart. I just checked and I've already gotten 322 sales + 8 borrows for the day -- over 200 of them within the past hour. My KDP dashboard isn't remotely keeping up, and neither are the sales being reflected in the product page rankings. Doesn't matter; when they catch up, _HUNTER_ will be soaring up the lists.

I'll report back much later, after ENT also hits this afternoon.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Just looked.  Wayne is at 946.  
GO ROBERT GO WAYNE.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

I guarantee you that Wayne is way below #946 now. I've been listed at #364 for hours...since before Bookbub hit. When the rankings change, you'll see how far they've plunged.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

I had just looked and that was the number Amazon gave me for Mangrove.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Sure. I understand; I just mean that the rankings on Amazon product pages are running HOURS behind actual sales numbers right now. I haven't seen them change in over three hours, so they still aren't reflecting all the sales Wayne and I are getting.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Hope y all both break a hundred.  Actually I hope the top ten.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Interesting report, Sela. Thanks.
> 
> The market is changing constantly, of course. So can you tell me when your most recent Bookbub promo occurred, and what the results were?


Hi, Robert:

Sorry I haven't been around to respond to your question.

My most recent Bookbub was a 99c promo of a boxed set of 3 novels in October. It is available on 4 channels. (Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, Nook)

Sales of the week before the promo: 51 on all channels (average 7-8 a day) Price $9.99
Revenue = $251.64 (Amazon) and $89.55 (other channels) = $341.19
Highest rank in Kindle store: low 10,000s

Sales the week of the 99c promo: 5,475 Amazon 2,598 all other channels Total sales: 8,073 
Revenues: $1642 Amazon $1299 Other Channels Total Revenues: $2,941 Cost: $480
Highest rank in Kindle store: 23


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Yeah, it's about a five hour lag between sales and ranking. A few of the ads have come out, but more are scheduled for today. GoodKindles for some reason didn't run it. I emailed Adam and he's trying to figure it out.

Once the bigger ads come out, sales will start adding up, but I doubt we'll see movement in rank until late this evening. Right now I'm at 97 sales and 19 borrows for today.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

As of 1:39 pm Eastern, I have 604 combined sales plus borrows. The rankings on Amazon aren't remotely keeping pace; they're reflecting sales numbers from early this morning.

It will be incredibly annoying to me if _HUNTER_ reaches its apex in the charts late this evening, but the Amazon product pages and bestseller lists don't reflect it till around 4 a.m., when it will do me little good.


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## ElleT (Feb 2, 2014)

Saw both of your ads. Wanted to swing by and wish you the best of luck! And happy reading to those of us who picked those two reads up!


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Elle, awfully sweet of you. Thanks...and enjoy.

As of 2:05 pm Eastern, 641 sales. It appears that the sales clip is about 160 per hour, near as I can gauge.


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## Kevin Lee Swaim (May 30, 2014)

I want to say I'm jealous. I _want_ to, but I can't. Congrats, both of you!


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Just put both of you on the homepage in the #1 and 2 positions on AwesomeGang. This is fun to watch. Robert I also had a little social media postings going on for you yesterday. Think Wayne has extra ones today.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Kevin, big thanks for that. 

And Vinny, can't tell you how much I appreciate that. You and your gang are....AWESOME. 

The ENT email blast just dropped, carrying both _HUNTER and FALLEN MANGROVE_ -- which is delightful! And HUNTER has just blown past 726 sales for the day...at 2:30 pm.

Whoa.

Just wish the %&^#%*() Amazon RANKINGS would reflect this! They're still showing a ranking that had to be based on sales before 9 a.m. Yeeeesh. Is this the handiwork of the Zon's weekend crew, or something?


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Unfortunately rankings always seem to update during the night for you guys. I'm in the UK, and I tend to catch the highest rankings for .com just as I wake up (around 8am GMT)


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Robert what is your Twitter handle?


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Vinny, it's ...

@RobertBidinotto

Now up to about 800 sales.


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## vkloss (Sep 22, 2014)

Robert and Wayne - with the exposure you're obviously getting and have had in the past with such good sales / rank, have you ever been approached by agents or traditional publishers?


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

I was approached by a Turkish agent and publisher, and actually did a deal with them. But so far, that's it.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

*FINALLY.* The ranking is now starting to catch up to sales. As of 6 pm Eastern, _HUNTER_ is down to #117 in rank now, and sales are up to 1087 for the day


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Let me be the first to congratulate the both of you.
You are both #1.  In their respective categories.    
Keep it up.


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## KL_Phelps (Nov 7, 2013)

Wayne has made a pact with the devil, every time I turn around he's running a bookbub ad!


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## 72117 (Sep 1, 2013)

Congrats Robert and Wayne! Very exciting to watch! Can't wait to see where you end up.


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## SkyScribe (Aug 18, 2014)

Awesome how your KB Featured Book ad isn't even showing the correct price. A lot of care and attention there.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

8:30 pm in the East. 

Currently LISTED at ranking #88, with 1.258 sales + 22 borrows = 1280 paid. I know that the ranking is in reality much lower than that, but the reporting delays are maddening.


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## 鬼 (Sep 30, 2012)

Awesome work, guys!


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Wayne's book is now listed at #545; mine at #74. Those rankings still must be 5-7 hours old, given the sales we've been racking up. My total paid downloads for the day now top 1400.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Ranking changes always lag almost exactly five hours behind sales. Don't ask me why, it's just one of those Zon things. Tomorrow when my BB ad comes out, I'll post the time it was sent and then the ranking four hours and five hours later. When you posted at 2:30 and said the ranking was akin to your sales at 9:00 you were right on the money. They only update every hour, give or take a few minutes, which is something else I've never figured out.

Currently I have 281 sales and 21 borrows, ranking #545. This is going quite well, but a little less than I hoped for. While the sales will barely pay for the 14 ads, the push up the ranking, following yesterdays initial surge with the start of the Countdown Deal, strengthens the longer term part of the algorithm which will add slightly more weight to tomorrow's sales when the BookBub ad comes out.

Looking back over time, Sundays have nearly always been a good day for me. I'm still hoping to top August's promo which resulted in a peak of #14. Right now the #1 book in Sea Adventures (and has been for over two weeks) is a Kindle First book ranked at #9 in Paid Kindle, so it's enjoying some Zon love, bouncing from #4 to #9 for the last fifteen days. If I could dislodge it, even for one hour, that would be insane. Imagine, an upstart indie author outperforming a book with Amazon's massive marketing abilities. Even if it's for only an hour, I'll be over the moon.

On a personal note, I spent the morning working as a volunteer, helping to remodel a home for one of our injured Afghanistan Vets. As many of you know, I donate half the royalties from Fallen Pride to Homes for Warriors, a project in my home town in central Florida. It's a project that's administered by Space Coast Paratroopers Association and the city of Palm Bay. Using funds donated for the purpose, the city buys dilapidated homes and volunteers do a complete top to bottom remodel and give it to one of our Wounded Warriors, some relocating from hundreds of miles away. There were about 20 volunteers there, along with Sergeant Wagner (pictured with me below), many of them also Purple Heart recipients. It was humbling what this small group of Patriots is doing on a small scale and making such a huge difference. The next home to be remodeled will be for a severely injured Soldier who is not likely to live long enough to move in. But, his wife and two little kids won't have to worry about a home. Tomorrow, I'm meeting with about a dozen of them, here at the hotel I'm staying at.


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Good Job Wayne!


