Is BookBub Worth It? How I Became An Overnight Bestseller

Before BookBub I had sold just over 400 copies of my debut novel WHEN THE STARS ALIGHT on my own steam. My rankings were low. I had only ever skimmed the top 100 in the month of August before sinking low again.

My rankings the night before BookBub

Then I got offered a BookBub Featured Deal and my book was an instant #1 Amazon Bestseller in Gaslamp Fantasy, orange banner and all, and sold 600 ebooks in two days.

So, is it worth it? That depends on your aims.

The Background

BookBub is upheld as the Holy Grail of promotion for self-published authors and it’s not difficult to see why. It can expose your book to millions of readers in the US and/or worldwide for a hefty upfront cost and a mandatory discount. It’s a fairly balanced trade-off but just the cost and discount alone can probably be off-putting to indies who already have to absorb the brunt of expenses for our business. For me, personally, I never expected to get accepted when I applied on a whim. I had heard that BookBub was Highly Competitive and Extremely Selective. In other words, don’t even bother applying for it unless you have 100s if not 1000s of reviews, a 4.5 average across them, and are already in some form trending as a book.

Having queried WHEN THE STARS ALIGHT in the past I was too familiar with being told no and so I thought one more couldn’t hurt. I decided to apply for a 99c discount since I’d already run a few free promotions in the past and thought 28p is better than none. I went US only since the US/International price tag scared me too much but my desire was to reach more US readers in general.

The deal I chose ended up being $516.