Tag: BookBub

Do you subscribe to email lists with ebook deals?

Bookish Question #291 | Do you subscribe to email lists with ebook deals?

Yes. The two main newsletters I subscribe to are BookBub and FaithBooks.

BookBub is the granddaddy of all email newsletters. Authors pay for the advertisements, and it offers one or two free or on-sale books each day for each genre the reader selects. I use it to follow Christian fiction and nonfiction.

I have found I’m not buying as many books as I used to from the BookBub newsletter. I click through to Amazon, but then find one of two things:

  • I already own the book, probably having bought it during a previous BookBub promotion
  • The sale is a Kindle Countdown deal, which means it might be advertised at 99 cents or 2.99, but it’s full price for me (because Kindle Countdown deals are only available to readers in the USA and UK).

FaithBooks is a newer newsletter focusing on Christian fiction. It’s free for authors to advertise, and promotes new releaes, 99 cent ebooks, and sale books. If you like Christian fiction, I do recommend signing up for the FaithBooks newsletter.

I also get emails advertising multi-author giveaways from sites like BookFunnel and Story Origin.

These can be hit and miss—I downloaded half a dozen free books from the last promotion I saw, but didn’t even get through the first chapter on half of them. The plots sounded great, but the writing (and editing) took all the enjoyment out of reading. My initial reaction was that they’d been written by AI, but I also wonder if they might have been ghostwritten. Either way, they show the importance of having an actual human read and edit the output before publishing to ensure the dialgoue sounds something like human speech.

I also subscribe to a lot of individual newsletters—often because I signed up as part of a BookFunnel or similar deal. I probably subscribe to more than I should because I feel guilty for downloading a free ebook then immediately unsubscribing, even if I deleted the ebook after the first chapter.

What about you? Do you subscribe to email lists with ebook deals? If so, what’s your favourite?

Do you subscribe to book deal email lists?

Bookish Question #72 | Do you subscribe to book deal email lists?

One of the big changes in book marketing over the last few years has been the introduction of book deal email lists, advertising free and cheap ebooks. Many were developed as a way of earning money from the Amazon affiliate scheme. This pays a commission of between 3% and 8% (I think) if anyone clicks through from the website to Amazon and makes a purchase.

Amazon soon caught onto this.

They introduced more rules about affiliate marketing, like the fact affiliates are not supposed to email affiliate links, and that a certain percentage of purchases have to be of paid purchases (not free ebooks) in order to earn affiliate commissions. (Yes, I’m also an Amazon affiliate. I don’t earn enough from the scheme to pay for the hosting on this blog, let alone turn it into a profitable business! But click here if you’d like to visit my Amazon shop and contribute a few cents to my book-buying habit.)

Bookbub is the biggest in the business.

They have the biggest email list, and Bookbub subscribers can choose which genres they want to receive emails about. They have 810,000 people on their US Christian fiction list. It advertises just two books most days—free, or heavily reduced (usually to 99 cents or $1.99). Authors and publishers pay hundreds of dollars for a spot in one of these daily newsletters, and most make their money back.

Other book deal email lists include BargainBooksy, eReader News Today, FreeBooksy, My Book Cave, and Riffle. I subscribe to all of them, and occasionally buy from them.

Occasionally. Why not more often?

Sometimes it’s because I’ve already read the book. Sometimes it’s because I already own the book. Sometimes it’s because I’m just not interested (Christian fiction is a wide genre, and there are some sub-genres I’m not interested in). Mostly I don’t buy because I already have too many books on my to-read and to-review pile, and I’m trying to get that number down. So I’ll buy maybe one book a month as a result of seeing it advertised in one of the emails, although I’m more likely to download or buy a free or 99 cent book than a more expensive book.

What about you? Do you subscribe to book deal email lists? How often do you buy a book from one of the emails?