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Good for you with your work for that Wounded Warrior project, Wayne! Military charities are my priority, too.

I sure hope your meet your target tomorrow. It's a bit more ambitious than mine.

I'll have to see where I top out in the wee hours -- probably 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. or so. My sales for today are likely to crest between 1600 - 1700 -- not quite as much as I wished, but enough for a respectable ranking in the 20-30 range. As a consolation, I'm seeing collateral benefits to my sequel, _BAD DEEDS_, and also a surprising 90 sales in the UK, where I _never_ sell much.


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

I posted a link for Wayne's book on the FB KDD page, too. Congratulations to you both. 

My dream if my books ever take off enough or


Spoiler



the movie gets to a certain point


 is to open housing, college help (tuition is free here in FL for them but everything else and job training for those aging out of foster care.)


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## D-C (Jan 13, 2014)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Wayne's book is now listed at #545; mine at #74. Those rankings still must be 5-7 hours old, given the sales we've been racking up. My total paid downloads for the day now top 1400.


You're at #42  & #1 in your x3 categories.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Mangrove sold 320 copies yesterday, with 21 borrows. Right now it's ranked at #391, with a steady climb in ranking over the last three days. The BookBub ad will be out in a few hours to take it the rest of the way. This is easily the highest rank I've ever started a BookBub promo. The next twenty-four hours should find it inside the top 50, at least. I'm hoping for a top 10 still.


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## AA.A (Sep 6, 2012)

Good luck to both of you. This is really fun to watch. 
My highest rank was 1436, that was several days ago (The Gardener of Baghdad). If Bookbub would have taken it, maybe I would have been in the top 250.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Okay, time for my post-mortem on Day #3 of my five-day KCD (and I regret putting it into negative terms):

On of a combined Bookbub + ENT, plus social media, _HUNTER_ crested at #42 #38 yesterday.

It's now [11 a.m. Eastern on Sunday] holding at #43, and it is #1 in three categories: "Crime Fiction," "Vigilante Justice," and "Assassination Thrillers." It is at #12 in "Thrillers" and #14 in "Mystery, Thrillers & Suspense."

Those are all the best rankings I've seen. They may have been lower while I was asleep after 3 a.m. in the East, but none of my insomniac friends have reported anything better. Those are wonderfully visible placements going forward today, and will attract a lot of eyeballs on Sunday and Monday, while the price tag is still down at 99 cents.

All told, 1515 ebooks sold during the day -- 1493 sales, 22 borrows. Some pluses about that:

* About a hundred of those sales were from the UK. That's impressive. I used Bookbub's UK option, which cost $25, and it clearly paid for itself.

* Collateral sales of _BAD DEEDS_ are way up. I sold 47 ebooks yesterday.

* I believe I'm going to see a big spike in audio sales. Three days ago -- the first day of the promotion, when I was using smaller sites and lists -- I generated 14 sales. Audio sales reports lag by two days, so I do expect a significant surge to come, reflecting the second day of the promotion, plus yesterday.

I can't report on print sales; I received an error message on my Createspace dashboard and I'm awaiting a reply to my inquiry about it.

*Now the negatives:*

Folks, I hit yesterday's combined Bookbub + ENT + social media promotions coming off a two-day roll of prior promotions on multiple sites. I had sold over three hundred copies on each of those prior two days, and _HUNTER's_ ranking had fallen into the 300's going into the Big Day. I figured that with that low ranking, plus the combo of Bookbub + ENT + social media, the sky was the limit. I honestly anticipated way more than the "typical 2,000 sales" claimed by Bookbub for its "Thriller reader" list. And I honestly expected a Top 20 ranking -- maybe even Top 10.

But I got only 1515 ebook sales yesterday, and a low of #42. _Way _below expectations -- especially when you consider that a good chunk of those sales didn't come from Bookbub, but from ENT, my social media, and the "tail" effect of all the preceding promos. Add the sobering fact that a hundred of those sales came from the UK. which means the U.S. Bookbub list simply underperformed...WAY underperformed its advertised average.

I've been pondering possible reasons why.

1. For one thing, I didn't like their promotional blurb at all. They don't give you a choice or input about what they write, and I think theirs was poor in what it said and stressed, and inaccurate in describing the central plot conflict. Let me give you a comparison. Here is their email blurb for yesterday:

_A _Wall Street Journal_ bestselling thrill-ride: Reporter Dylan Hunter is on a quest for revenge, while CIA investigator Annie Woods hunts a corrupt high-ranking agent. Their enemy may be one and the same -- but can Dylan and Annie trust each other enough to find out?_

Now here is mine, from the HUNTER product page; I've borrowed a bit of language from its intro and reformatted to match their style:

_The #1 Kindle bestselling thriller: Two people, passionately in love. But each hides a deadly secret. He is a crusading vigilante, on a violent quest for justice. She is tracking this unknown assassin, sworn to stop him. Neither realizes the truth about the other. And neither knows that a terrifying predator is hunting them both. . . ._

Which do you think would get more click-throughs? I report; you decide.

2. I have no idea whether a Saturday campaign underperforms compared with weekdays or Sundays.

3. Did some extraneous sports/TV/news event distract people from opening their email yesterday?

4. Did some other title in their mailing attract more eyeballs? In the mailing I received as a subscriber to their thriller list, they were: Andrew Clawson's _The Crown's Vengeance_ (free); _Odd Jobs_ by Ben Lieberman ($2.00); JoAnn Bassett's _Maui Widow Waltz_ (free); and Avery Corman's _The Old Neighborhood_ ($1.99).

I'm stumped. Disappointed and stumped.

I am now eager to see if Wayne does a lot better. I certainly hope so! He's running Bookbub on a Sunday (not Saturday), using their "Action/Adventure" list (not "Thriller"), but also starting from a ranking in the 300s. Bookbub's Action/Adventure list is considerably smaller than its Thriller list, and it also claims fewer average downloads. But other than those factors, we have a reasonably close comparison. I truly hope that my experience was a fluke -- not a sign that Bookbub is losing some of its _oomph._


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

I've seen worse blurbs, Robert. But, yeah, I'd say that was certainly a contributing factor. Not sure about you, but Saturdays have never been all that great for me, which is why I'm glad mine ran today.

BookBub actually snuck it out earlier than I expected, with Mangrove right at the top and a superb blurb. The email came out at 10:30 and sales for the day up to that time were at 348 with 5 borrows and a rank in the high 300s. Since the ad came out, I've sold 210, with still only 5 borrows.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Off topic:  HAPPY BIRTHDAY WAYNE.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

I realized that my prior post sounds absurdly pessimistic. The promotion, by any objective measure, was a rousing success. It's only that my expectations proved not to be realistic -- shaped by my anticipation of what Bookbub might generate in a single day. Perhaps I misinterpreted their advertised ROI numbers; they probably meant the expected downloads over the length of the campaign (several days' "tail"), not just on the day when the mailing drops. If so, it is likely that I'll be much closer to the 2,000 average sales they advertise when the final numbers are in. Already today I've picked up 200+ new HUNTER sales.

So, let me apologize for the downbeat tone above. I'm good. Life is good. The multi-day promotion has worked out fabulously for me. And I hope Wayne shows even better results. GO, WAYNE!

Oh, and I see it's your birthday! Hope you get a great present, in the form of a Top 10 ranking.


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## Amber Rose (Jul 25, 2014)

Robert,

I absolutely agree that the blurb cost you. I saw your book in the email (wasn't yet following this thread so was completely unbiased as I didn't know you were a board author) and I was completely unmotivated to buy your book. And I did buy others. Now, having read your blurb of above, I can't wait to read your book...

What a pity. Bookbub's blurbs are weak on the best of days, and yours got a particularly short straw....


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## AA.A (Sep 6, 2012)

Well Rob, at least it didn't have several typos!! Bargain Booksy took an oscar with The Gardener of Baghdad. Three typos!!! The blurb was so far from the story I had written!


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Amber, thanks so much for that feedback. I know that Bookbub blurb struck me as weak; I didn't know if it seemed anemic and off-point to others. I suspect so.

Now let me put in a big caveat in my criticism of Big Bubba (as one guy describes Bookbub). It's the same caveat I put in any criticism of KDP/KU/Select/Koll:

_Imagine our lives without them._

Okay. They aren't perfect. They screw up. They don't always do things in ways that are to our best advantage.

But I have to put things in perspective.

Perspective = "What was life like for an aspiring self-publishing author five years ago?"

Frankly, things sucked. I don't have to go through the details; we all know them. But speaking personally, I look at what I have been able to do in the past three years. Past age 60, I've been able to publish two novels -- in ebook, print, and audio editions -- and watch one of them soar past the best books of all the iconic writers I love, right to the apex of the bestseller lists. I've been able to attract about 100,000 readers, many of whom have become devoted fans, from all over the world. I have a contract for one of my books to be published in _TURKEY_, for crying out loud! And now my debut thriller has entered the Kindle "Top 50" not once, but _twice_ -- three years apart!

NONE of that would have been possible without Amazon generally, and KDP specifically. Hitting #38 with the same book a second time wouldn't have been possible without Bookbub. These opportunities are now open to _everybody_ -- not just those lucky few anointed by Big Publishing.

So, as much as I can grouse about how much better things COULD be, or have been, with Amazon and Bookbub, I have to remember that -- thanks to them -- things are one whale of a lot better for authors like me than they have ever been, in the entire history of the world.

I think we sometimes forget that. I know I do.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Right on schedule -- about 5 hours after the 10:30 a.m. Bookbub email blast -- I've finally seen the ranking of _FALLEN MANGROVE_..."fallen." Now down from 395 to 269. Go, Wayne!


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## John Ellsworth (Jun 1, 2014)

Hey Wayne happy birthday and BB day.

Your military giving and efforts are admirable. I tried to get into Navy JAG when I got out of law school and was about to take the oath when a doctor asked about a scar on my face. A minor skin cancer (I grew up in AZ, so what can I say). Well, they rejected me based on that. So I regret that I couldn't serve but now have a son in law who has done one tour in Iraq, two tours in Afghanistan, a tour during the Balkans war, and a year in Korea DMZ. So I live it vicariously.

Anyway, Hope you knock 'em dead today. A number 1 wouldn't surprise me.


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Happy Birthday Wayne!!

Robert I wonder how many sales you would have if you had 5 books in your portfolio. I think that is the best thing to have when you do a Countdown run like you guys are doing. Think you said you had 25 sales on your other book?


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Oh, I'm well aware of that, Vinny. One reason I ran the big promo of Book #1 was to benefit Book #2, but also to give me the income I need to write Book #3!  

48 sales of Book #2 yesterday, 29 more today, which is far from over.


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## Kate. (Oct 7, 2014)

Thanks for sharing your experiences, Robert and Wayne! This is a fascinating thread.

Robert - I didn't mind the first plot summary too much, but yeah, your version grabbed me much more strongly. It's a shame BB doesn't let you supply your own synopsis. Still, I hope your tail is a long and healthy one!


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## CJArcher (Jan 22, 2011)

I'm a little surprised by your results too, Robert. I would have expected more in such a huge genre as Thriller. Another thing to consider is the numbers that BB report on their website would include sales at B&N, Apple etc. Since Hunter is exclusive, you'd be missing out on those which may have pushed you over the threshold of 2k. Or maybe not - guess we won't know for sure.

I've got a BB ad coming up for a boxed set in 3 days. It's the same genre as another boxed set they advertised for me back in June '13 so I'll be interested in comparing results between the 2 promos.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Darcy, thanks for the well-wishing. And yeah, I would've preferred that they adapt my own rather than come up with their own. I used to do promotional writing professionally.

CJ, that's a good point I hadn't considered. It's likely that their advertised average results include cross-platform promotions, as well as the multi-day "tail." Anyway, I shouldn't complain, should I? 1500 sales yesterday, almost 400 today so far (and the day is still young), and I'm living in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Things could be worse, eh?


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Nice to see that _FALLEN MANGROVE_ is now down to #103. Given the 5-hour lag, we're starting to get rankings based on early afternoon numbers. Go, go, go!


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Thanks for all the birthday wishes, y'all. I had a truly humbling experience at today's meeting with the local Warriors involved with Homes for Heroes. One young man I met has been struggling to not just write about his experiences, but how to get it published. He's also under a time constraint. While his house is being built, he's dying. He's not expected to ever live in the house being built for him, his beautiful wife and two young boys. Faced with that obstacle, they're both very upbeat and so much in love it makes you crazy. I told him what I could in the short time we had and gave him the web address for Veterans Writing Project and my card. My visit back here in my home town was very rewarding in many ways. I'm leaving in the morning, probably before sunrise. I miss my wife and little girl.

So far, Mangrove is up to 1,231 sales, with 11 borrows and set to make the top 100 with the next update. It's at #103, now. With nine hours left, I still feel pretty confident that it will outperform August's promo with 2,400 sales and a #14 ranking.


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## Robert Stanek (Nov 16, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> So far, Mangrove is up to 1,231 sales, with 11 borrows and set to make the top 100 with the next update. It's at #103, now. With nine hours left, I still feel pretty confident that it will outperform August's promo with 2,400 sales and a #14 ranking.


Good results, Wayne. I've been out supporting homeless vets for the past few weeks. Really feels good to give back.

Tough road to travel when it's been down in the '20s here (which is unusually cold).


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## Lisa Grace (Jul 3, 2011)

Wayne - Happy Birthday. 

I did put a post up for you late last night (for today on The FB page — KDD). 

I'm so sorry for that young man and his family. It's so hard to watch someone with so much left to live for, have to leave.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Wayne, you're also now #20 on the "Movers & Shakers" list.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

_FALLEN MANGROVE_ is now at #73 [in "Kindle Ebooks"; #77 in "Kindle Store"]. 

I think it'll blow right by my slowly fading _HUNTER_ in the next update. Passing you the baton, buddy.


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## edbaldwin (Sep 4, 2012)

Wayne,

Been following your progress.  Do you see any drop off after several promotions of the same book on a given promo board?

Thanks,

Ed


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## Shayne Parkinson (Mar 19, 2010)

Great to see you and Robert both doing so well, Wayne - and happy birthday!

My perma-free first in series is also on BookBub today. So far it's reached to #8 in the .com free store, and I'm very happy! This book hovered fairly constantly around #300 pre-KU, and #600 ever since then. When it was last on BookBub six months ago it reached #5, so if it manages that again I'll be ecstatic.  Of course the follow-on to the rest of the series is what I'm really looking forward to - last time it lifted the following two books into the top 1000, and they stayed around there for a few weeks.

It's at #16 in the UK, which is also very pleasing.


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## Philip Gibson (Nov 18, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> Thanks for all the birthday wishes, y'all. I had a truly humbling experience at today's meeting with the local Warriors involved with Homes for Heroes. One young man I met has been struggling to not just write about his experiences, but how to get it published. He's also under a time constraint. While his house is being built, he's dying. He's not expected to ever live in the house being built for him, his beautiful wife and two young boys. Faced with that obstacle, they're both very upbeat and so much in love it makes you crazy. I told him what I could in the short time we had and gave him the web address for Veterans Writing Project and my card. My visit back here in my home town was very rewarding in many ways. I'm leaving in the morning, probably before sunrise. I miss my wife and little girl.
> 
> So far, Mangrove is up to 1,231 sales, with 11 borrows and set to make the top 100 with the next update. It's at #103, now. With nine hours left, I still feel pretty confident that it will outperform August's promo with 2,400 sales and a #14 ranking.


In case you're asleep or otherwise absent Wayne, Fallen Mangrove is now:



> #77 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
> #1 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > War & Military
> #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > War & Military
> #1 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > Sea Adventures


So exciting to watch this and I know we all wish you well. Thanks for donating not only some royalties but also time, effort and encouragement for those in such need of it.

Especially the encouragement.

Philip


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Thanks for that Lisa.



edbaldwin said:


> Wayne,
> 
> Been following your progress. Do you see any drop off after several promotions of the same book on a given promo board?
> 
> ...


No, and I disagree with those that say it can be diluted. Think about it. Today's email went out to almost 1 million action/adventure subscribers and with luck, I'll sell 2,500. That's a pretty low percentage. Half the time, when I get the email from BookBub, I don't even open it because I have a huge backlog of books on my Kindle. I think that's normal with most readers. Eventually, I suppose it's possible to wring every reader that's going to read a particular book out of BookBub's current subscriber base. But, that would be ignoring that it's more than growing. Any kind of subscription like that will have people unsubscribe, yet BBs subscription base keeps growing. Plus, I haven't yet run a BookBub ad on the same book twice. All five have been featured now though, so the next one will be a repeat.

I'm going to bed. I want to get up early and head home. I'll post the final results in the morning. Peak ranking will probably be after 5 am and my days of pulling an all nighter are long past.

So far today, Mangrove has 1488 sales and 13 borrows, 62 of those sales were in the UK. It's current rank is #77 in the Kindle Store. Just 291 more sales and I will have sold 50,000 total books since publishing Fallen Palm on 10/7/13.


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## nightfire (Mar 22, 2012)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> No, and I disagree with those that say it can be diluted. Think about it. Today's email went out to almost 1 million action/adventure subscribers and with luck, I'll sell 2,500. That's a pretty low percentage. Half the time, when I get the email from BookBub, I don't even open it because I have a huge backlog of books on my Kindle. I think that's normal with most readers. Eventually, I suppose it's possible to wring every reader that's going to read a particular book out of BookBub's current subscriber base. But, that would be ignoring that it's more than growing. Any kind of subscription like that will have people unsubscribe, yet BBs subscription base keeps growing. Plus, I haven't yet run a BookBub ad on the same book twice. All five have been featured now though, so the next one will be a repeat.
> 
> I'm going to bed. I want to get up early and head home. I'll post the final results in the morning. Peak ranking will probably be after 5 am and my days of pulling an all nighter are long past.
> 
> So far today, Mangrove has 1488 sales and 13 borrows, 62 of those sales were in the UK. It's current rank is #77 in the Kindle Store. Just 291 more sales and I will have sold 50,000 total books since publishing Fallen Palm on 10/7/13.


That is inspiring Wayne. Plus the work with the Wounded Warriors. You rock 

You are currently at #66 in the paid store. I wish I could buy it again to help you get higher! 

50k books in about a year. Wow, just wow.


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## Guest (Nov 17, 2014)

Guys, great results!

One question though, why so little borrows with both campaigns?


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## Kate. (Oct 7, 2014)

I can guess - because borrows aren't counted until the reader gets to 10%, the borrows that are showing up would be from people who started reading straight away. There are probably a good number waiting to "come through" if the reader is in the middle of another book, for instance, or if they only read a few pages before bed at night and haven't gotten to 10% yet.


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## Guest (Nov 17, 2014)

Darcy said:


> I can guess - because borrows aren't counted until the reader gets to 10%,


Oh, you're right!

Guys, keep us informed also about any changes in borrows in the coming days.


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## MikeDavidson (Oct 5, 2013)

Mangrove is at 51! Congrats Wayne!


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

I think Wayne is going to wind up in the Top 10. He reported numbers at 6:30 pm equal to what I had at the end of the day! No telling how far this will go. But I cast MY vote by buying the book. I hope everyone reading this has!


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Now down to #41. That's where I ENDED. He's still got about 4-5 hours before his book peaks. Lookin' good, Wayne!


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Still at 41 - 2:18 am on east coast time


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Now at 39, 2:27 am Eastern time.


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Maybe the Amazon Gods are following this thread lol


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

I think Wayne still has a shot at the Top 20. The book should peak somewhere between 5 - 7 a.m. Eastern. That's when the last significant flood of Sunday sales should register. Fingers and toes crossed for him. What a great birthday present that would be!


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Incidentally, for anyone who missed it, here is the long recent interview of Wayne that's posted on my blog:

http://www.bidinotto.com/2014/11/interview-with-wayne-stinnett-bestselling-adventure-novelist/


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## EC (Aug 20, 2013)

Still at 39 at 03.30 eastern.


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## Magda Alexander (Aug 13, 2011)

Holding steady at #39 at 4:30 a.m. EST. Go Wayne!


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Not sure what happened after I went to bed, but sales fell off big time. The day ended with 1,583 sales and 13 borrows. That's less than a hundred sales in the last 5-1/2 hours. While this was very successful, it didn't perform as well as my August promo with Fallen Out. Peak ranking as it stands now is at #39 where it's been for three hours.

Sell through has already started. Fallen Out was over 40 sales yesterday. The highest this month was 20 on three different days. That's it until tonight. I have about a ten hour drive to get home.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Wayne, I stayed up till 5 a.m. watching the frozen rankings. NOBODY'S rankings were changing for at least two hours, perhaps more. I wonder if something was goofy last night in Seattle.

But your 1596 (sales + borrows) and #39 ranking turn out to be very close to my 1515 paid and #38 (I'm told) ranking. Frankly, I don't get it. Both our campaigns were engineered to take us much closer to the top rankings than that. Weekend Bookbub slump? Is BB losing its mojo? Computer issues at Zon? (Many in another thread are reporting big delays in processing their book updates.)

Anyway, as of 10:40 am Eastern, your book was at #50; right now, 12:15 pm, it's at #52. At the same moment, mine is still "bitterly clinging" to the Top 100, at #94.

Not that I am complaining! Here are my raw data for the first 4 days. I'm providing it all so that anyone interested can mull the fertility of various paid lists/sites, the "collateral" benefits of these campaigns on paper and audio sales, and the enduring "tail" of sales.

Note that this promotional campaign included ads that hit the U.K., via KCD, Bookbub, and Ebooksoda:

*PRE-LAUNCH, Wed. evening Nov. 12:*

I didn't want any screw-ups, so I set my KCD to start about 9 pm Eastern the evening before I had my first ads scheduled. I saw a minor jump in sales, hardly above the norm.

*DAY #1, Thurs. Nov. 13:*

_Campaigns_: KCD, KB&T, Digital Book Spot (via BKnights at Fiverr), plus a blog on Readers in the Know, plus extensive Facebook (e.g., friends enlisted to promote) and Twitter.

_HUNTER Results_: 281 sold + 4 borrowed = 285. End of day ranking: #634, down from around #8000 the day before.

_Collateral effects:_ BAD DEEDS saw a slight spike above normal: 21 sold, 4 borrows = 25. Also, I saw a big spike in HUNTER audiobook sales: 14 attributable to that day. I usually average less than one per day. However, my print sales had zero impact.

_Totals across both ebooks:_ 302 sales + 8 borrows = 310 paid units

*DAY #2, Fri. Nov. 14:*

_Campaigns_: KCD plus ads with Riffle Select, Readers in the Know (focused book of the day), Booksends, Ebooksoda, Fussy Librarian, Awesome Gang (which did a lot of extra social media for me -- thanks, Vinny!), EbookLister, plus more Facebook (listing on book pages) and Tweets.

_HUNTER Results_: 289 sold + 12 borrowed = 301 (slight increases over Day #1). End of day ranking: around #350 (it had gone as low as #296).

_Collateral effects:_ BAD DEEDS - 16 sales + 3 borrows = 19 paid. However, another big spike in audiobook sales: 30 more. For me, that is huge. NO paper sales, though!

_Totals across both ebooks:_ 305 sales + 15 borrows = 320 paid units.

NOTE: This day's results, from all these sites plus whatever residual benefits were still generated from the Day #1 promotions, only slightly exceeded the first-day results I got from just KCD + KB&T, Bknights and social media. Booksends contacted me, reporting that their Amazon data showed that their promotion resulted in over 300 visits to the HUNTER product page, with a 30% sell-through, or 100 sales. If true, that means the rest of the day's 220 sales were spread among all the other 6 sites listed (plus social media and the "tail" of first-day sites), I have no idea in what proportions. So Booksends seemed to be demonstrably fertile, but I'm not sure how well any of the others produced.

*DAY #3, Sat. Nov. 15:*

_Campaigns_: KCD plus Bookbub + ENT, plus some more social media.

_HUNTER Results_: 1493 sold + 22 borrowed = 1515 paid units. End of day ranking: #42, although it sank in later hours to as low as #38.

_Collateral effects:_ BAD DEEDS saw 39 sales + 9 borrows = 48 paid. That's a substantial spike over the usual dozen or so daily paid total. Again, though, ZERO paper sales. I do not yet have audio numbers, but based on the prior two days' numbers, I expect them to be substantial.

_Totals across both ebooks:_ 1532 sales + 30 borrows = 1563 total paid.

NOTE: Given that this day's sales results included "tail" effects from the previous day, and also that the Bookbub promo was enhanced by ENT, I think it's safe to say that the Bookbub "Thriller" list significantly underperformed its advertised expectations of around 2,000 average sales. I've said previously that I suspect a poor promotional blurb may be responsible, at least in part. The fact that this was a Saturday promotion may also have something to do with the numbers...or not.

*DAY #4, Sun. Nov. 16:*

_Campaigns_: None except for KCD. Minimal social media. This day tests the "tail effect" of the previous days' efforts, especially including Bookbub.

_HUNTER Results_: 527 sales + 31 borrows = 558 total paid. End of day ranking: #79.

NOTE: This "tail" -- which now includes the effects of enhanced visibility on various Amazon bestseller lists -- represents 37% of the preceding day's results. Since several hundred of these sales are probably attributable to the prior day's Bookbub promotion, they must be added to the Bookbub results of the previous day, meaning that the list is more fertile than its initially disappointing results would suggest.

_Collateral effects:_ BAD DEEDS saw 37 sales + 9 borrows = 46 paid units. This is almost exactly the same as the previous day's totals. I'm encouraged, because it means that one of my biggest hopes for this campaign -- enhanced visibility and sales for the sequel -- are being realized. BAD DEEDS has been in the ranking range of #8000 - #10,000 for a while now. However, it spent much of Day #4 at around #2800 and as of this moment on Day #5 it is at #2989. I do not yet have any audio results for Day #4, but I expect them to be substantial. However, once again, I didn't sell a single paper copy of either book!

_Totals across both ebooks:_ 564 sales + 40 borrows = 604 total paid. That's nearly 39% as much as the previous (Bookbub) day's total paid downloads for both books -- which to me is a great "tail" effect.

*DAY #5, Sun. Nov. 17:*

_Campaigns_: Last day of KCD. Minimal social media. We see the "tail effect" of the previous days' efforts, two days after Bookbub.

_HUNTER Results_: 326 sold + 38 borrowed = 364 paid units. End of day ranking about #131.

NOTE:This still represent 65% of the previous day's overall paid sales, a nice tail effect.

_Collateral effects:_ BAD DEEDS had 24 sales + 16 borrows = 40 paid units. Negligible change in audio buys; I believe I mistakenly attributed the 30 sales the previous day to Day #2 rather than Day #3 (Bookbub day). Again, zero print book sales.

_Totals across both ebooks:_ 350 sales + 54 borrows = 604 total paid.

NOTE: The ratio of borrows to sales has definitely been rising steadily. This is the last day of the campaign with HUNTER priced at 99 cents. It will be interesting to see what the first post-campaign day will generate at the full price of $4.99.

NOTE: I've never sold many books in the UK -- maybe half a dozen per month. I mentioned that I used KCD, Bookbub, and Ebooksoda to reach that market this time. I scheduled KCD to begin earlier in the UK, to account for the time difference. So here are some results:

Day #1: 8 sales, from KCD alone

Day #2: 6 sales, KCD + Ebooksoda

Day #3: 86 sales, Bookbub + KCD, and perhaps residual Ebooksoda effects.

Day #4: 24 sales + 2 borrows, "tail" effects from all the preceding; still at 99 cents.

Day #5: 24 sales + 1 borrow, still at 99 cents.

That's 151 paid units from a market that usually generates a trickle of sales. While Ebooksoda showed little benefit, UK promos using KCD and Bookbub clearly did. I wasn't paying close attention, but well into the campaign I saw a UK Kindle ranking in the 500's, and HUNTER has been holding down the #1 spot in "Vigilante Justice" in the UK simultaneously with #1 in the USA!

I'm finishing this post around noon on Day #5, the last day of KCD. I'll come back here tomorrow to insert the end-of-day totals; and over the next day or two I'll also update the audiobook numbers, which are THE big, pleasant surprise for me so far.


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## EC Sheedy (Feb 24, 2011)

Robert and Wayne: I really appreciate all this data sharing. Just wanted you both to know.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

EC, you're welcome. I hope some of you can read the runes and tea leaves and make some sense out of all of this.

A big takeaway for me is the surprising way that Bookbub underperformed expectations for both of us. Not that it didn't _perform_, objectively; but it clearly didn't hit the numbers we anticipated. At first I attributed my own disappointing results to a poor promo blurb; but Bookbub did an excellent blurb for Wayne. Was it the weekend timing? That's never been a big factor in the past, has it? Or is this a sign that readers are reaching the saturation point with daily book promotions?

I can only share my data, hope that others among you do, too, and see if we can determine what's going on. I'm certainly looking forward to whatever info Wayne may be able to share.

But please don't get the wrong idea. We both sold a whale of a lot of books. And it's not as if there aren't positives to take note of. I hope everyone notices them. Maybe it wouldn't mean much to Lee Child, but for me, selling over 3,000 books in five days is a big deal!


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Was this your first BB on that particular book?


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Yes, indeed. In fact, my only promo of _HUNTER_. Amazon ran its own back in late 2011, dropping the price to $1.99. That was the one that propelled it up to #4. But I have never run my own paid promos of either book, nor ever dropped their prices. So, the book was basically unknown to the Bookbub list.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Yes, indeed. In fact, my only promo of _HUNTER_. Amazon ran its own back in late 2011, dropping the price to $1.99. That was the one that propelled it up to #4. But I have never run my own paid promos of either book, nor ever dropped their prices. So, the book was basically unknown to the Bookbub list.


Well there goes my theory. I was thinking maybe you caught the same audience twice.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Yep. So it's not an over-used list. It's not the specific list, since Wayne and I used different ones. It's not the price, because they were the same. It's not the blurbs, because though mine was dubious, his was great. It's not the lead-up to BB, since we did similar things. It's not which weekend day, since we used different ones.

We're left with only a few possibilities. Time of the year? Weekend timing? Subscribers getting overwhelmed by too many choices, or their ereaders already loaded with too many titles?

I'm open to other suggestions.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

This may or may not have anything to do with it.  Retailers are starting earlier advertising BLACK FRIDAY.  I wonder if people who normally wouldn't think twice about spending that 99 cents,  are thinking no I need it to spend on someone else.  
That is the only idea I have.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

I'm going to be the naysayer. You guys made it high on the Top 100 list. Maybe you just didn't realize how many sales it would take to get into the top ten. A lot of different things play into that. It's a higher-volume time, so it would naturally take more sales to climb higher on the list. It's easier in the some months because volume is down. Take it as a win. You made it into the top 100.

When it comes to the BookBub list, I think it's impossible to say that everyone subscribed to that list even buys books. I'm a subscriber, but I pick my own books and don't pick advertised books from that list. I never have, even once. I think more than half that list is probably the same. You still sold a huge amount of books. Now, ride the tail and enjoy it.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Yes, Jedi Master! 

You're right; it could be a seasonal thing, coming into the holidays. But it isn't how many sales it would take to climb the list to the Top 20; it's the fact that BB usually generates more average _sales_ -- wherever that puts you on the list. These sales results don't match past performance of the list. That's the puzzler.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Yesterdays sales updated throughout the day. Now I'm showing 1645 sales and 13 borrows.

I think one thing we didn't take into account, Robert, was the number of people that subscribe to not just BookBub, but many of the other advertisers, as well. It could be that the 450 that bought Mangrove through one of the previous day's ads would have bought it yesterday in the BookBub ad, pushing it higher. On the next one, I'm going to let the Countdown Deal do it's thing two days before BB for the initial push then maybe just ENT and AwesomeGang the day before and several other ads on the two or three days after.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Possible, Wayne. But how many daily book recommendation mailings does any reader want? I would be surprised to find that anyone but an author, who has skin in the game, would bother to subscribe to more than one or two.

Your suggested scheduling tweak might or might not work better. But I don't think our two slightly different approaches to scheduling the KCD made much difference to the outcomes. I started with KCD, then 12 hours later kicked in KB&T and Bknights, plus social media. Combined, that generated about 300 sales. Then the next day I added 7 more ads to KCD. Another 300 sales. So there was the "initial push." The third day, Bookbub PLUS ENT, coupled with whatever tail came from the preceding days, then produced 1500 sales -- not the expected 2,000. You, by contrast, started with two days of KCD, then packed a ton of ads the day before Bookbub. Your results were only marginally better. 

So I am skeptical that reordering and re-bunching promos would have made any significant difference for either of us.

From a positive standpoint, let me say that I got 558 HUNTER sales the first day after Bookbub, and I'm now nearing 300 in the early evening of the second day after. The entire five days of ads, plus the new visibility on Amazon, has helped me sell over 3,000 books. I'm delighted at that.

But I don't know if further tweaking will do much to improve on that. I suspect that larger forces are at work here. Like supply and demand. My gut tells me that because of the proliferation of authors, titles, and all these book-recommendation services, the typical ereader is now overflowing with unread downloads, and -- as a result -- millions of book readers are getting far choosier about what they download and read.

If true, that would explain why paid promotional campaigns -- not just Bookbub but other recommendation sites, too -- may be producing fewer book purchases than in the past. If others here have good data comparing how well some of these services produced for them a year ago versus now, that might confirm or refute my suspicion.


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## cinisajoy (Mar 10, 2013)

Robert,
When I was new to ebooks as a reader, I signed up for nearly every site advertising free and discount books.  I think I was getting 20 emails a day from various advertisers.  I finally unsubscribed to most of them.


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## EC (Aug 20, 2013)

Go try a free book and see what happens.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

First day after BookBub, yesterday, I had a total of 407 sales and borrows, which surpasses the 340 from the day before with 13 ads. Mangrove has now slipped to #86 this morning. Sell through is continuing to ramp up, all four of the others enjoying near double the normal sales. Current total revenue from all five books over the entire promo starting at 9 pm on 11/13 is over $3200.


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## KaiW (Mar 11, 2014)

I'm definitely seeing BB lose its effectiveness over the last few months, possibly since the introduction of KU. Sales on 99c promos have been about 30% lower than previous campaigns, and free is also seeing a huge drop from my POV. For example, I had a free promo in Thrillers in March and had over 100k downloads across 4 different retailers, whereas my latest free promo in the same category cost more but generated only 60k (diff book). So I think it's likely we're looking at diminishing returns from the same advertiser, as well as the KU factor.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

I think what Yoda said makes perfect sense. Ranking is a comparison not to what your book did yesterday, but what your book is currently doing compared to every one else's books. My 8/1 BookBub ad for Fallen Out was at the peak of summer, when all book sales are typically slower than now in mid-November. However, during that promo Fallen Out sold 2400 on the day of the ad, where this one only sold 1700. Even the run-up for the two days prior in August was much better than this one. Could it simply be because it was the weekend? My 8/1 ad was on a Friday.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> I think what Yoda said makes perfect sense. Ranking is a comparison not to what your book did yesterday, but what your book is currently doing compared to every one else's books.


My experience confirms this. I had a BookBub ad a few weeks ago. I did pre-BookBub ads, but two of them--The Fussy Librarian and The Awesome Gang--were busts. Now comes the eye-opener: despite a one-star review posted for the novel just hours after the BookBub promo started (the review was by someone whose other reviews weren't even close to my genre), which was immediately followed by a new, negative Showcase feature that slowed sales to a halt, the book had close to 2,000 sales and made it to #28 in the paid Kindle store. The fact that my book made it to #28 tells something about the sales of other books. After the negative Showcase feature and review, the follow-through sales were negligible. A previous BookBub ad for this novel had 3,000 sales.

We have no way of knowing how many books Amazon is selling, whether sales are up or down, or how many sales have been cannibalized by KU. Also, as others have pointed out, there are so many promo sites that readers are inundated with more free and bargain books than they can read, with the possible exception of romance readers (if someone started a promo site devoted to romance readers, they'd make a fortune). I don't think the market will ever become saturated, but it certainly is flooded now.

We may never be able to make sense out of what is happening. This business is in a constant state of change.


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## KaiW (Mar 11, 2014)

Agreed but I'm never that interested in ranking post-promo, only actual bottom-line sales. No question that those numbers (and cross-series sell-through) are down.


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## GeorgeMahood (Jan 9, 2014)

I think that it still sounds like a great success, Wayne. Well done!

Apologies if it's been mentioned before, as I haven't had time to read this whole thread, but surely one of the main reasons that this promo hasn't performed as well as your previous ones is that it's the 4th book in a series. That is going to put a lot of readers off who either a) haven't read the first 4 (inc prequel), or b) don't want to commit to buying the rest of the series too. Your promos for Fallen Out and Fallen Palm will have performed much better because buyers aren't having to make the same commitment as they are with the later books. Just a thought and I'm sure it's something you've already considered. 

To shift as many copies of Book 4 as you have is really impressive as it will no doubt result in a massive bump for your other books.


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

Marian said:


> We have no way of knowing how many books Amazon is selling, whether sales are up or down, or how many sales have been cannibalized by KU.


On a tangential note, I have been wondering myself whether book sales are down at Amazon overall lately, purely because my book rankings have been very volatile in my category on about the same number of sales.


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## reneepawlish (Nov 14, 2011)

I did a BB ad at the end of September (a free book, 5th in the series) and I have over 100k in downloads.  My books sales had been steadily growing before that (nowhere near your sales Wayne lol), but since then, I've seen lots of downloads of the 2 free books in the series, and I had my best month ever in October.  November is shaping up to be a bit less, but I have another BB ad on the 28th, so I'm anxious to see how it does.  And since that ad, my apple and Nook sales have been the best ever.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Before this gets buried permanently in obscurity, I thought I'd update the day-by-day campaign results I posted on page 6 of this thread, and post it again below. Here are the overall headlines:

* More than 3,000 copies of "HUNTER" were sold. In addition, another 200+ copies of "BAD DEEDS" were purchased.

* On Saturday November 15, "HUNTER" sold 1,515 copies in a single day.

* For the second time in three years, "HUNTER" hit the Kindle "Top 50" Bestseller List, peaking at #38 out of 3 million ebook titles.

* The book soared to #1 in the categories "Crime Fiction," "Vigilante Justice," and "Assassination Thrillers," and still holds that top ranking in the latter two categories. It hit #2 in "Espionage Thrillers." It reached #12 on the big "Thrillers" list, and #14 on the even bigger "Mystery, Thrillers & Suspense" List. (It may have gone even lower in those numerical rankings; I wasn't paying attention all the time.)

* "HUNTER" also went to #1 in "Vigilante Justice" in the UK, and still remains in that ranking as of this writing. In a market where it has never done that well, it sold over a hundred copies in a single day.

* The collateral benefits include big spikes in sales of the "HUNTER" audiobook, and many new readers who will go on to purchase "BAD DEEDS" and the other coming sequels. I also expect sales of both books to remain considerably higher than they were before the sale, for a long time.

Here are the day-by-day numbers, which may be useful in gauging the usefulness of running pre-Bookbub ads, and also the fertility of various advertising platforms.



Robert Bidinotto said:


> Wayne, I stayed up till 5 a.m. watching the frozen rankings. NOBODY'S rankings were changing for at least two hours, perhaps more. I wonder if something was goofy last night in Seattle.
> 
> But your 1596 (sales + borrows) and #39 ranking turn out to be very close to my 1515 paid and #38 (I'm told) ranking. Frankly, I don't get it. Both our campaigns were engineered to take us much closer to the top rankings than that. Weekend Bookbub slump? Is BB losing its mojo? Computer issues at Zon? (Many in another thread are reporting big delays in processing their book updates.)
> 
> ...


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## Eskimo (Dec 31, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> I think what Yoda said makes perfect sense. Ranking is a comparison not to what your book did yesterday, but what your book is currently doing compared to every one else's books. My 8/1 BookBub ad for Fallen Out was at the peak of summer, when all book sales are typically slower than now in mid-November. However, during that promo Fallen Out sold 2400 on the day of the ad, where this one only sold 1700. Even the run-up for the two days prior in August was much better than this one. Could it simply be because it was the weekend? My 8/1 ad was on a Friday.


Quick question Wayne -- did Pixel of Ink promote you this time? I recall they did over the Summer.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

David Chill said:


> Quick question Wayne -- did Pixel of Ink promote you this time? I recall they did over the Summer.


No, they didn't run it either time. I won't be bothering them further.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Here's the final stats on my promo, which will end tonight at 9 EST, when the Countdown Deal ends and it goes back to full price. Though it didn't do as well as I expected, it was still phenomenally successful. Average sales of Fallen Mangrove in the first two weeks of November was just over 42 per day, with an additional 11 borrows per day. To recoup the revenue lost by discounting it, the book needed to sell 165 copies per day, or 990 copies over the six days. To cover the cost of all the ads, an additional 699 copies needed to be sold over the six days, for a total of 1,689 to break even.

Fallen Mangrove sales per day:
Friday (Countdown Deal only): 130 sales and 13 borrows
Saturday (13 smaller ads + CD): 320 sales and 21 borrows
Sunday (BookBub + CD): 1645 sales and 13 borrows
Monday (CD and BB tail): 377 sales and 26 borrows
Tuesday (CD and tail): 124 sales and 24 borrows
Wednesday (last day of CD): projecting 100 sales/borrows
Beginning rank: #2,377 Thursday night
Highest rank achieved: #39 early Monday morning

Total: 2,676 sales and 117 borrows
Total revenue: $2,048
Invested: $489
Normal income during promo time: $690
ROI (Total revenue - cost of ads - normal income): $869

My opinion on what constitutes a success might be different from others. Even if a promo loses money, it can still be counted as a success. Fallen Mangrove had 2,793 total sales and borrows over the six day period, where it normally would have been only slightly over 300 during that same time period. That's almost 2,500 new readers who might not have been, without the promo. THAT'S where success lies. Don't worry so much about the pennies and lose track of what's truly valuable, readership.

All four of my other books had spikes of 110% to 200% on Sunday and continue to have higher than normal sales.


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## I&#039;m a Little Teapot (Apr 10, 2014)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> No, they didn't run it either time. I won't be bothering them further.


They picked you up on your last run, if memory serves. Or the one just before. I remember it in the newsletter.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

SevenDays said:


> They picked you up on your last run, if memory serves. Or the one just before. I remember it in the newsletter.


It was the one before, with Fallen Out. That's how I discovered them. I didn't apply that time.

Almost forgot the icing on the cake. Some time during the BookBub ad, early on Sunday evening, someone bought my 50,000th book.


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## Jac1106 (Jan 13, 2012)

50,000 books sold in a little over a year! Congrats!


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## Lefevre (Feb 1, 2014)

cinisajoy said:


> Robert,
> When I was new to ebooks as a reader, I signed up for nearly every site advertising free and discount books. I think I was getting 20 emails a day from various advertisers. I finally unsubscribed to most of them.


I agree, and I would bet that over 50% of Book Bub's coveted email list is probably authors. The market has definitely matured.

Being excited that you got new readers is definitely the right attitude.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Definitely excited about all the new readers, some 3,000 of them. Some observations about post-sale results:

* A big, unexpected spike in audiobook sales during the promotion. As I mentioned, I usually get maybe 12-20 per month. I've had 59 during the promotion, and final numbers aren't in yet.

* A marked increase in KU borrows to outright sales, both during and especially after the promo. Today, two days after the promo, I'm seeing a LOT more KU borrows than sales. I'm not clear about what that means; but if I understand correctly, a many KU subscribers who may have downloaded the ebook during the promo, but who were _not_ recorded then, are now getting around to reading it past 10%, and so are being recorded in the borrow numbers. Is that correct? Anyone?

* A very nice bump in UK sales and readers. I'm hoping to gain some traction there.

* A "tail," but not a huge one. For two days after Bookbub, the 99-cent KCD continued, adding 604 sales+borrows across both titles on the first day, 404 on the second. Tuesday, the first day _after_ the sale (with the price back up to $4.99), I picked up 66 sales + borrows of _HUNTER_ plus 43 of _BAD DEEDS_, or 109 total for both. Today, the second day after, both totals will be _way_ lower than that, though still higher than normal.

By contrast: Back in late Nov./early Dec. 2011, when the book hit #4 on $1.99 pricing and a big Zon push, it stayed in the Top 100 for a full month. This time, it fell out of the Top 100 on Day #5 of the promotion. It's certainly a different world!

Now, the money:

I spent $730.50 for all the ads, including Bookbub. As near as I can determine, I grossed about $2200 in ebook sales, plus whatever 59 audiobooks will generate. Let's _very modestly_ call that only $100. So, let's assume that the promo grossed $2300.

On the day before the sale, I netted about $68 on 41 sales + borrows. So, let's assume I would have generated the same amount per day over the 5-day sale period, or $340.

$340 + $730.50 = $1070.50. Subtracting that from the $2300, I netted roughly $1,230 during the five days, after expenses. And I'll continue to benefit from whatever the "tail" will bring in average daily income that's above the pre-promotion level of $68.

In sum, the revenue return more than doubled the investment. I also believe that many of the new _HUNTER_ readers eventually will buy _BAD DEEDS_ at $4.99, and that a significant number of them will become fans of future sequels.

So, as it was for Wayne, this was a big win for me, any way you measure it.


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Love seeing the results but you guys are both missing a metric. How many newsletter subscribers did you pick up to your list. Surely there had to be some spike.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Good point, Vinny. I gained 25 new subscribers in the last six days.


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## CJArcher (Jan 22, 2011)

Congrats, guys! Definitely a success for both of you.


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## Twizzlers (Feb 6, 2014)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> It was the one before, with Fallen Out. That's how I discovered them. I didn't apply that time.
> 
> Almost forgot the icing on the cake. Some time during the BookBub ad, early on Sunday evening, someone bought my 50,000th book.


That's amazing.

I wish there was somewhere on Amazon that showed how many total books I've sold without having to do all the math each month myself.

D2D shows how many books you've sold (i'm just shy of 10,000 with them).


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Figured you had to Wayne. I was already on your list. Think I signed up for Roberts during the promo. You both have very good author newsletters.


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

J Ryan said:


> That's amazing.
> 
> I wish there was somewhere on Amazon that showed how many total books I've sold without having to do all the math each month myself.
> 
> D2D shows how many books you've sold (i'm just shy of 10,000 with them).


I keep a monthly spreadsheet, entering each days sales by title and outlet. It calculates daily, weekly and monthly sales totals and income. At the bottom, I keep a lot of promotional stuff and other data. One is total sales. Since every sale is entered daily, when I start the next month's spreadsheet, I just enter the total number of books sold to date from the previous month into the "Previous" cell and it continues to add sales for the next month. As of this very moment: 51,205 since the sale of the first book.


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## Silly Writer (Jul 15, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> I keep a monthly spreadsheet, entering each days sales by title and outlet. It calculates daily, weekly and monthly sales totals and income. At the bottom, I keep a lot of promotional stuff and other data. One is total sales. Since every sale is entered daily, when I start the next month's spreadsheet, I just enter the total number of books sold to date from the previous month into the "Previous" cell and it continues to add sales for the next month. As of this very moment: 51,205 since the sale of the first book.


Care to sell a copy of that spreadsheet, Wayne? With your data cleared, but the formulas still intact?


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

Email me and I'll give it to you.


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## ToniD (May 3, 2011)

I expect to see you guest-posting on BookBub Unbound one of these days, Wayne  

Congrats on another successful run.


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## Silly Writer (Jul 15, 2013)

Wayne Stinnett said:


> Email me and I'll give it to you.


Thanks, Wayne!


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## KL_Phelps (Nov 7, 2013)

we all want Wayne's spreadsheet, oh and his sales numbers!!!!


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## Mark E. Cooper (May 29, 2011)

Wayne is the bomb  But Trackerbox is good for keeping a running tally of income and sales numbers. Before ACX, I had rarely ever used Excel. I had to teach myself how to make one to keep track of four series in audio. To my surprise, I hound learning excel sort of fun.   Don't tell anyone that I'm a bit geeky will you?


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Robert Bidinotto said:


> Definitely excited about all the new readers, some 3,000 of them. Some observations about post-sale results:
> 
> * A big, unexpected spike in audiobook sales during the promotion. As I mentioned, I usually get maybe 12-20 per month. I've had 59 during the promotion, and final numbers aren't in yet.
> 
> ...


Very nice! How many new email subscribers you gained?


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Only a handful -- and that's really due to my own stupidity and sloth. I've been meaning for months to update my back matter in _HUNTER_ to include direct links to _BAD DEEDS_ and to my mailing list. But I haven't. When I realized that those items were missing, it was only two weeks before the big promotion, and I was afraid to tinker with the book, for fear I'd screw something up disastrously and the book wouldn't be listed when the sale began.

It's something I have to attend to now. I know I've missed a lot of potential _BAD DEEDS_ sales and mailing list sign-ups as a result of this dumb oversight.

Combined sales and borrows of both books in the four days of the post-promotion period have been running about double what they were prior to the promotion. How long that will last, nobody knows. But I'm pleased with the improved numbers.


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## RBC (Feb 24, 2013)

Yeah, that stings but what can you do now.. 

Next time it won't happen maybe!  Good luck!


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## nightfire (Mar 22, 2012)

Robert if you update the back matter it just might trigger an updated book for those that have it.  So you can still capture some of those people.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

That's great to know. I'll get right on it.

BTW, let me hand it to Bookbub: They just solicited from me participation in an extensive, detailed, online survey about all aspects of their promotion, my results, and my opinions of it. It was well-designed, and I'm sure they use it to tweak what they do. It's obvious why they're #1.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

POST-PROMOTION REPORT:

I was invited by Simon Denman at "Readers in the Know" to post about my KCD campaign before it began, and then to report the results afterward, in a second post. I waited till six days of post-promotion numbers had come in before sending him the follow-up report.

Simon has just posted it, taking pains to put my data into simple charts and graphs, so that other authors can see the impacts made by of various ads on a day-to-day basis. At the end of the post, I present my conclusions, as well as suggestions to fellow authors planning similar paid promotions.

I hope you find this summary report useful:

http://www.readersintheknow.com/blog/15/kindle-countdown-campaign-results


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

Very good Robert! 

Next time you set this up be sure to let me know as I can put a social media campaign together for you to blast out to readers a few times.


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## Robert Bidinotto (Mar 3, 2011)

Thank, Vinny. I appreciate what you did on my behalf this time.


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## Vinny OHare (May 3, 2013)

If you ever feel like doing a guest post on any of our sites let me know. Would love to have you.


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## Brynley Bush (Jan 18, 2015)

Thanks for the great data.  I'm about to apply for my first Book Bub ad, which will have to be free since I've run a free promotion in the last 90 days.  The BookBub application asks how many days after your ad your book will remain free.  I hadn't considered that.  If you've run a free BookBub promo, did you just make your book free the day of the ad or did you extend the free period?


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## Wayne Stinnett (Feb 5, 2014)

As with a discounted ad, I want the free ad to be on the third day of a four or five day period. With free, put a couple of small ads on the first day and a couple larger ones on the second. Then Bookbub on the third and no more than two days after that, preferably one.


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